How two happy families can build a whole practice

If you have one happy client, one family that’s really glad they found you, you’ve already got the best marketing there is. Word of mouth works better than any ad, because it is marketing in its purest form: happy clients tell other families about you, friends with kids of their own, parents from the same school. It’s happened to us more times than we can count, and those families have always been our longest and most loyal clients.

Why referred families stay

You’re predictable. A family that comes through a friend already knows what to expect. Your pricing is clear, they know how to pay you, they know you don’t skip lessons and they know your cancellation policy. Nothing about working with you is a surprise, and for a busy client that’s worth a lot.

Your skills have already been checked. Their friend has watched you for months. They’ve seen you prepare a child for an exam, they’ve seen the grades go up, or they’ve simply seen a kid who stays interested in English week after week. Nobody has to take your word for it.

You’re more than a teacher. For a lot of children you become a speaking buddy, a foreign friend, a small window into the wider world. They ask you questions, they tell you about their week, and it quietly changes how they see things. Families who want their kids to know more about life beyond their own city value that a lot.

A referral offer helps

With some families a simple referral program worked well: a few lessons off, a discount on a month, or a small promo for every new student they bring.

It works even better with groups. If one-on-one lessons feel too expensive to a client, or they’d rather their child didn’t study alone, they go and find a second or third child for the group themselves. Word of mouth turns into a marketing tool, and the clients do the searching for you. That’s how some of our groups filled up much faster than we expected.

The referral nobody saw coming

Some of our best families came from the least obvious places. One of our teachers had taught a student offline in China years earlier. That student was already an adult, and his mom simply shared our teacher’s WeChat contact card with another mom who needed a teacher for her eight-year-old son. The boy is thirteen now and still studying, his mom renews the package again and again, and at this point it really feels like family.

Working out your own packages. Our free Lesson Package Calculator turns your price for one lesson into packages of 10, 20, 30 and 100 lessons, with the package terms already written in English and Chinese. Get it free

Why retention is a skill you have to learn

Your loyal families become your client base, and your schedule is built on them. When your schedule is predictable, your income is predictable too.

That’s the big difference from working for a company. However loyal a client is and however many lessons they buy from you there, they don’t belong to you. You don’t have their WeChat contact in your phone. They’re loyal to the company, not to you.

Back in 2021, I (Alice) was teaching a girl on an online platform. That summer the first rumours about the Double Reduction policy started going around, and in the middle of a lesson the girl’s mom walked up to the camera and asked for my WeChat. I gave it to her right there, and that one moment kept the student with me for four more years, until the girl graduated and moved on to high school.

That’s why retention isn’t a bonus for a solo teacher. It’s one of the main skills you’re building, right next to teaching and selling yourself. If you’re still deciding whether going solo is for you at all, we wrote about that in Maybe it’s time to move on, but where?