Customer Lifetime Value

[Fenta]

Hey guys,
Between the rare few students that stay for years, and the majority who stay for months, what is a reasonable monthly value to use for the average?
I know it will change per school. Asking because this is a critical thing to know or at least have an idea of for marketing. I'm doing some pre-emptive facebook advertising just to get a feel for it, and have no idea where I am.

 

[WaterGal]

This is going to vary depending on:
1 - your retention
2 - your tuition rate
3 - what else they give you money for (equipment, private lessons, testing fees, seminars, etc)

#1 will vary based on your program, teaching ability, and how you handle billing/memberships.
#2 will vary based on your location/local demographics, what you're offering, etc. Someone teaching 2 classes a week out of a church basement in a poverty-stricken town is going to charge much less than a full-time school in a wealthy suburb.

I'd recommend keeping track of your historical payments, and figuring out what your average monthly value is (total payments that month divided by total # of students you had). For us, it varies from month to month, largely depending on whether or not we had a test that month, but usually in the $95-110 per student range. And our students usually stick around at least 9 months, so I use a very rough lowball estimate of $1000 average total lifetime value.