6 Effective Yoga Marketing Tips to Take Your Studio to the Next Level
- Jay Trisko
- Sep 27, 2019
- 7 min read
The practice of yoga is becoming more dynamic and gaining momentum with yoga studios opening all over the world. Yoga studios alone represent a $10 billion industry in the U.S, and it’s set to grow at a rate of 9.2% per year. Yoga heals and transforms, helping people to be the best version of themselves, so it’s no surprise that the yoga industry is booming.
JayTrisko
As people continue to become more health conscious, it’s prime time to open a yoga studio or reinvigorate your existing yoga enterprise. While the yoga industry is thriving, you still need to market your yoga business effectively to get potential students in the door and promote your business.
Small business owners wear many different hats, and yoga studio owners are no exception. Two-thirds of small business owners and entrepreneurs are personally responsible for three or more areas of their business, including marketing. The top three marketing tools used by small companies are email, website, and social media.
Whether you’re a yoga teacher, opening a yoga studio or own an existing business, your marketing plan is crucial to growing your business. There’s a lot of marketing information out there; it can be a little confusing when first thinking of your marketing ideas. This article will go through 6 effective tips to help you grow your studio today.
Lay the Foundations and Set Your GoalsBuild an Incredible Yoga WebsiteContent Marketing is KingBe Active, Engaging and Connected on Social MediaUnderstand Search MarketingHost Local and Community Yoga Events
Lay the Foundations and Set Your Goals
When it comes to marketing, there are so many elements to get your head around. Whether you’re new to marketing or have previous experience, laying the foundations and setting goals is the perfect start to creating your marketing plan. Understanding your audience, target market and competition is essential to your marketing ideas.
The majority of this information can be discovered during the planning stage of your business plan and incorporating this data will help you create targeted and effective marketing. If you’re looking to open a new yoga business, check out these six essential steps to creating the perfect yoga studio business plan.
Careful planning and strategy are so important in a marketing plan from optimizing your website for SEO to organizing how you will create content that will add value. Set clear and measurable goals to help you create a marketing plan that will help to promote your business to the right people and achieve your short and long-term goals.
To help you organize your content, especially when working in a team. Trello is an online tool that is used to manage projects and personal tasks. Use visual boards to organize anything from keeping on top of your to-do list to creating your blog content and keeping to deadlines.
For some marketing inspiration and out-of-the-box thinking, check out:
This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See by Seth GodinPlay Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create New Categories and Dominate Markets by Kevin Maney, Dave Petersen, Christopher Lochhead, and Al RamadanBuilding a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller
Build an Incredible Yoga Website
In today’s digital age, if you’re running or planning on launching a yoga business, then a website is one of your most important business assets. It’s the place where the majority of new students will connect with you and delve deeper into your business. In an online marketing survey with small business owners, 74% surveyed had a website with 56% saying their website is responsive.
A responsive website, a single website that adapts to any screen size across multiple devices, is key to your website. In 2018, 52.2% of all worldwide online traffic was generated through mobile phones. A massive 88% of local searches occur on a smartphone, and 61% of consumers say they’re more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile-friendly site.
Some essential elements to include in your fantastic yoga website include:
Yoga business brandingBooking systemReviews and testimonialsSocial media linksSign up form for your email marketing listLocation detailsResponsive design
When it comes to creating an SEO-optimised website that’s truly going to showcase your business, it can feel like an overwhelming task. There are a couple of paths you can take to create an on-brand website that’s going to support your marketing goals. You can either hire a professional to build your website or use a website builder such as:
Wix – the powerful cloud-based builder is easy to use with a number of helpful featuresWordPress – the website builder gives you complete control and is the world’s most popular website building platform.Gator – a popular website builder by HostGator provides an all-in-one website building and hosting solution.Squarespace – a fully hosted website builder known for its fantastic design and user-friendly experience.
Content Marketing is King
Content marketing is a way to craft interesting pieces of marketing that help to position your brand and build trust with customers. Social media marketing can then amplify your content marketing strategy to really grow your business. For great marketing, you need great content.
No single type of content will appeal to every customer so it makes sense to vary your content. Types of content to include in your content marketing strategy could be:
Blog postsVideoImagesInfographicsEmail newslettersPodcastsQuizzes and polls
With blogging, you can create content for your website packed with keywords that drive customers from your social media to your website. Marketers are now shifting towards longer, more in-depth content which is something to keep in mind when creating blog content. Long-form content generates 9x more leads than short-term content.
When it comes to choosing where to focus your marketing, video content popularity has increased massively. Video content is 50 times more likely to drive organic search results than plain text. In Hubspot’s Consumer Behaviour Survey, over half of users say they consume an entire video (when distributed through Social Media), compared to 29% for blogs and 33% for interactive articles.
To make marketing easier, here are some of the best content creation tools:
Adobe Spark – fast content creation software that lets you combine text, images, and video content.Canva – this tool makes it easy to create and edit customized images for social media channels.Animaker – create multiple video types including explainer and infographic videos.Lumen5 – it uses artificial intelligence to create a video from text.
Be Active, Engaging and Connected on Social Media
Being active and engaging on social media is a great way to grow your brand and your business. 77.6% of small businesses reported using social media to promote their business with Facebook being the top platform used. Facebook has experienced steady growth with 97% of social advertisers stating it’s the most useful platform.
Engaging with your community and creating a following should be a part of your marketing plan. When choosing which platforms to use, think about who your target audience is and the type of content you’ll be sharing as well as how much time you have to devote to social media marketing. Yoga and Instagram are a match made in heaven and is the perfect place to host challenges to engage with your audience.
Some of the top Instagram yoga hashtags to use include:
#yogi#meditation#namaste#mudra#health#yogachallenge
To help grow your business you can take advantage of the many marketing elements social media networking has to offer. From video live streaming your latest yoga class on Facebook or Instagram live to taking advantage of influencer marketing, social media presents a lot of marketing opportunities. If you’re interested in learning how to run a successful Facebook campaign, listen to this episode of our podcast.
The fact that word of mouth marketing online is so important is why businesses need to be active on social media. About 62% of consumers search online for reviews and information before buying a product and 71% are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals.
To give you a social media marketing edge, some great tools to use are:
Understand Search Marketing
The majority of people will come across your yoga studio through your website. According to Net Market Share, Google is heavily favored and a market leader however, search engines such as Yahoo and Bing still hold a large audience. There are several different ways you can focus on showing up on search result pages.
First of all, when creating your website, think about the keywords you will use. The right keywords make it easier for potential students to find your yoga business. Appearing in organic website listings is an excellent and free way for your business to appear in search engine result pages.
Another option is to use Google Adwords so that you rank in the top position of search results. Google is responsible for 94% of total organic traffic. It has over 246 million unique visitors and 3.5 billion daily interactions so you can see why it’s such a popular option within the marketing plan with paid traffic converting 50% better than organic traffic.
If you’re not sure where to start to for search engine marketing success this year, check out Google Adwords for Beginners: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to PPC Advertising by Cory Rabazinsky. The book covers the basics and is the perfect place to start launching your first campaign. Another fantastic resource is The Paid Search podcast with Chris and Jason. The weekly podcast covers everything you need to know about Google Ads.
To get more marketing inspiration, listen to these fantastic podcasts:
Host Local and Community Yoga Events
When marketing and promoting your yoga studio, you should think about your local community. Your digital marketing efforts are important but heading into your local yoga community is crucial. The majority of people who attend your yoga and pilates classes will live or work nearby. Therefore, thinking of ways to get those specific people into your studio is an essential part of your marketing strategy.
A large number of marketers believe that events are the single-most effective marketing channel over email marketing, digital marketing, and content marketing. There’s a number of factors to think about when planning classes and events. According to Yoga Journal, Vinyasa yoga is on top of the list of favorite yoga classes, followed by Iyengar and Ashtanga.
With the endless reach of social media, it can be easy to lose focus from your local community. But, when you’re growing and marketing your yoga studio and brand it’s essential to look towards your local community. When deciding what classes or services to offer, use your market research of your local area, recent trends and general yoga industry overview to create the best service for your area. From aerial and restorative yoga to chair yoga and yoga for mental health, offer niche classes that will be well received in your local community.
If you’re looking to host a community yoga event in your local area, here are some ideas to get you started:
Collaborate with other leaders in your communityPuppy yoga in the parkFree workshopLunchtime yoga for nearby companiesOver 50s morning yogaUniversity student events and discounted classes
In Summary
Like any other business, marketing your yoga studio requires time and patience. The steps in this guide will help to kickstart your marketing strategy. Stay true to your brand and remain authentic while your market and grow your yoga business. Use your marketing efforts to add value, bring in new students and establish your yoga brand within your community.
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