8 Yoga Marketing Ideas, Strategies & Tips for Online Lead-Generation
- Jay Trisko
- Aug 3, 2019
- 6 min read
Do you want to grow your yoga studio using online marketing? Here are 8 essential concepts to understand about search marketing, website design, and social media, along with other tips from the yoga marketing specialists
Yoga Marketing Tip #1: Develop a Solid Website
In today’s digital world, your website is the front door of your business. It’s the focal point you can direct all your other marketing efforts towards.
A website explains your services, introduces your instructors, educates people about yoga, and provides your contact information.
You can blog to improve your search rankings, link your website from your Google My Business Page, and use your site to build awareness of your brand.
Websites today must be clean, simple, and refined. You want a professional design that doesn’t overwhelm visitors. For example:
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Website designs like this UXI template are not expensive to develop. They’re also mobile responsive, which is critical with today’s mobile connected world. Make sure your forms are easy to fill out on a phone and that you have a click to call button in your header.
Important Tip: Use Visuals
Some online ideas come across better when you present them visually. Try using infographics in your design:
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You can also do a video which introduces your studio, shows classes in action, and has student testimonials:
Visuals like videos and infographics appeal to mobile users, working as effective ways to get your message across.
Yoga Marketing Idea #2: Master Search Marketing
Most people looking for a Yoga studio will check out your website first. And the majority of them will find you on Google or Bing search.
There are three places you can show up on search results pages, and each has value in its own way.
The first is pay-per-click advertising. These ads are run through auction-based systems like Google Adwords and Bing Ads. The main advantage here is that you show in the top positions (reserved for paid ads) and that you can control the ad copy and landing page. For example, you might want to run an advertisement on Yoga for beginners. Your ad and the page it goes to on your website can match that offer.
Next, you need to set-up and rank for Google My Business. This is the maps listing and review platform Google uses for geo-targeted searches. It’s a free listing you can optimize with your descriptions and by getting customer reviews.
If you don’t have a physical address for your business, either use your home address or set up a PO Box. To rank for these searches, it’s helpful if Google knows where your business is located.
Then you have the organic website listings. These are also free clicks, with ranking gained by optimizing your website for keywords, gaining links, getting social media traffic, and adding content to your blog.
With diligence, you can show up in three places on page one.
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Yoga Marketing Idea #3: The Art of Empathy
As a yoga professional you have an advantage over many business owners: you have a strong sense of empathy for your clients.
Use this sense in your marketing strategy. The web is very much a customer-centric world. People gravitate towards content that speaks their language. If they get confused or there’s a lack of connection, they’ll just move on until they find what they want.
This means that if you’re targeting experienced yoga students looking for advanced classes, you need to speak to their needs. If your targeting newbies who aren’t even sure if yoga is for them, you need to speak their language.
The more you can tailor your content to match the needs of the audience, the better your results will be.
Remember that your yoga website design, social media, blogging, and certainly advertising is not really about your studio. They’re about the needs of your prospective students. Marketing content that fails to empathize usually does a poor job of online lead-generation.
Yoga Marketing Tip #4: Get On Board With the Trends
In the US, yoga is a pretty trendy type of fitness. The clothes, lifestyles and social aspects of yoga play a role in getting people interested.
A local yoga instructor in Boulder Colorado was struggling with her marketing. Classes were empty. She needed to do something to really gain some momentum.
The answer: goats.
You’re probably aware of the goat yoga trend that started in Oregon:
And why not enjoy a beer with goat yoga?
One thing you may have to face is that your magnetism as a yoga instructor – powerful though it is – may not be enough to draw in new students.
Don’t laugh at the trends, embrace them. You may well need them to get people into your classes.
Yoga Marketing Idea #5: Reviews and Testimonials
Today one of the most persuasive types of content is reviews and testimonials from your students. Prospective students like these “word of mouth” recommendations, if for anything just to reassure them about what their experience will be like.
Ask your regular students to recommend you on Facebook and leave your reviews on Google and Top Rated Local. You can also create a testimonials page on your website and include student comments in your video. For this content, encourage people to note specifics about your studio and classes they like which will connect with prospective students.
Yoga Marketing Idea #6: Offer Unique Value
Yoga studios that succeed offer a little more than just yoga. They have what we call in marketing a unique value proposition (UVP).
Like it or not, if you want to make a successful business out of yoga instruction, you have to take-on a competitive stance. As a yoga instructor, this is obviously not going to be a hardcore slash and burn campaign designed to take the competition out. But it does require a UVP.
A UVP is the offerings and service touches you add that make your studio unique from others in the area.
Examples we’ve seen include:
Adding extra services like Tai Chi classes or martial arts.Having a dietitian on staff.Creating a superior ambiance with the interior design of the studio.Offering special class hours for groups like Moms, business people, or students.Offering classes for groups like teenagers or the elderly.Teaming up with local brew-pubs for Yoga with beer classes.
The ideas are limited only by your creativity. Yoga in the US can be quite trendy, subject to styles and fads. Sometimes you can develop a unique twist to your yoga classes by getting ahead of these trends.
Be aware that if you don’t give people a reason to choose you over another studio, you leave it up to chance. That’s not a way to get ahead in a competitive market.
Pro Tip: Appeal to New Students
One of the most important goals of your yoga website is to entice new students into trying classes. Make sure your content and offer connect with this audience.
First, make sure you have content on your website that describes your approach for new students. Many people are intimidated by yoga at first, so you need to assure them that your program is designed for total newcomers of all fitness levels. Your video introduction and testimonials can help here as well.
Next, make an enticing offer. Many studios offer the first class or two free. We’ve also seen success with the 30 days for $30 offer, where new students get unlimited yoga for their first month:
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Before you can turn people into loyal, long-term customers, you have to get them in your door. That’s what these offers are designed to do.
Yoga Marketing Idea #7: Go Social
Yoga studios are the type of business that does well with social media marketing. Use these free platforms to your advantage.
Set-up a Facebook business page and post several times a day. Also, make sure you’re active on messenger as many potential students will contact you through it.
Your existing students are the main group that will follow your pages, making this an excellent client retention tool.
Facebook is like a digital bulletin board where you can post updates, yoga tips, and news about students. Everything you post can then be shared by your followers, giving you exposure to prospective students.Because yoga has visual appeal, use platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat to post images of poses and exercises with at home tips. Take some short videos and create a Youtube channel for short lessons people can watch anywhere.
The idea here is not to substitute classes at your studio with social media content, but to supplement them and keep your students engaged. Done well, this can become another UVP. As your followers share interesting posts on their channels, you create valuable awareness marketing.
Yoga Marketing Idea #8: Know Your Marketing
There is an old saying that describes how confusing marketing can be:
I know half of my marketing isn’t working, I just don’t know which half.
This saying is out of date. With digital marketing, you should know if your marketing is working or not. The underlying goal is to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
This is the purpose of the Marketing 360® marketing software. It’s a tool that tracks everything you’re doing with your yoga marketing, from SEO to social media traffic, and organizes it so you understand the value of your marketing efforts.
You will find that some channels do better than others, and you’ll want to invest more in those. But you can’t assume what will work. You have to let the market tell you what works. Verified data is one of the most valuable parts of your long-term marketing strategy.
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