After certification, the question is how to market your classes to meet these needs?
It is commonly believed that a person should hear about your product or service six times before she makes a “buy” decision”. Such impressions could be from any or multiple sources—leaflets, banners, word of mouth, ads, or social media platforms. Have you ever wondered why you constantly see advertisements for products and services on your TV screen day after day, sometimes even multiple times in a single day? Well, why should yoga be any different?
Marketing is important for yoga teachers because it helps them attract new clients and retain existing ones. Successful teachers understand the value of marketing for their businesses to thrive. It is important to let potential customers know about your services and promote them like any other commercial activity. In the competitive world of yoga, being an exceptional teacher is just one piece of the puzzle. Without effective marketing, your classes may go unnoticed. Marketing is not just about advertising your services, but also about effectively conveying your unique value to the right audience. In this chapter, we will delve into the most effective strategies for marketing your yoga business so that your passion for teaching can translate into a successful practice.
Why is Marketing Important for Yoga Classes?
- Visibility: No matter how exceptional your yoga classes are, they will only attract clients if people know about them. Marketing increases your visibility, letting potential students understand what you offer and why they should choose you over others.
- Building a Brand: Marketing helps you build a brand around your yoga classes. It allows you to communicate your unique teaching style, your values, and what sets your classes apart. This helps attract clients who resonate with your brand and are likelier to stick around.
- Increasing Enrollment: Effective marketing strategies can help increase enrollment in your yoga classes. You can attract more clients by reaching a larger audience and persuasively communicating the benefits of your classes.
- Sustaining the Business: Regular marketing is essential for the sustainability of your yoga classes. It helps maintain a steady flow of clients, which is crucial for financial stability.
Marketing Strategies for Yoga Classes
We have discussed some marketing concepts at length in the last chapter. Here, we focus on specific strategies for yoga classes.
· Leverage social media: Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are excellent for marketing yoga classes. You can share photos and videos from your classes, post student testimonials, and provide valuable content like yoga tips and health benefits.
· Offer Free Trials: Offering a free trial class is a great way to attract new students. It gives them a chance to experience your teaching style and the atmosphere of your classes firsthand.
· Build a website: A professional website can help you reach a wider audience. It can be a platform to share detailed information about your classes, philosophy, schedule, pricing, and contact information.
· Collect and Share Testimonials: Positive client reviews can be powerful marketing tools. Share these testimonials on your website and social media platforms.
· Network: Attend local events and workshops to meet potential clients and spread the word about your classes. Partnering with local businesses or other yoga teachers can also help reach a larger audience.
Remember, marketing is an ongoing process. It requires consistency, creativity, and a willingness to adapt your strategies based on what works best for your yoga classes. With effective marketing, you can attract more students, build a powerful brand, and turn your passion for teaching yoga into a successful career.
There are several methods available to generate inquiries, which can be divided into two broad segments: traditional methods and modern methods that are social media..
Yoga teachers have the option to use one or a combination of these methods.
I The traditional Methods
1. Distributing Leaflets/Flyers
It is a tried and tested method that is still widely used. Also, a cost-effective and faster way to communicate with your target audience. Flyers serve another purpose: they register a message in a prospect’s mind that such a yoga center has come up/is working in my area. If I am not interested immediately, I can use their services when needed. Also, I can talk about it to those in need. It also helps in creating brand awareness and publicity for your classes.
You can choose the area/s you want for distributing your flyers. Make sure the quality of paper and printing is reasonably good. Have an image that accurately describes your offering. Multicolored flyers draw more attention. The design must be suitable to be picked up by the prospects to read it further. Most flyers get shoved into a dustbin without proper quality and design.
Important Points to Be Considered:
· Your message must be clear, concise, and emphatic.
· Have shaped flyers—they grab attention quickly.
· Focus on the offering, the service, and the customer, not on you or your company/setup.
· Call to action—tell your customers what you want them to do.
If possible, you can place your flyers in beauty parlors, big stores, chemists’ shops, or with some pathological labs/doctors. The method to measure the effectiveness of your campaign is that if you distributed five thousand flyers, how many calls did you get? And then, finally, how much got converted into actual clients? My experience says you should get twenty to 30 calls and 2 to 3 conversions. It is very low, but this is how it is.
2. Displaying Banners/Billboards
This is another widely prevalent method to advertise your classes. Flyers have low shelf value, maybe a few seconds, but banners work long-term. They are less expensive, but to create a big impact, you must strategically position them so that they are visible to everyone passing by. The site should be where a lot of traffic moves. It could be a market area or outside some prominent place where your target audience frequents. Finding a suitable place for displaying banners sometimes poses a severe problem. You may need permission from local authorities. So, make sure you follow the local laws.
People notice these billboards/banners daily, and a message is firmly planted in their minds. If not immediately, whenever they feel like they can join your classes.
Your home, where you are running classes, should be the first place to display banners.
3. Local Search Engine
When we need any service, the immediate thing that strikes our mind is to go to local search engines. They provide us with references of many service providers with ratings from their users. I used this channel effectively to my advantage. When you are unknown, many people are unaware of your offering. It is better to get yourself listed with one or more search engines. Use strategic keywords to get your yoga service listed. If you offer kids yoga, don’t choose a “yoga center” or “yoga school” as your listing domain; choose kids’ yoga straight. If your specialty is power yoga or weight loss, you better choose “weight loss”, not a simple yoga class. This channel is cost-effective, too. Evaluate the effectiveness of the method by considering the number of inquiries you receive, and its conversion rate compared to the cost involved. If it offers a monthly subscription, choose this one only, as it will give you a feel of how many and what types of calls you receive. If it makes sense, you can renew for a longer term based on your experience.
4. Cold Calling
It is again an old method but still prevalent. It is highly time-consuming, annoying, and less productive. If you can hire an employee to do this work for you, get one. Have a focused approach—area specific, a particular type of community—call-center employees, IT professionals. But if one goes systematic, it could prove to be cost-effective. I get 2–3 calls daily from real estate firms/builders/developers. Pathological labs and stockbrokers heavily use this channel.
Word-of-Mouth
If you focus only on your services—a welcoming feeling, a soothing ambiance, a teaching method that is unique—your clients become your best brand ambassadors. They will talk to their friends and share their experiences and get you many clients.
It is the best form of advertising for your classes, as it is highly trusted. We rely more and take definite action on recommendations from our friends, family members, and people we know and trust rather than from unknown salespeople or advertisements. Then, it is cost-effective, as you are not required to spend anything on advertising or promotion. The best part is it forms a chain reaction: one advising the other, then this person reporting to her group of friends and so on.
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