Yoga is gaining increased acceptance all over the world. These days, people all over the world are realizing the importance of yoga exercises to relieve themselves from ailments as well as improve the immunization system of the body.
That is why it is very important for business owners in the Yoga industry to have an online presence as well so that they are able to capture this increasing popularity of yoga.
Having a little digital marketing knowledge will help you grow your classes, fill your workshops, and start making long-lasting connections with your students.
Digital marketing covers so many areas and the key is not to try and do all things at once, but instead focus on getting started with a few key activities.
There are about 6,000 Yoga Studios in U.S. (Source: https://www.thegoodbody.com/yoga-statistics/)
When it comes to finding new classes or workshops to attend, these yoga demographics all have a similar approach. Word of mouth reigns supreme, with 45% of yogis saying they discover yoga offerings through friends or coworkers. Facebook was the next top source (44%), followed by online ads (35%) (Source: https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/yoga-statistics-demographics-market-growth-trends-ds00/)
What is the single most significant challenge for most Yoga Studios and their owners?
Marketing profitably and finding new students with long term engagement with the studio.
Even chains with 10 or 20 studios in affluent communities offering high-quality teaching, exceptional customer service, cleanliness, with many different styles, have challenges with marketing that offers a sensible ROI.
The fact is that digital marketing is growing rapidly, changing constantly, and its effectiveness (with a sensible ROI) needs to be analyzed and monitored on a quarterly basis. That is hard work by itself. When one method fails, or one campaign has run its course, a new one needs to be implemented quickly and effectively to keep the business growing and profitable.
This balance that our western yoga has achieved between preserving an ancient practice and keeping up with a changing, online world is what has enabled it to hold such a well-established space in recent years.
14 Simple and Effective Tips will tell you:-
- Understand the reasons why yoga teachers need to be on social media now more than ever.
• Find out where you should go to learn more about your students so that you can truly engage and have social conversations with them online
• Learn how to find your most authentic voice on social media and why it is important
• Discover key strategies for optimising Facebook and Instagram so that you can deliver more value and increase engagement with your students.
Here are the 14 Simple and Effective Tips
1. Website -Build and Launch Your Yoga Website
The start-up plans for marketing of a yoga studio should consist of an online website design that has a user-friendly interface for a smooth communication with the customers. Retaining a frank behavior with the members is also required so that they feel comfortable enough in that arena.
Making the customers feel free and frank so that they can break away from their insecurities and hesitation is an important way for marketing of yoga studios. The authority is expected to be frank enough so that more and more customers can be drawn towards and can be transformed into a permanent member of the studio.
*Digital Aladin offers an interactive online course which will tell you step by step instructions that break everything down into manageable tasks and show you how to build your yoga wordpress website from scratch.
2. Create Your Yoga Brand
For yoga teachers who want to get started with creating a brand,so that they can feel proud for their yoga business.
Discover how to find your niche and tone of voice before getting creative with Canva to easily create a style guide of fonts, images and colours and design a simple text based logo.
3. LOCAL SEO
Local SEO is actually quite different than your general search engine optimization campaign, because local SEO is location specific. And ranking your website for a geo-specific business, like a yoga studio, involves much more than choosing the right keywords. Always remember, yoga students will come to that location which is nearer to their residence.
To get found for searchers looking for a yoga studio in your area, you should be taking full advantages of Local SEO techniques. The steps include:
- Create an official listing of your studio on Google My Business
- Include your Name, Address, Phone number on each page of your website
- Increase your local reviews across Google, Bing, and local directories
- Build authentic links and citations by including your studio’s name, address and phone number across other relevant websites and local directories
4. CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY
Devised a scalable content marketing strategy for Yoga keeping in mind their target audiences and their objectives. Drafted content for their blogs and optimized it according to their selected and approved keywords on WordPress.
Distributed content across various content distribution platforms. The content developed were shared with relevant hashtags and tags to increase the engagement rate.
Content that were developed based on Events related to Yoga or Calendar dates were shared and posted in Yoga groups and pages with relevant tags. Guest coverage for Yoga to increase back links and brand recognition.
Request your clients to contribute a short story on how ‘Yoga changed their lives’.
These inspiring stories were published in the blog page and shared in social media with relevant hashtags.
It was observed that stories that had a personal connection had more engagement among audiences, as most of the target set have more interest in reading live stories than articles that were generic.
Clients played a major role in content generation by reaching out to their followers, friends and other influencers and requesting them to contribute their ‘transformation story’.
These stories should publish and share across major online platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with the hashtag #Storyof aYogi.
5. Get Blogging
If the idea of this scares you, fear not! You definitely learnt something about yoga, philosophy, postures and anatomy during your yoga teacher training that you can share in words.
Blogging has so many benefits from creating content for your website packed full of relevant keywords that search engines will pick up, to driving people to your website from social media to read your posts. You could also submit your work to other yoga win-win.
Blog posts were also updated in the profile as more audiences tend to visit the profile and kept posting yoga related queries.
6. Organic Social Media
Discover tried and tested strategies and tactics for growing your online audiences and connecting with your students on Facebook and Instagram.
Connect with your students on social media
Branding through social media channels – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Drawing audiences by providing a mix of social media posts related to new yoga lovers, yogi’s, yoga teachers etc.
Increase audience interaction by providing client testimonials.
Responding to user comments and maintaining online reputation management.
Creating a Pinterest and Quora profile for the brand.
Empower your brand on social media channels with an objective to reach out to all the target audience and empower them with the benefits of practising yoga
A Quora profile was created in the name of the co-founder and constantly kept posting answers for queries related to Yoga and Yoga props.
7. Paid Social Media Strategy
Run the campaign by leveraging on social media platforms with interactive posts targeted women and encouraging them on practicing yoga and how it can change their lifestyle in a positive way.
8 Mastermail Marketing
Learn how to use MailChimp to nurture long-lasting relationships with your students!
Set up a free account, build your email list and send, successful, engaging email campaigns that bring you the results you need in your yoga business.
9. Search Engine Optimization
Researched on various keyword specifics for your in Yoga and how they can be leveraged for branding.
Worked on On-Page SEO optimization and Off-Page SEO optimization for their webpage.
Generated monthly ranking reports for your brand Yoga’s approved keywords.
10. Video
You’ll have noticed that video is everywhere on social media right now. Facebook in particular is on a mission to fill their platform with video. Use video instead of an image and you’ll be rewarded with increased organic reach.
If you use Facebook or Instagram Live, your followers will even receive a notification to tell them you’re currently live in the platform. Video is definitely the place to be right now so start experimenting and give it a go!
Yoga and online videos are essentially a match made in heaven. There’s no better medium for yoga teachers to demonstrate poses, share sequences or provide tips. It’s also a great way to capture intimate interviews directly from your yoga studio, on the topics and ideals that you find most important.
11. Offer Unique Incentives
Most yoga studios tend to offer new students discounts or free classes as incentives – which can be a very effective technique for marketing a yoga studio.
However, if every studio out there offers the same things, how can you get people to choose you and your business?
Set your yoga business apart from the rest by offering unique, creative promotions and incentives for your customers.
Summer Slimdown Facebook Promotion -A slimdown Facebook promotion is perfect for a group of women looking to get in shape for summer. Starting January 1st when the fitness motivation is at its highest and ending the first day of summer would be the ideal timeline
Offer a one-week pass for like and share the page on Facebook
Free week/month pass for a guest with a Google Review.
Your member will be very happy to give that month free pass to their best friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, or relative. It gives them the chance to workout with someone they know! It gets new people to your gym. Once you do get them there make sure you keep them! Before the one month is over talk to the potential member about joining and get them signed up before the month is completed. If for some reason they don’t want to sign up to your gym ask why and learn from it.
12. Google Reviews
First, you get Google reviews on your page which looks good to non-members and it great for Google.
13. Infographics
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then infographics are worth a thousand shares and likes – making the highly effective tools for marketing yoga.
Infographics are effective because they illustrate important information, and help readers understand vast amounts of information (or just big ideas!) in a short amount of time. When creating infographics, look for ways to replace large amounts of text with images and concise copy.
You can publish infographics on your blog, or share them as content on social media. These can also potentially help you get some great cross-promotion and backlinks for your site.
Create Generic infographic creatives with Yoga tips, yoga benefits and yoga poses were posted in the profile
If you aren’t a designer, then hire a designer who can help you out for a very reasonable price.
14. Analytics and Reporting
Reporting is to digital marketing as Savasana is to yoga.
At the end of your flow, if you don’t take the time to reflect on your practice, you will be missing out on the majority of the benefits.
Remember to try a few of these digital marketing tips out first and see how you get on before moving on to the next.
Conclusion
Like yoga itself, marketing a yoga studio requires consistency and patience. Through all the yoga studio marketing ideas above, focus on sending a clear message to both current and prospective students on what your studio has to offer. Keep doing your best to create value, make yoga meaningful for the world at large and attract more students to your studio.
With advanced marketing tools and easy-to-use software for website management, class bookings and event promotion, there’s no system more suited to helping you streamline and expand your business, and skyrocket your revenue.
