Are you struggling to fill your classes to capacity? One of the biggest marketing mistakes yoga instructors make is not sharing their classes, events, and workshops enough. If your students don’t know you’re teaching, then you can’t expect them to show up.
“You cannot serve people if they don’t know you exist.”
~ Lenka Stefanakova
It can feel weird promoting yourself, but someone has to do it. If you get queasy at the thought of self-promotion consider what Sage Rountree said in this blog post for Yoga Journal, “understand that you are not promoting yourself, you are promoting your work, and your work is bringing yoga’s benefits to your students.”
Being a yoga teacher is a job, and you should be thinking of it as a business. Companies advertise their products and services, and you should be doing the same. Here are my top three marketing tips for independent yoga teachers to put into action this year.
Use More Visuals
Visual content including images, videos, infographics, etc. are a few of the best mediums to communicate with your students. Images and infographics can be easily created using Canva. Here’s an example of one I created.
If you’re a little leery of creating videos, it’s time to take a deep breath and hit that Live button. Animoto reported that “four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.” Local St. Augustine yoga teacher Rachel Layne posted this video to Instagram last week promoting her Vinyasa Flow class.
After sharing your visual content via social media or your blog don’t forget to include it in an email. Simply including the word “video” in the subject line of an email can increase your open rates by 19%! That’s huge when the average open rate in the fitness industry is only about 22% according to MailChimp.
And don’t forget about flyers. As much as we all love our digital toys, people are still walking around in the real world. A few places you can post your flyers at include the grocery store, local restaurants, the post office, or health food stores. Don’t forget an eye-catching yoga image that reflects your classes.
Guest Writing
Consider pitching an idea to a local newspaper. If your yoga classes are more on the gentle side and geared towards seniors, you’ll have a better chance of reaching them through a print article than something posted online. Another perk is that the newspaper likely has an online version too.
Local businesses that have a blog could also be open to guest postings. Bonus points if you can find someone in the same industry that attracts your type of client, but isn’t a competitor. For yoga teachers, this could be a health food store or metaphysical shop. Contributing an article will build your credibility as an expert in the field and introduce you to a new audience.
Build Relationships
Connect with other teachers and attend their classes. Share a photo on social media of you and the teacher after class; you can even include a quick blurb on how you enjoyed the practice. They’ll appreciate the shout out and likely reciprocate the action in the future. Same goes for sharing other teachers’ events.
Being out there on the mat in the student role can help you build a connection with the community of students too. Practicing beside them allows them to feel your energy and gives you the opportunity to build a relationship. The conversation will likely lead to you revealing that you’re a teacher (if they didn’t already know) and when your class is held.
Post your schedule to your website, share it on social media regularly – not just once a month, and talk about it whenever you have a chance. Remember to remind your students at the beginning or end of class about your upcoming workshops or classes. If you teach more than one class a week at that studio, make sure to mention your other class(es).
Do you have any other marketing advice you’d like to share with our community of yoga teachers? If so, post it in the comments section.
