5 Common marketing mistakes yoga teachers make (and how to avoid them)

Marketing. Get it right and you will find yourself with a continuous stream of new and returning customers who love, and rave about, your yoga classes. Get it wrong and may find yourself with an inconsistent class turnout, irregular students and a fluctuating income.   

In any case, it’s best not to leave it to chance. Learn from these common pitfalls to ensure your marketing attempts meet the mark. 

Broad Targeting 

The saying “Try to please everyone, and you end up pleasing no one” is marketing 101. Broad marketing, casting the net wide to reach anyone and everyone, fails to focus on the specific needs, wants and concerns of your target audience. 

By honing in your message and targeting specific clients, you can create a message that really resonates with potential students. This form of narrow marketing allows you to speak to your niche audience, ultimately resulting in increased sign-ups and greater student satisfaction!

Neglecting your USP 

Your Unique Selling Point is that one element of your teaching that sets you apart from others. It could be your personality, your ethos, the products that you use, or the people that you serve. Whatever ‘it” is, it prevents you from getting lost in the crowd of mounting yoga teachers and serves as a driving force for people to sign up for your classes. 

Your USP should be behind every marketing campaign, social media post, newsletter and email. This single message should be woven into all your communications to make it clear to your audience what you are all about and why they should care. 

Missing the Essentials

Before you even begin thinking about a marketing campaign, you need to have the fundamentals in place. This includes:

• A functioning website with contact information clearly available 
• A user-friendly booking system 
• Automated email communications (to send out booking confirmation emails, and class reminders)
• A business social media account

Having the above in place improves the user experience, facilitating the customer journey from seeing that first Facebook post to purchasing your classes. 

You can even use your Yoga Alliance Professionals’ profile as your website to make things easier!

Not Tracking your Performance 

To assess which aspects of your marketing strategy is working, you need to keep an eye on the results. Regularly reviewing the results of your marketing efforts allows you to evaluate your current process and assess what needs changing. 

For example, by tracking how many enquiries you receive over a month, you gain insight into what aspects of your marketing are earning the most results, and which areas are not. With this knowledge, you can begin by adjusting just one element of your campaign to see if this results in better performance. 

Rushing it 

Teaching yoga is a busy job! What with running classes, planning your next sequence, travelling between studios and negotiating with different venues, there is little time to dedicate to a full marketing strategy. Nonetheless, sharing the odd post on Instagram or the occasional email rarely cuts it. 

You need to have a marketing plan and schedule in place to achieve consistent results. Set aside some time to draw up a calendar of your classes, events, social media, paid advertising and additional marketing strategies. And, if you do not have the time to do this, it is most definitely worth investing in professional support to create your marketing plan. 

Enjoy discounts on professional marketing services here!