How Much Time should I Spend on Marketing?
Yoga teachers often ask me how much time they should spend on marketing. This is an excellent question, as it opens an opportunity to learn a lot about marketing!
Two Situations of Running a Yoga Business
To answer this question we break down marketing into two situations of running your yoga business:
- Business as Usual: meaning you are teaching your regular classes and nothing special is going on. The point is that you are (not yet) thinking about marketing or expanding your yoga business and feel comfortable with the current situation. For example:
- you are a yoga teacher who has a day job and teaches classes every now and then in your spare time.
- Yoga is your main job and you are happy to have a regular schedule with several yoga studios.
- You are a new yoga teacher, having your first experience and trying to establish a regular schedule that sustains your life.
- Phases of Growth: you plan to grow and/ or offer something new:
- You need more money (surprise, yoga teachers need to pay bills too!) and thought about offering workshops or retreats.
- Your current way of life doesn’t seem to be sustainable and you feel that you have started to suffer from yoga teacher burnout.
- You feel the calling to serve bigger and want to reach more people by teaching online.
You will use marketing differently in these two situations.
Business as Usual
“Business as usual” lets you use marketing to grow and connect deeply with your following. To save time and energy, it’s best to establish a routine that you can sustain. Dedicate a certain amount of time you can commit to in the long-term. Consistency builds trust and authority as your online community knows they can rely on you.
- Social media: I personally am not a fan of trying to follow the latest social media trends. Facebook and Instagram change their algorithms so often. I personally can’t keep up with it, while staying authentic. For me, this means posting three times per week and posting stories as much as it feels good for me. I like to batch posting and prepare the posts for at least one week in advance.
- Email: whether you are in “business as usual” mode or growing, ALWAYS work on growing and nurturing your email list! Email is the best marketing channel you can use, even if you haven’t yet thought about growing your yoga business.
- How to grow your list: the short version is to simply ask your students for their email address after class, while exchanging Instagram handles, for example. Make it as easy as possible for people to sign up for your newsletter on your website and on your social media channels.
- Now you might think, ‘What? She wants me to send a newsletter?’ Don’t be scared, it’s going to be fine. It’s actually a super fun way to interact with your community! They will already be excited if you can commit to sending out an email once per month, with your current schedule. That’s a great start! They will love it even more if you also share your thoughts about yoga or what’s going on in your yoga world. Once per week is the ideal frequency, but again, it’s about maintaining a consistent schedule that suits you.
Phases of Growth
In phases of growth, we use marketing in a different way. In marketing terms, we talk about “launching”. It’s much more work than your “business as usual” marketing. However, the good thing is that you can and should prepare a lot of this in advance. Hollywood is doing a great job in this. With every new movie, they build a “buzz” by mentioning a new movie release way in advance. Months later, we see the first trailers. Then shortly before the release date of the movie, they increase their marketing efforts even more and constantly publish on all available channels. You can do the same, for example, when you want to host a retreat. This is also applicable for online classes or if you even want to open your own studio!
- Create a buzz at least six months in advance: prepare your community by sharing in one of your regular newsletters that you are thinking about hosting a retreat, and also mentioning it after class. You can also use this to validate your project. You’ll be able to see from their reactions whether they like the idea or not. It’s already a great indicator of interest if they reply to your newsletter or are willing to share their email address to stay updated about your retreat.
- Six to three months before the retreat: nurture your community by sharing more and more details about the retreat. Inform them about your intention/ theme behind the retreat, the location, planned activities, how to get there, etc.
- Three months before the retreat: let people sign up. During one week, post several times per day, send several emails, and mention it after every class to really ensure that everybody in your community knows your retreat is live and that they can sign up. Also, use any other channel you can think of, like flyers, asking your favorite coffee shop whether they want to cross-post your retreat on their social media, etc.
- Keep your community updated about deadlines like early-bird specials, and other bonuses, such as winning a free spot or a free goodie, for example, a free massage during the retreat.
- After the retreat, ask for testimonials and share a blog post about the retreat from your perspective with your community.
Wrapping Up
Maybe you expected something else from this article, like a clear formula or statement of how much to post and information about the latest trends etc. I don’t advise trying to keep up with the latest algorithms, unless you want to become an Instagram influencer or make your money with commissions from being a brand ambassador.
The outlined approach is going to serve you well until you reach a certain level of growth. Then it’s time to think about hiring a marketing professional, like me. A marketing professional can take your marketing to the next level and help you leverage all the available tools, while maintaining integrity.
In any case, remember to always provide value, serve your community, and use marketing as a tool to take your yoga off the mat.
Do you also have a question about marketing? Join the discussion and comment below!
