Start your yoga career now: Yoga Alliance Certified Teacher Training in London Begins September


What Yoga Teacher Training Never Taught You
Rebecca Ffrench on 12 April, 2010 |

Like most, when you decided to pursue a career in yoga you were ready for the time, money and commitment of teacher training. You were taught the finer points of yamas and niyamas, but little if any time was spent on how to find students to teach; after all, we all need to work to pay off those teacher training bills and actually make a living.

Let's face it, most of us aren't business people, we're the polar opposite. Most of us struggle to strike the right balance between our passion for yoga and our need to generate an income. It's not uncommon when focused on the business of yoga to feel a bit awkward...it's not what we're trained to do.

Let's take a look at some pointers that'll help teachers and studios focus their marketing efforts in the right direction.

Be specific in geography
London is a sprawling city made up of an overwhelming number of small communities. Only very large companies have the money to successfully reach large portions of the city's population.

Those of us with much smaller budgets should to focus on the neighborhoods located around our teaching areas. For example, if you have a studio in Fulham or a class in Richmond, start by focusing your attention on finding avenues of communication (either offline or online) in those areas. It's easier on the pocket book and more effective since your efforts will be highly concentrated in a small area.

Understand your communications options
This is often the most confusing part of marketing. How do you get your message out to the world?

There are an endless number of options, from leafleting to online marketing, but you've got to find the right fit for your budget.

Clearly most of us cannot afford to advertise in newspapers or magazines, but if you have enough money they can be effective. Newspapers and magazines (also known as "print") are only effective when adverts can be displayed in a sustained, long-term campaign. A single ad is very unlikely to make an impact so don't gamble your money on it.

There's an old saying in the ad business, "frequency sells". What this means is that enough ad exposures to the right audience will convince them buy. The downside with this approach is that most of the world can't afford frequency selling which rules out print for most of us, but keep frequency in mind as you read this article--it's incredibly important and thus a requirement in any marketing plan.

Leafleting is much more affordable but less effective because you can only canvas a few hundred homes at any given time, the vast majority of which will probably have little interest in yoga for one reason or another--time conflicts, too young, too old, yoga doesn't appeal to them, etc. Though not so effective in targeting yoga enthusiasts leafleting does meet the frequency criteria.

Online marketing is perhaps the most affordable and cost-effective way to get your message out to people who actually have an interest in what you offer. Since prospective students regularly use search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo to actively search for yoga classes they are very likely to use it to find your classes.

Let's consider an example. Say a person living in Tooting is looking for a yoga class close to home or work. They'd go to a search engine, type in "yoga classes in Tooting" and get a page with a list of results. The very act of typing in "yoga classes in Tooting" reveals quite a bit about their interests and intentions. They are, by their very search, demonstrating a keen interest in "yoga", a "class" and an area of London called "Tooting".

What this means is that behind this search is a person who is ready, willing, and able to find and pay for a yoga class in Tooting.

Had they typed in "Yoga Tooting" their intentions wouldn't have been quite so clear. Were they searching for a class, yoga mat, blocks, DVD or some other item or service? It's very likely that they were looking for a class but not as likely as the first search example.

Typically online advertising is offered on a pay-per-click basis (PPC) where an advertiser is charged only when a user clicks on their ad. This can be good or bad depending on your level of expertise. With clicks costing upward of 50p to £1 each, the costs can really mount up over time. However, if you know how to manage PPC and then know what to do with the visitor once they've landed on your website they can be a very valuable new student.

Online marketing is a science and as with all sciences it takes an education to make sense of it.

Know your prospect
What does your student look like? Are they children; seniors; thirty somethings; female; professional? This type of profile is called "demographics" and the more you know about the average demographics of your student the better you'll be at finding them, after all birds of a feather fly together.

One yoga teacher I did work for had an innate instinct for demographics and she used it to locate ways to get her message out including making deals with GPs that had patients whose demographics matched that of her own students.
Knowing a bit about your students goes a far way in helping your marketing efforts.

Seek predictability
What good is a successful marketing campaign that you can't repeat? A successful marketing campaign offers more than just a full class, it offers predictability in knowing how to fill your class time and again.

Know the financial impact made by your students
From a pure business standpoint, some teachers may see a student come through the door and think that they represent £10. A seasoned marketer sees the same student and thinks they're worth about £200. Why the difference?

The average student doesn't attend a single class, they will attend multiple classes after which their attendance will being to dwindle until finally they stop attending. This drop-off is perfectly normal and happens with most students in all classes.

So a key metric to know is how many classes the average student attend before falling off the roster. This is important to know because it drives everything you do from a cost perspective.

If you know that the average new student will attend 20 classes then when you advertise you'll take that into account and spend appropriately rather than under or over spend (under spending is a problem because it prevents you from reaching your potential).

If you can find the average number of classes and multiply it by the average amount of revenue per class attended you'll arrive at what's called the Lifetime Value of your student (LTV). So next time you're thinking about how much to spend on marketing don't think about a student's value to a single class, think about their Lifetime Value.