girlsgotgoalsphAre you an independent yoga teacher or do you run a yoga studio? Do you want to make a bigger impact and grow your online yoga business but don’t know where to start?
More and more yoga teachers are starting to take their yoga business online. However, despite the many intentions, a lot fail.
While it’s true that the internet and digital advancements have made it easier than ever before, growing your online yoga business is not as easy as it looks in Instagram. When it comes to making your online teaching dream a reality, a solid foundational marketing strategy is essential.
Choose your niche
As the market becomes saturated with so many online yoga classes, it becomes clearer how important it is to choose your niche. But how can you find your niche of specific students to cater to? How can you build a successful yoga business by focusing on your target students?
In order to find your niche, ask yourself who will benefit the most from what you have to offer. It is the person who will resonate the most with your teachings. Try to evaluate yourself as a yoga teacher and identify your strengths and weaknesses. What are you best at? What skills can you offer your students? What skills have you not mastered yet?
Next, try to identify if you want to cater to a specific demographic, such as age or gender. You could also specialize in a specific type of yoga that caters to a problem like: “yoga for weight loss,” “yoga for core strengthening,” or “yoga for flexibility.” Another type of niche could be yoga for a certain type of athlete (boxers, runners, basketball players) or a specific group (beginners, couples, pregnant women, seniors). There are so many to choose from!
Once you have a niche, it becomes easier for you to create content around that niche. By doing so, you get to provide the best skills and resources that will help your students.
When you try to sell to everyone, you are selling to no one. So focus on your ideal student and your strategies and next steps will all be aligned to attract your ideal student. Having a niche is one of the most effective ways to communicate your brand’s message clearly.
Embrace technology
One way to leverage technology and social media is by having a well-crafted website. This is your home where your students can find you and learn all about you. Your website is the foundation of your online business. Through your website, you can showcase your unique style, personality, your credentials, class offerings, and class schedules.
You don’t have to be visible on all social media platforms. But doing your research and finding out where your ideal students are hanging out and leveraging on those platforms is a must. Choose a couple platforms and learn them in and out. We recommend Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook for Yoga coaches to market their brand. Also make sure to post when your followers are most active in order to maximize the engagement.
Consistently offer valuable content
Being consistent on social media doesn’t only refer to have consistent brand colors and fonts but being able to deliver valuable content that aligns with your niche and doing so in a consistent timeline. Some yoga instructors post tutorial videos once a week, others can post up tp 3 or 4 times a week. It all depends on what you are capable of. But remember to share content that aligns with your ideal student and what they want to learn.
Consistency helps build your online presence, builds brand awareness, and makes you recognizable to your audience.
Be visible online
Aligned with the previous point, it is essential for yoga coaches to make themselves and their brand visible online. Engaging with your audience by commenting, reacting and replying to their comments on your posts are great ways to boost your online presence and show your audience that you are a real person behind the screen. Doing Facebook and Instagram live stories will also help show your audience your personality and help create that “build-like-trust” relationship with your students.
A lot of yoga teachers would argue that their hands are full and can’t create content that they can consistently post online. One strategy is to create content is bursts. Set a day or 2 days per week where you will only focus on creating your content. Plan out your content for the next 2 weeks. Then schedule the content to be posted on your social media platforms. This way, you have enough content for a few weeks and won’t be scrambling to think of what to post each day.
Getting a social media manager is another great way to take this off of your plate. Social media managers can help create the content and post the content as well as engage with your audience to ensure that you are showing up consistently. But of course, showing yourself on your platforms and personally replying to your students is much more preferred in order to really create that bond with your students.
In conclusion
Hopefully this article has helped you get clearer on how to start your online yoga business.
In a nutshell, by putting in just a little time and effort each day to grow your online yoga business, these small steps will snowball into great results and will have considerable payoff both creatively and in terms of broadening your audience of students.
Remember that messy and imperfect action beats doing nothing at all.
REFERENCES:
- 21 Ideas for Growing Your Online Yoga Business: https://namastream.com/blog/21-ideas-growing-online-yoga-business
- How to Find YOur Yoga Niche as a Teacher: https://alignedandwell.com/yoga-niche/
- How to Market Your Yoga Business without Losing Your Soul: https://wildheartmedia.com/how-to-market-your-yoga-business/
- Start Teaching Yoga Online: https://www.yogajournal.com/teach/lights-camera-yoga
