6 Unique Ways to Attract Students to Your Yoga Studio
The first thing on your list of priorities when starting your yoga studio was to get a strong base of students. It is indeed, the main priority of your teachers at all times. It is simply not enough for them to enjoy teaching yoga. Yoga teachers need to be entrepreneurial and invest time and resources to attract more students to their classes. And not just for the money, but for the social impact and reach.
And your teachers can't do it alone. They need your support as a yoga studio owner to achieve success.
The good news is that there are plenty of ways you can market your yoga studio in this highly digital world we live in now. There are lots of creative, fun and engaging ways to grab the attention of prospective students. And no, we don’t mean distributing awesome business cards, having a great website, a great blog, a solid email database, engaging social media accounts with lots of followers or being listed on online directories. We mean unique and effective ways to attract new students within a short time frame.
Here are 6 ways to inspire you to do just that.
Let’s get started!
1. Run a Weight Loss Challenge
Of all the unique marketing methods to try to gain new students, running a weight loss challenge is arguably the best one. Weight loss goals and instructors (preferably those that teach Bikram, Ashtanga, Vinyasa and power yoga styles) that help people through the process will get new students as well as current students on board.
When it comes to running a weight loss challenge, it’s all inclusive – you do not have to limit it to new students. You should make the challenge open to everyone, for a fee of course. You can give your current students a discount since they’ll be paying an additional fee to join in on the challenge.
The good thing about a weight loss challenge is that you’ll achieve two things: it helps people to reach their weight loss and fitness goals and gets new students into your studio.
Besides achieving a weight loss goal, you can give the winner a prize. Perhaps a Manduka yoga mat or nice yoga clothing?
2. Summer Weight Loss Facebook Promotion
Speaking of weight loss, you can run a special summer weight loss promotion on Facebook. It’s particularly great for a group of women looking to slim down or get in shape for the summer. You should ideally aim to run it during the new year (when fitness motivation is at its peak) through to the first day of summer.
Since you’re trying to attract new students, the promotion should be a specially tailored program, headed by a teacher who is specialized in the area.
You should ideally market it as a special 6-month program that features high-intensity yoga like Bikram and power yoga. New students can sign up for six months at a special rate and once they are pleased with the results, they will sign up for a longer term membership.
3. Offer a Free Yoga Day
You should use your yoga studio website, if you have one, to build a landing page where prospective students can sign up with their email or social media accounts to join in on a yoga class, for free.
That is a great tactic because when a prospective student signs up for the free class, you will have their contact details to send them more information and marketing down the road.
You can easily and quickly build landing pages depending on which content management system (CMS) you’re using. If you’re using WordPress, you can create landing pages for free using plugins like WordPress Landing Pages, Parallax Gravity, Impact Template Editor and Ultimate Landing Page. For Squarespace, you can build a landing page with the theme you’re using. Here’s a tutorial on how to build a cover page in Squarespace. Other free landing page builders include Wix and Ucraft.
As with any special offer, these students are trying to see if yoga is right for them. So they need to feel like they fit into the culture of your studio and that they’ll get the results they want. It may seem like a lot of effort to recruit a student with just one class, but the effort is worth it if they leave loving their experience and wanting to sign up for more classes.
4. Offer a Free Month Pass in Exchange for a Review
Reviews look quite good when people are looking to join a yoga studio. Reviews greatly impact purchasing and enrolment behaviors and decisions. Equally as important, reviews can help your studio to rank higher in Google organic search results.
If you don't have any reviews or have very few, encourage your current students to leave you reviews in exchange for a free month pass that they can extend to family, friends or colleagues.
This tactic will get your current students excited about taking a class with someone they know and will also get new students to your studio. And once you get them, work hard to keep them.
Before the free month is over, you should talk to the prospective student about joining and signing up. If they don't want to join, find out why and use that as a learning opportunity for your studio.
5. Do a Flash Promotion on Your Studio’s Anniversary
You can run a studio anniversary promotion for the first 20 new students that visit the studio. Evaluate your membership packages and try to come up with a unique offer that will get people to sign up.
When you get the 20 people in, make sure you give them a tour of your studio and introduce them to the different instructors. The goal is to make them feel welcome and comfortable so they can be long term members of your studio.
6. Team Up with Other Professionals
Look for professionals that offer complementary services to yoga (like private chefs, spa owners, physical therapists, etc.) and team up with them. If you refer your students to them, chances are they’ll refer their clients to you.
Since you both serve the same target market; you can build each other’s clientele when you work together.
Wrapping Up
Go over and share these unique marketing strategies with your teachers and give them a trial run. Always remember to be flexible and creative in your marketing. It’ll pay off big time – both in the short and long term!
