Musings of a Marketing Maven

Are you con­fronting the chal­lenge of open­ing a new yoga stu­dio, get­ting estab­lished as a newly cer­ti­fied teacher, or attract­ing more stu­dents in a com­pet­i­tive urban area? If so, you’re not alone.

More Yoga Teachers

There’s been an explo­sion in the num­ber of cer­ti­fied yoga teach­ers  — 70,000 at last count  (NAMASTA, 2005), plus the many newly minted teach­ers since then. The pres­sures of a sus­tained eco­nomic down­turn are caus­ing many to seek alter­na­tive careers.

Some of the new­com­ers want a more reward­ing sec­ond career, a means to give back to their com­mu­nity. Some are recent col­lege grads who’ve strug­gled to land a job that they find mean­ing­ful, peo­ple who see value in the yoga lifestyle. Oth­ers are peo­ple who have faced a major life pas­sage or health cri­sis, been trans­formed thanks to yoga, and now want to share the joy of their practice.

What­ever their moti­va­tion, yoga’s increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity has led to an explo­sion in teacher cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, but this is not with­out risk for both new­com­ers and exist­ing studios.

More Chal­lenges for Yoga Teachers

If there are too many teach­ers within easy dri­ving dis­tance, it’s hard for new teach­ers to make an ade­quate liv­ing until you suc­ceed in attract­ing a loyal set of stu­dents who attend your classes on a reg­u­lar basis… Stu­dio own­ers man­age a lim­ited inven­tory of avail­able class times and space, so they pre­fer pop­u­lar teach­ers who can fill the classes.

This is the clas­sic “Catch 22″ sit­u­a­tion for the the teacher.  It takes time to earn a good rep­u­ta­tion as a val­ued teacher, time to build recog­ni­tion for your con­tri­bu­tions, time for word-of-mouth to gen­er­ate refer­rals from your stu­dents to their friends.

The ques­tion is, how can new teach­ers speed that up? The answer is, by stand­ing out, being dif­fer­ent in ways that mat­ter to stu­dents and the stu­dio owner. (In the busi­ness world, this is referred to as “per­sonal branding.”)

The chal­lenge boils down to fig­ur­ing out the authen­tic path that will enable you to attract the right stu­dents — peo­ple who will ben­e­fit from your par­tic­u­lar teach­ing and inter­ac­tion skills; peo­ple who will enthu­si­as­ti­cally rec­om­mend you and your stu­dio to their friends and family.

In a crowded urban mar­ket you need to stand out, be rec­og­nized for what is dis­tinc­tive and mean­ing­ful about your ser­vices, your stu­dio and its loca­tion, the cal­iber of your teach­ers and the vibrancy of your studio’s community.

Be Dif­fer­ent — But in Ways That Are Meaningful

Start by spend­ing some time look­ing around to under­stand what the other stu­dios are offer­ing in your area. Talk to other stu­dio own­ers to see what’s work­ing for them. Talk to yoga stu­dents about what’s miss­ing from their cur­rent class expe­ri­ences. Ask them how they would describe their “dream classes.” When and where would those classes take place. What would be dif­fer­ent about the student-teacher inter­ac­tion from what they’ve expe­ri­enced today.

Then invest some qual­ity time think­ing about how you can make your offer­ing more dis­tinc­tive — more directly rel­e­vant to prospec­tive stu­dents within dri­ving dis­tance of your stu­dio. What’s spe­cial about the peo­ple who live in your area?

If you’re in a highly com­pet­i­tive area (like Los Ange­les, New York or the Bay Area), think about ways to posi­tion your stu­dio or some of your classes to appeal more nar­rowly to a spe­cific set of stu­dents who share com­mon needs or inter­ests. For example,

• Classes for boomer women, or mother-daughter classes
• Classes for peo­ple strug­gling with spe­cific health or mobil­ity chal­lenges: such as chronic arthri­tis, back/spine issues, or cancer
• Classes for peo­ple who need help restor­ing their self-esteem (or even their youth­ful appear­ance), as a result of being laid off or other painful life passages
• Classes for bik­ers, skiers and run­ners who need help relax­ing those overly tight leg mus­cles, or to build upper body strength
• Classes for ten­nis play­ers, or skiers, or golfers — you get the idea

What about classes that tar­get spe­cific pain zones — the kinds of anatom­i­cal or bio-mechanical prob­lems that many peo­ple in your area are likely to expe­ri­ence? How about team-teaching with a like-minded phys­i­cal therapist?

• Classes for peo­ple with tight shoul­ders, disk issues or neck prob­lems — the kinds of issues faced by peo­ple who spend too many hours at the computer
• Classes for peo­ple with lower back weak­ness, or bal­ance challenges
• Com­bined nutri­tion and yoga classes for peo­ple who want to man­age (and main­tain) weight loss in a non-faddish way

Increase Your Reach

Have you explored whether peo­ple who work for the larger employ­ers in your area might be inter­ested in classes offered at their work­place (after hours, before the work­day begins, or dur­ing lunch hours)?

Classes at over-55 com­mu­ni­ties, senior cen­ters, churches, etc.?

In addi­tion to your pri­vate tuto­ri­als, have you devel­oped classes or other ser­vices to help your stu­dents get more ben­e­fit out of their home-based asanas?

Do you offer asana guid­ance via pod­casts that your stu­dents can down­load and lis­ten to at home or when they’re trav­el­ing? If you get good at this, you might be able to offer a sub­scrip­tion ser­vice for a series of weekly or monthly pod­casts that you mar­ket over the Internet.

If you have a friend with a dig­i­tal cam­corder, why not post some videos of your teach­ing style and phi­los­o­phy on YouTube?

Have you thought about ways you might pro­vide some online instruc­tion (yoga sequences, guided med­i­ta­tion, etc.) that stu­dents could use to guide their prac­tice, at the student’s con­ve­nience, on days when she can’t get to a stu­dio for a sched­uled class?

Some Exam­ples from a Seat­tle Studio

The stu­dio where I prac­tice is quite sophis­ti­cated; their classes are over­flow­ing. Here are some of the things my teach­ers do to keep them­selves in front of their stu­dents when we’re not in their class:

• Cre­ate and sell an annual yoga cal­en­dar that fea­tures real stu­dents in a series of poses (includ­ing women over 80!)
• Send monthly newslet­ters by email to stu­dents who choose to receive them. The emails con­tain poems or sto­ries writ­ten by the teach­ers, often with pho­tos that inspire med­i­ta­tion — and reminders about upcom­ing classes, retreats, and spe­cial events.
• Host sev­eral spe­cial events each quar­ter (like week­end retreats in lovely set­tings within a few hours’ drive of their stu­dio) or classes on spe­cial topics.
• And of course, they have a web site with infor­ma­tion about the teach­ers, the classes, the events cal­en­dar, etc.

If you’re strug­gling to keep your yoga stu­dio vibrant and full of stu­dents, I hope one or more of these ideas will lead to increased busi­ness suc­cess for you.

Soci­ety as a whole ben­e­fits when yoga val­ues infuse people’s daily lives and activ­i­ties. But for the strug­gling yoga stu­dio or newly cer­ti­fied teacher, explo­sive growth in teacher cer­ti­fi­ca­tions leads to increased com­pe­ti­tion in the local mar­ket. To thrive and grow in a crowded mar­ket requires a thought­ful strat­egy, one that’s put into prac­tice via a focused and dis­ci­plined set of tactics.

Namaste.