Yoga is often about building community with yourself and others on the mat. And your passion for the practice is essential when it comes to growing your yoga studio and establishing dedicated clientele. That said, running a business can be a wild and overwhelming journey, especially as you grow!
A successful marketing strategy can help skyrocket your yoga studio to the next level, increasing your sales, profits, and client retention. So, what does branding look like, and how can you make it work for you? In this article, we’ll discuss branding basics and strategies for how to evolve your business.
Want to talk to an expert yoga branding mentor who will help you get started? Schedule a free strategy session with renowned yoga business coach Josh Biro today.
What is Branding for a Yoga Studio?
Branding for your yoga studio goes beyond creating a logo and a pretty website (though they’re important steps for your overall vibe).
A brand is a marketing concept that lets your potential clients know who you are and what you offer. It includes your logo, the quality of your product or service, and the impression you create.
Branding strategy allows you to target a specific audience to generate leads, pack more students into your space, and build client loyalty.
Benefits of a Strong Yoga Studio Brand
Successful branding means your studio’s reputation is legit in the eyes of your clients and employees. It’s recognizable, trustworthy, and a place that students return to again and again. The benefits of solid branding include three key components for a successful business: brand recognition, credibility, and customer loyalty.
Brand Recognition
Brand recognition occurs when someone can identify your yoga studio upon seeing an element of your brand, like a logo, tagline, or advertising campaign. When a client can pick your yoga studio out of a lineup, they’re familiar with your reputation and are more likely to engage with your studio.
A recognizable brand means building an emotional connection with current and new students and employees around shared values. People want to and will buy into that.
Credibility
Think about the brands you turn to repeatedly. Maybe that’s your favorite clothing company, food service, or self-care app. Why do you choose them? When you’re familiar with the quality of a brand, you often like it more, trust it more, and you’re willing to invest in it. Building credibility takes time, but it’s worth it for the massive results.
Customer Loyalty
So, now your brand is recognizable and trustworthy. How do you maintain that? You want to make sure you’re communicating with your clients and getting their feedback so that they feel like they’re not just a student or employee but also part of the brand.
Knowing your clients helps you stay relevant and identify community needs. Maybe you have current clients who are interested in trying hot yoga or want to be able to suggest music for the class playlist. Getting this kind of feedback allows you to adapt and offer a more personalized, richer experience that will keep people coming back.
How to Brand Your Yoga Studio
Now that you understand the value of brand recognition, you want to jumpstart your yoga studio’s strategy. What’s the nitty-gritty of it all? Where do you start? We break it down for you below.
Define Your Goals
Understanding and defining your goals from the start allows you to ensure progress and growth. You need clear and measurable goals to draw new students, delight current students, and create a yoga studio atmosphere that attracts and maintains top instructors.
That means you need to know your numbers or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs like total revenue, total expenses, and net profit and loss can set both short- and long-term goals and begin tracking your progress toward achieving concrete goals.
Find Your Niche
What makes your yoga studio stand out from other local businesses in the yoga industry? Maybe you’re offering an incredible loyalty program, private instruction, a specialty yoga class, or other unique services. Discovering your niche helps you understand what your specific audience wants, how you can meet their needs, and what you can learn from your competitors.
Develop Your Mission Statement
A mission statement allows you to clearly communicate your yoga studio’s purpose so that your potential students know exactly what you’re bringing to the table and what values you stand by. A good mission statement identifies a problem within your community and provides a solution.
Create Your Visual Brand Identity
This is where that logo and website aesthetic comes in! While you’re curating your niche and developing your customer base through the delivery of an outstanding yoga studio, your visual brand identity becomes the face of all your hard work. These online marketing materials will be recognizable and streamlined to contribute to brand recognition.
Logos, Colors, and Consistency
Consistency is your friend when it comes to your visual brand identity. You don’t want to confuse your audience by using too many different logos or colors. Streamlining your visuals by using the same color palette and logos will only help to boost your brand recognition.
Create Your Online Brand Identity
Beyond your website and merchandise, you want to ensure that your marketing efforts adhere to your brand’s visual identity and mission.
Clear and Concise Web Presence
You want to make sure you’re using the same tone and language across all platforms. That means if the content you’re putting out on the web is meant to be sassy, keep it sassy. If it’s meant to be informative, stay informative. Your content should also reflect the emotional connection you have with your current students and those you hope to attract.
Concise Social Media Presence
Remember, consistency is key. Social media allows you to communicate directly with potential yoga students and talented employees, so you want to use it effectively. Delivering meaningful, relevant content while promptly addressing tags, comments, and concerns will only help you gather important insights and grow successfully.
Easy-to-Use Customer Service Presence
Developing a user-friendly way for students to give you feedback makes it easier for you to right wrongs and adapt your systems to avoid future concerns. If a client has to navigate a clunky interface or can’t find a way to contact you, you’re more likely to lose their business and damage your yoga studio’s reputation.
Develop Your Core Values
Core values are the standards you hold your yoga studio to when running your business. These values dictate everything from marketing to decision-making and building community with your students. They could be something like “Compassion, Discipline, and Vulnerability,” but you’ll have to determine what best represents you and your services.
Established Brands and Decisions that Highlight Their Core Values
Brands like Everlane and WeWork do an incredible job of highlighting their core values through clear language and quality service.
Everlane distills its core beliefs into concise language, “Our way: Exceptional quality. Ethical factories. Radical transparency,’ and then expands on how the decisions they make deliver on each value. Their site lets you know Everlane is a brand that’s dedicated to following through on its mission: clothing that’s well-made, ethically sourced, sustainable, and accurately priced.
WeWork’s mission to “Empower tomorrow’s world at work” is clear and to the point, highlighting them as future-thinking and customer-focused. They’re building working spaces that evolve alongside workers. WeWork also lists their values and provides specific definitions, spelling out how to hold them accountable.
Common Yoga Branding Mistakes
Managing a business is no small feat, so you want to make sure you’re using your time and energy in a way that will serve you best. Let’s explore some common branding mistakes that can make scaling your business difficult.
Your Brand is Only the Logo
People want a story to grasp and something to believe in when they’re choosing a yoga studio. If your brand solely consists of your logo, you’re losing out on the opportunity to clearly communicate your yoga studio’s values and services. A logo is a part of the puzzle, but it’s not the whole picture.
Your Target Audience is Too Broad
You’re not going to be able to meet the needs of everyone, and trying to target a broad audience can actually hurt your ability to grow. If you go broad and try to connect with everyone, you won’t be interesting to anyone and your branding will suffer. Instead, focus on the specific student you want to attract that fits within your niche and is drawn to your brand values.
You Keep Changing Your Yoga Brand
Reinventing your yoga brand again and again can be tempting as your tastes change or you let your competitors dictate your business. Remember the old adage, “Consistency is your friend?” Your brand recognition, credibility, and customer loyalty are all tied to consistent branding. If you keep changing your brand, you risk confusing students and losing out on business.
Create Your Yoga Brand with Yoga Business Coach Josh Biro
Josh founded the Yogapreneur Collective to help yoga studio owners generate leads, boost sales, create an outstanding employee team, and build systems to make daily operations run smoothly.
Josh’s guidance is highly sought-after, and he’ll work with you to develop an authentic brand that represents all of your strengths. Not only do his strategies work, but his delivery is also what keeps people returning for his advice. He’ll treat you as a dear friend and like your business is his own.
With time, discipline, and impeccable mentorship, you can start making a powerful impact on your community through a thriving yoga studio business. Book a free strategy session with Josh Biro when you’re ready to make real change and see real growth.
