Owning a yoga business means that you wear a lot of hats. You’re likely a teacher, a marketer, a salesperson, and more. But how do you sell more yoga when the competition seems endless and you don’t know where your new students are hiding?
The short answer: You need to prospect.
The long answer: You need to create content that sells people on your studio before they ever walk in the door.
This means taking inventory of your mindset and your resources before digging into your concentrated marketing and prospecting efforts so that you can reach your ideal customers in an impactful way.
What is Prospecting – and Why is it Important?
Prospecting is one of the first steps in your sales process. It is the step in which you identify and reach potential customers.
You might create a database of prospects and then communicate with them intentionally, like in an email list or by calling them, or you may prospect by simply getting your name out there – often on social media, paid ads, or by showing up to local events.
There are a TON of ways to prospect, and depending on your yoga studio’s goals, they might be completely different from the studio down the street. Remember, there’s more competition in the wellness industry now than ever before. This means it’s more important than ever to prospect with intention and to consistently advertise and prospect.
Prospecting is important because it helps give people a public opinion of your yoga business – and drives them to want to be a part of it! It will ultimately drive more people to visit your studio, sign up for classes, and stay a part of your community for a long time.
See our video on our Prospecting Funnel Lab from the 2019 Yoga Business Summit here! ⤵️
This information was originally presented at the 2019 Yoga Business Summit. For more incredible yoga business marketing content, check out this year’s Yoga Business Summit, October 10-16, 2021 in Puerto Morelos, Mexico.
Step 1: Get in a prospecting mindset
When it comes to prospecting for your yoga business, you might be stuck for a few reasons. Maybe your current strategy isn’t working, or you might not even have a strategy. The good news is, every yoga studio owner has access to powerful marketing platforms. The tools are available to us for very little cost and are easier to use than ever before.
You CAN get your message out, and you CAN do it with very little money upfront.
When you combine this with powerful content, people not only come into your studio, but they arrive as a higher-quality prospect.
AND you have every reason to expect that you’re going to retain them — especially if you start to implement the information from my last email about how to grow a million-dollar studio through retention mastery.
So, as you work on your prospecting mindset, think of it as a fun way to connect with your future clients. You get to create a yoga marketing strategy that fits your budget, is on-brand for your studio, and brings in future clients that you’re going to LOVE working with!
Step 2: Understand your yoga studio marketing budget
If you’re unsure of where to start with your prospecting funnels or heck, maybe you don’t even have prospecting funnels on your radar (yet)…
Start with something simple, like determining your marketing budget (get your calculator ready!).
To calculate your annual yoga studio marketing budget, follow these simple steps:
1.What is your annual projected gross revenue? You can answer this for the current year, or if you’re already planning for next year, use those numbers. Remember, revenue is your top-line income, also referred to as total sales.
In this example, let’s say that the top-line revenue for Studio A is expected to be $500,000 for the current year.
2. Calculate 7% of your projected gross revenue. This is a low-end budget that we’ll apply in step 4.
$500,000 * .07 = $35,000
3. Calculate 10% of your projected gross revenue. This is a high-end marketing budget that we’ll apply in step 4.
$500,000 *.10 = $50,000
4. Decide what you can spend within your low-end to high-end range.
Next year’s marketing budget is $35,000-$50,000
You might be thinking, “That’s A LOT of money! Why do I really need this budget for my yoga studio?!”
Great question. We’ve worked with hundreds of studios all over the world, and customer behavior is constantly changing. You will need to market strategically and intentionally to ensure that your marketing budget is building your business, not a red line item in your balance sheet.
Which leads us to step 3…
Step 3: Get into your ideal students’ heads
Before you spend a cent of your marketing budget, it’s important to understand who you’re marketing to.
First, you should take some time to decide who your ideal audience is. This might mean doing some market research on who lives near your studio, who is already visiting your studio and even look into the analytics of who visits your website or social media accounts.
Once you understand who you’re marketing to, you can create a comprehensive, long-term strategy. Your strategic plan might include ongoing initiatives, like a referral campaign, regular social media posts, and more. It may also include one-time events that drive people to your studio.
As you create your marketing plan, it is wise to work with a yoga business coach to ensure that your plans are airtight.
Your marketing plan will help you:
- Get in front of people in the research phase. People don’t just walk into studios anymore. They look on Google, Instagram, and ask their friends. They encounter studios that host Yoga In the Park events, or that advertise at their local farmer’s market.
- Meet people where they are. Hey, people are lazy. Our brains are trained not to listen when there’s too much noise, which means it takes a LOUD marketing strategy to get people to tune in.
- Inform your buyers. People LOVE to be informed. That means they’ll vet your business online before they even consider visiting.
- Eliminate price objections. If sales is hard, don’t make it harder on yourself by not telling people what value they get and at what price point. People could sign up for an online yoga class, or go to YouTube. Use your marketing budget to show people why your studio is worth it!
In other words, you need your marketing budget and plan to get you in front of the right people and to be top of mind.
Step 4: Start prospecting and selling more yoga!
Once you have your budget squared away and a plan in place, it’s time to start prospecting!
Remember, prospecting is identifying and reaching potential customers. Get your retention strategies dialed in first, then implement funnels to bring in more new students.
Because when you have proven retention mastery strategies to keep them around, prospecting funnels won’t be a waste of your energy or money! They will be a highly intelligent — and crucial — element of your marketing budget.
The Bottom Line
When you get your prospecting funnels on point with high-quality content, you will:
- Get more new students in the door
- Create insane brand awareness
- Increase your revenue (especially when combined with all your retention strategies)
- Become the authority in your market so even your competition is watching you
If you’re ready to create insane, bottom-line busting marketing strategies that sell more yoga in 2022, check out the 2021 Yoga Business Summit in Puerto Morelos, Mexico. We’ll spend 7 days and 6 nights refining your core messaging, creating a plan to sell more yoga, and designing strategies that benefit your studio – and your sanity – years into the future.
This year’s summit is designed to help you navigate the upcoming industry changes to positively impact your bottom line.
Take me to the summit! Click here.
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