Despite COVID-19 and how it has affected businesses today, yoga leads and, therefore, the studios generating them aren’t that hard to find for one reason: people want to relax, stretch, connect with others, and find some peace during these difficult times.
This means that if you are a yoga studio or business, you should be able to bring more students your way by focusing on lead generation to attract qualified leads. In case you don’t know, the more leads you get, the more your business will grow. After all, clients are the core of every business.
With this in mind, company owners and, in this case, studio owners struggle with what lead generation is and how it can be used to attract more students to such a niche.
Lead generation is about focusing your efforts on acquiring potential clients to increase your studio’s visibility, get more business and maximize your profits.
You work around this by setting new strategies for your business. As much as it is lead generation, the truth is that you get to operate with several methods at once so you can get high-quality leads.
Now, where should you start? We will be sharing some of the best lead generation strategies you can implement in your yoga studio or as an individual to start bringing more students.
Always Focus on Your Community
Start with your neighbors if you want to attract people!
You can get the attention of your neighbors to make them interested in your studio. They won’t be able to visit it if they haven’t heard of you. So get busy building your brand.
Your brand will be more popular in your area, and you’ll attract more students to your studio. This is a natural process and what you should focus on.
What are some ways you can connect with your local community? Participating in local events can be a great way for you to meet people and promote your business.
To expose your studio to the public, set up a booth at a local fair or wellness event. Sponsor an event in your community to get to know you. You might want to advertise on a town sign or billboard to get noticed.
Make sure you have business cards, postcards, and other promotional materials ready to hand out to any interested leads. You will be able to attract more students to your studio and increase your business by making friends in your neighborhood.
Engaging with your community is the best way to start marketing at a low price.
You can’t sell coupons and membership deals if you don’t have any local partners, so this strategy is yet a “no” until you build your presence in the community.
For this to work, you should also target a specific demographic, such as women between 30 and 50 years old, by marketing in the places they frequent.
You can consider some of these tactics so this lead generation strategy in specific works for you:
- Your studio can offer lessons at no cost to students if it is located near a college campus.
- You can arrange for free lessons for your employees if your studio is located near commercial offices. After they have gathered, you can introduce yourself and hold a class for dozens of people.
- Old school marketing works. Printing hundreds of flyers with your studio name, price, address, and phone number are easy. They can be pinned to bus stops, electric poles, and parks benches.
- You can also get far by word of mouth. Word-of-mouth advertising can lead to 20-50 percent of all yoga students discovering classes. Ask your students to refer you to a friend or to write reviews on the internet.
Be Open to Explore New Markets for Expansion
You may have to generate leads from a new market in order to attract more students to yoga. To get the attention that you desire, focus on yoga’s benefits for health.
Are you interested in generating leads through the corporate market? Contact local businesses for trial classes, office demos, or a corporate rate to attract more students to your yoga classes.
You can grab the attention of teachers and students by giving a talk or demonstration at the school if family classes are on your list. Parents should be able to contact you by sending information home.
You can measure the success of your strategy by sending home a coupon code so that you can track these leads for future marketing.
To get your local running or sports group involved, you could also reach out to them. Post a sign-up sheet to build your database. Follow up with new leads.
It is all about targeting each audience and utilizing specific approaches to avoid wasting your efforts and time.
Don’t Be Afraid of Promotions. Be Smart
Everybody loves a good sale or offer. However, studios can lose a lot of money when they don’t know how to set discounts promotions and just give some offers.
But it is a fact that when you want to attract new students, saving money is a great incentive for them.
Promos can be used to generate interest in your studio and new leads. Ask your clients to invite a friend for a free class or maybe set a program where people get discounts for bringing new leads your way.
A referral program is a great idea because it could be set up where members who refer others will get a prize or perk. They’ll provide you with a lead, and they’ll also receive a thank-you note for supporting your company.
Another option is to offer themed classes such as family nights or group yoga events, where clients can join you at a reduced or even free rate to give yoga a try.
There is no better way to encourage students to sign up for a new yoga studio than by offering incentives. It is more important to get first customers in a yoga studio than to worry about price anchoring in the beginning.
A studio must offer incentives to new students. The quality of the classes alone is not enough, but also crucial, so make sure you have a balance in this.
The concept of discounting raises the question: How can you attract hundreds of customers to your business? Subtle conversion is the key.
A student who signs up for a discount deal is likely to stay with you the next month if they like your classes.
Also, the type of discount you offer is influential. Below, you have some ideas of what you can offer and if it is a good idea for your studio in particular:
- Offer private classes.
Advertise private yoga classes through classified websites like Gumtree.
It is an excellent idea to meet a few students before you start a studio or if you already did and that’s why you’re here as well, take the time to continue building your audience. Remember, start small.
You can attract your first yoga student by offering private lessons at a cheaper rate than the rest. These students will attend your classes, filling up your space.
- Take advantage of being a new studio.
People are always bound to give new studios a try, so you need to take advantage of this.
Creative freebie promotions are key to making your services stand out. To ensure you are designing this in the right way, try to imagine yourself as a customer.
What kind of deal would it be if you could attend yoga classes every month? Would you prefer a studio that takes a cut of your first month’s attendance? Do you want to take 1-2 classes for free and then pay regular tuition? Your offer should be tailored to the students’ needs.
- Unlimited Membership Discounts.
Unlimited Classes is the primary discount model, and it works as long as you set the prices right.
Why does this work? Students are always interested in giving it a try because it allows you to take unlimited classes for a month at a reduced price.
Students can sign up for unlimited classes because they know they are saving money and that they will get sessions for a whole month. The deal is only valid for the first month whatsoever, so they get the chance to try your classes and work around what you can offer.
Once the month ends, students will have to pay regular prices, and many of them are willing to stay.
You can also customize your entire catalog and make it available to new students, so you have packages that fit their budget but also their needs.
- No cost classes for newcomers.
A free class is a great way to get yogis to sign-up for your classes. Everybody wants to take a class free of charge. They will most likely sign up for a paid membership model if they are impressed by your studio and teaching methods.
Your first class is always free or, at least, it should be. This will help you attract new students to your class every day.
When people know that they can come to your class without any risk, you will ensure that your rooms are never empty.
This deal should be promoted on social media. Make it the center of your marketing campaign.
- Give Discount Coupons.
There are many classified websites that allow businesses to list coupons. These sites tend to be local or community-based.
Or you can always rely on the old method of offering them yourself to your regular students so they can provide them to the new ones like their friends and family members.
A way to utilize your coupons is, for example, to create a coupon for a “Free Class.” Next, take the coupon to your local brick-and-mortar stores and present it to them.
The sellers will give the coupon to your targeted demographic. Make a $10 coupon for a $20 class and distribute it around your community.
Be concise and only list the benefits. So that people can find you quickly, make sure to include your logo and contact information on the coupon.
- Group Discounts.
If your studio caters to one demographic, you can create coupons for specific students. These coupons can be extended to attract a specific demographic.
A “Free Yoga Class Month” could be offered to seniors by a studio that caters to them. You can target them with digital marketing or go to places they frequent and offer coupons or posters.
- Discounts for Family/Friends.
Many studios offer discounts or referrals for families who sign up together. You could offer a discount for students who have a family member that wants to sign up for classes.
- Corporate Discounts.
Many companies now offer yoga classes to employees at no cost during lunch breaks and on certain days. Employees love this as they get to take time off work and can learn a new skill.
The yoga instructor is paid a fixed rate that the business owner negates.
Offer your services to any large businesses in your local area. If they aren’t in your area, you could ask them to pay by the class. This is a great way to reach your community and get more students signed up. You can also sell your yoga classes to them and get them to visit your studio.
Don’t Forget About Social Media
Social media can be a great way to generate leads and get attention for your company. Are you not social media-savvy? You don’t have to be as long as you know the basics in posting and how to handle the process most users go over. Also, today’s tools make it easy to market your studio to large audiences with little effort.
Post engaging content to your channels to start your campaign. Your studio will get more clients if you have more likes, comments, and engagement.
Answer every comment or question posted to your feed. Share relevant content to keep your audience interested and increase your reach. Your community will grow and attract more students if you’re more accessible.
After you have built a loyal following, you can place ads on social media to get as many leads as possible.
You can target a specific market and advertise to them with content that will interest them in your business. Look for informative and well-written content with great photos. Advertise to get people to sign up for your newsletter, and you’ll be able to generate a lot of leads.
Brand Identity Is Everything for All Businesses
We believe this should have probably been the first step, but we want to make sure you have the essentials for lead generation clear to move to this one: build your brand identity.
Your brand should represent your yoga studio’s values and distinguish it from other studios. Before you can create a marketing campaign, you need to understand your values and what your studio stands behind.
Think about the top brands in the world and how they are unique in their own way, even when there are thousands of companies in the same niche.
You will need to create a brand bigger than yourself if you want to open the best yoga studio in the country or, at least, a successful one.
Many yogis make the error of making their studio all about them instead of creating a large, encompassing brand. So, no, you don’t need to talk about yourself all the time or focus too much on how to make it personal.
Instead, focus on this: you must create a brand for your yoga studio that connects with people. How to communicate that value to students and the world around you. It is essential to market your studio effectively. This can take you up to a month of reflection to reach certain conclusions.
Your studio branding will attract more students than all other marketing strategies combined. Your brand should be heard and become synonymous with yoga in your area, and it must be associated with a specific cause or method of teaching.
Your brand will become a household name and be the first place people look for when they are looking to sign up for classes. Your students will recommend your studio to their friends and spread the word about your yoga school in the local community. People will seek out yoga studios with great reviews to increase their loyalty.
Your brand can increase your value and make prospects more open to your marketing campaigns.
People will be less likely to sign up for your classes if you present yourself as a teacher, but a larger brand helps them make a positive decision for you.
Continue Building Your Online Presence
Modern yoga studios need to have an online presence, and this is what we talked about just moments ago with social media. However, there’s more than just social media profiles.
Students want to do research on you before enrolling. They also want to keep in touch with your studio after signing up by liking and sharing your photos, following your stories, and watching your videos.
It is possible to build a community following through local initiatives. Still, you must also have a website and social media presence that is accompanied by a listing and all the directories where people tend to search for yoga studios.
Although this may seem daunting, you can set up a website or social media pages in less than an hour.
Also, you don’t have to create a website. A developer can build one for you for as low as $100, and many free builders can help you have a basic one for now. Therefore, keep these steps in mind for your online presence to be built:
Create Your Website to Get More Yoga Studios
Your website is the central component that connects all of your customers and social networks.
It should contain all information about your courses, along with links to social media so people can interact with you.
You could spend as low as $10 per month to buy a domain and hosting. Namecheap will provide enough bandwidth to support a typical yoga studio website with an unlimited plan. Your practice, price list, classes, photos, and special events such as workshops must all be included on the website.
The website should contain a “Call to Action,” a freebie that you offer to students in return for their email—for example, a free or introductory session.
This leads magnet will hook them to your email marketing system, allowing you to market to students who are interested. You could create a 20-page report about yoga in return for their emails.
These pages should be on your website:
- About Us.
- Services.
- Set Your Session.
- Class Schedule.
- Blog.
- FAQ.
- Contact Us.
After using all these strategies, you should be able to boost your lead scoring, lead capture, and ensure the best lead generation plan for your business.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Yoga Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers.Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Yoga Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Yoga Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.