Yoga advertising tips: Stretch your budget and boost sales

Key takeaways

• Carve out your niche to connect with your target audience before investing in ads
• Ads can help you show up more prominently on key channels like social media, Yelp, and search engines
• Direct mail is a highly effective advertising method because it literally lands in the hands of potential customers

The number of yoga practitioners in the United States has more than doubled in less than a decade, but sometimes it can feel like reaching potential clients hasn’t become any easier. If your yoga marketing strategy isn’t driving new students to your yoga practice, investing in ads can help you improve your reach and land more clients. Consider these five yoga advertising tips to help you grow your business without breaking the bank.

1. Develop your niche before you advertise

When potential students view your marketing campaigns, they should get the gist of what type of yoga instructor you are. Carving out your niche and using it to brand your yoga business can help you stand out and connect with your specific target audience. 

For example, you can differentiate your practice based on:

• Your yoga style (e.g., Hatha, Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Aerial, Kundalini)
• Your business model (e.g., traditional yoga classes, yoga retreats, virtual yoga)
• Your mission (e.g., improving mental wellness, aiding pain management)
• Your teaching goals (e.g., physical fitness, spiritual healing)

As you start to develop your niche, express it through your branding. Identify ways you can make your copy and visuals more specific to what you do. For example, you can highlight specific yoga poses within your campaigns—an aerial yoga pose from a hammock is quite different from a Lotus pose on a yoga mat. By the time you run your first paid ad, you’ll be well-equipped to attract potential clients who are likely to attend your events.

2. Attract leads with social media ads and influencers

Social media marketing helps many yoga business owners connect with their potential clients in their day-to-day life. But with more yoga studio owners than ever on social media platforms, getting attention from potential clients is more difficult than it once was. With unpaid digital marketing, only a small number of users who aren’t following you will actually see your posts on their social media feed. Luckily, paid social media ads can help you get your yoga studio marketing in front of new users.

When you run a social media ad, it can help you reach your target audience by showing up directly on users’ feeds. As your potential customers scroll through posts from their friends, your ads will soon fill their screens as a natural part of their experience.

Tapping into influencer marketing

Another form of yoga advertising to consider on social media is influencer marketing. Paying influential, local lifestyle content creators or yoga enthusiasts to promote your business can stretch your reach to a relevant local audience. In essence, these influencers become your word-of-mouth marketers. Consumers trust people more than brands, so getting a trustworthy voice that shares similar values to back your business can help you gain quick credibility as a yoga instructor. 

While influencer marketing might sound expensive, the average business earns $5.78 back per dollar spent, with some earning as much as $18 back. As long as your influencers consistently achieve a strong engagement rate—the number of likes, comments, saves, and other interactions received per follower—this type of paid marketing can be well worth the cost.

3. Reach high-intent customers with Yelp Ads

When potential students are actively looking for yoga classes, they’re likely searching online for instructors on sites like Yelp. When you claim your Yelp Business Page, you can build a more effective online presence by:

• Updating your business details, including your phone number and website
• Adding eye-catching photos to your page
• Responding to online reviews to showcase your level of customer service

When you pair your strong Yelp presence with Yelp Ads, you can drive even more students to your local business. Yelp Ads displays your listing above the search results for specific keywords and on competitors’ pages. You can also target your ads to make them even more relevant to your audience by selecting a specific geographic radius or boosting certain keywords you want to show up for in search results.

Every cent you spend goes toward actual clicks, so you’ll never waste money just to get shoppers to view (and scroll past) your ad.

4. Build your content marketing strategy

When interested students aren’t using business directories to find yoga studios, they’re using search engines. This can be a great channel for virtual yoga instructors who don’t have specific service areas to reach potential students; although, it can help just about any yoga practice.

So how do you rank high on search engine results pages? For many yoga teachers, the answer is content marketing. You can improve your rank by writing valuable blog posts, landing pages, and more content for your yoga website. When you include relevant keywords (like “yoga center” or “benefits of yoga“) in your content, you show search engines that your website is a great match for people searching the same or similar terms.

5. Direct mail

Direct mail is a promotional postcard, letter, or brochure that’s delivered to consumer mailboxes. An impressive 80-90% of recipients open direct mail, compared to just 20-30% for email marketing. 

While online advertising is a must in today’s digital age, sending physical promotions gives you the chance to put a highly noticeable and tangible ad right into the hands of your potential students. As long as you design a standout piece of mail, you can drive business to your yoga studio.

Direct mail can cost as much as $5-$10 a piece after printing, postage, and outsourcing costs. But with these tips, you can keep your total costs on the low end (about 30 cents to $2 a piece) while putting out an effective ad campaign:

• Spend on size, not finish: At the end of the day, a postcard with a glossy finish won’t differ that much from one with a matte finish. But an oversized postcard instantly looks and feels different from your standard piece of mail.
• Customize free templates: Platforms like Canva offer free templates to help you design postcards by simply dragging and dropping visuals and customizing text and colors.
• Incorporate an enticing offer: Effective direct mail should always be actionable. A limited-time offer or coupon can drive new students to your six yoga marketing strategies to grow your business faststudio.

Don’t be afraid to outsource to a freelance graphic designer if you need help. Talented professionals can cost as little as $30-$50 per hour. You can connect with beginner and advanced graphic designers on freelancer sites like Fiverr and Upwork.

Invest in yoga advertising to reach your goals faster

When your marketing plan isn’t getting you the results you want, yoga advertising may be the way to go. Ad campaigns require you to spend, but the returns can be enormous when you choose cost-effective techniques. For example, ads on social media and Yelp, content marketing, and search engine optimization can all help you get in front of the right audience, and you’ll only pay when you earn a click.

Looking to reach even more clients? Discover six yoga marketing strategies to grow your business fast and help your yoga practice stand out amongst the competition.