Finding Online Yoga Clients: The Organic Way

Finding Online Yoga Clients The Organic Way

Table of Contents

Introduction

Teaching Yoga used to be an offline business until the pandemic changed the way we do things. Nowadays, especially in the case of learning new things, a lot of people prefer being online for a variety of reasons.

From having a lack of time to having to travel to a remote location for their job, to hygiene concerns, there can be any number of reasons behind people preferring online yoga classes over offline ones.

Online classes are also beneficial from an instructor’s point of view. Here are just a few of the benefits of offering online yoga classes:

Why Offering Online Yoga Training Is Great From A Business Point Of View

Starting an online business can be a profitable undertaking, assuming you do it right. We will get to the “doing it right” part in the later sections of this article. For now, let’s see a few benefits you will enjoy as a yoga instructor if you bring your business online:

  • When you build an online presence, it becomes another avenue for potential customers to find your business. Even if most of the people that find you online are only interested in offline classes, you still get more visibility for your offline business. With the right pricing strategies and offers, this visibility can be monetized.
  • If you don’t already have an offline yoga instruction business, starting an online class is the most pocket-friendly way to get your business off the ground. Building a website, maintaining it, and marketing it can all be done with the money you may have to pay as a deposit for renting a yoga studio.
  • Offline businesses can reach and service only the people that are living in close vicinity of a business. This is especially true for yoga classes. Most people don’t prefer traveling far and wide for their fitness goals. Most people like to do things the easy way. However, online, you can reach out to virtually endless customers anywhere on the planet where there is access to high-speed internet.
  • The ability to cater to customers anywhere in the world doesn’t just let you reach out to more prospects. It also means that you can find clients that value your services more and potentially charge premium prices for your service. It also means that you can serve clients who are willing to pay premium prices for a personalized or simply better quality service.
  • Live online yoga classes allow the customers to have a studio experience from the comfort of their homes, with continuous interaction with you. This is especially transformational because customers who refrain from traveling due to time crunch in their schedules, or whatever other reasons, can now get expert supervision in real-time, instead of depending on recorded yoga classes on platforms like YouTube. Appealing to such a user base can pay rich monetary dividends.

Strategies for organically attracting clients to your online yoga business

Now that you have learnt about the monetary benefits of starting an online yoga business, you need to learn about the basic and advanced strategies involved in “doing it right” for sure shot success. Organically attracting clients is not an easy task if you have not implemented correct digital marketing techniques.

Let’s take a look at the most crucial strategies for getting organic clients for your online yoga business:

1. Build a comprehensive, easy to navigate, mobile friendly website

In the digital world, a website is your gateway to finding new clients. A strategically designed website will make your online yoga classes gain legitimacy and make you look professional. A website helps in cementing your online presence and allows you to market your online yoga classes to the target audience. It is also a tried and tested method of building trust in your brand and asserting credibility. Credibility is a hard-earned asset in the online world and can set your online yoga brand up for success.

You must build a comprehensive website, detailing the courses you offer, providing the initial information required for prospects to consider investing in these courses, enticing them with the exclusive benefits of joining you in their yoga journey, etc. Make sure that your website is user-friendly and easy to navigate. Users don’t like complicated maneuvers while exploring a website. Most importantly, make your website mobile-friendly since most users access the internet on their mobile devices.

Building a website is easier than ever, with the help of multiple easy to use content management systems (CMS) like WordPress. These platforms provide a plethora of free visual styles to build an aesthetically pleasing website. It takes easy to navigate, short steps to build your website from scratch using these platforms.

2. Understand your target audience

After building a website, the next step is to identify and understand the audience to whom you want to promote your online yoga classes. The target audience for your online yoga classes is the set of people who are most likely to subscribe to one of the yoga courses available on your website.

Build buyer personas and identify what might be the requirements and reasons for a particular set of people to join your online yoga classes. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer. It’s based on an amalgamation of market research(can be referred from various online sources) and actual data based on informed assumptions. These personas help in understanding the psyche of an ideal customer. Keep in mind characteristics like demographics, behavior, online search keywords, buying behaviors, information sources, etc.

Once you have understood the behaviour of your target audience, you can start promoting your online yoga classes to the relevant set of people through your website and drive conversions.

3. Focus on publishing consistent, regular, helpful content

Your website can double down as a vehicle for content marketing for your yoga classes. Adding a blogging section to your website allows you to publish relevant content, aimed at educating your target audience about trends around yoga, the benefits of online yoga classes, the benefits of yoga for a healthy body and sound mind, etc. The blog can be your gateway to attracting potential customers to your website and having them view the courses that you offer.

The quantity and quality of the content you create can lead you to increased organic leads. The thumb rule of content marketing is publishing content regularly. Along with regularity, consistency in the quality of your content is vital in making the visitors come back — increasing their chances of becoming customers. Make sure that the content that you publish adds value to the lives of the target audience and helps in building trust about your website and yoga classes.

4. Incorporate more visual elements in your content

Content marketing is more than just pushing regular content; its quality is what makes the difference. Quality content is that which captures the attention of the user and engages them for a longer duration. You need to ensure that your content possesses the required quality to be equal parts visual and textual.

You must create short videos to illustrate some of the concepts that you mention in your content. Along with videos, try adding relevant high-quality, optimized images. When a user accesses content supplemented with visual appeal, they are more likely to trust it. This trust helps in building credibility and having visitors return to your website.

5. Supplement content with effective SEO

Now, when you have understood the value of content marketing, and its ability to generate organic leads, you need to know the factor that is responsible for making content the source of leads and online traffic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of setting up your content for online visibility. As the name suggests, SEO is a set of strategies required to push your website and its content to the top results of search engines.

It’s crucial to supplement your content with SEO best practices like keyword research. For starters, you should take the help of some of the free online keyword research tools. Keywords are a reflection of the search queries of the target audience. Right keywords allow the search engine algorithms to index your web pages faster and push them to the top of search results.

You can invest in taking the help of professional agencies for taking care of your SEO needs. Saving the cost of paying rent for a physical yoga class space and other operational expenses, you can use a fraction of this money to increase the success rate of your website, which, in turn, will provide you with more customers organically.

6. Harness the power of social media

Social media is the most effective tool for online marketing if one knows how to use it correctly. It’s crucial that you set up a business profile for your online yoga brand on all major social media platforms, including but not limited to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

The option of creating short-form visual content, like Instagram reels, allows you to have a greater reach among your target audience because many millennials are attracted to yoga nowadays. You can insert plugins to your website in such social media content. In this way, you can drive more and more traffic to your website, giving you a higher probability of getting potential leads.

Social media is the best way to attract organic traffic to your website — through relevant posts, tweets, audio-visual content, etc. Once you learn to harness the power of social media, no one can stop your online presence from fetching you monetary rewards in the form of new subscribers to your online yoga classes.

7. Email marketing

Email marketing has forever been one of the most powerful tools for attracting organic leads. You should create separate email lists from the signup information of the visitors on your website. The email lists must be segregated based on the relevant interests of the users.

Start a newsletter and design customized emails for each email list to build a regular connection with your potential customers, who subscribe to your newsletter after visiting your website. Send the newsletter regularly and make sure that it adds informational value to the users in your mailing lists. You need to be strategically careful about every word of your marketing newsletters.

Newsletters also help build long standing relationships with your existing yoga students. When your pre-existing students trust your classes, they help in promoting them through word of mouth.

8. Offer free trial classes and add calls to action

People love free stuff, and offering free perks never goes out of style when it comes to marketing strategies. Free trial classes of your yoga courses will allow interested visitors on your website to get a better idea of what they might be investing their money in if they choose to buy a subscription to one of the courses you offer.

In addition to the attractive value of free trial classes, make sure to add relevant calls to action at different pages of your website — to direct the visitors to perform a certain action, like ‘sign up’, ‘buy now’, etc. Note that calls to action(CTAs) lead prospective customers to make a decision faster, according to several marketing surveys.

Tips to make your online yoga classes a desirable place to be

Now that you have learnt about formulating your digital marketing strategy for attracting new clients to your business in an organic way, let’s take a look at a few tips to make your online yoga classes a seamless experience for your subscribers (from subscription to classes):

1. Ensure that your website is organised and clean

Since your website will be the first point of contact between your prospective clients and you, you have to be doubly sure that it leaves a positive impression. To give a clear message, create a clear schedule of classes, and an easy roadmap to booking.

2. Create a smooth booking process

The booking process is one of the most tangible parts of the online yoga journey and must be designed to feel easy to navigate. Also, ensure that the payment methods work well and without errors.

3. Add a troubleshooting guide on your website

Identify the points of concern for users through the feedback section of the website and the first-hand experiences of existing users. Prepare a dynamic troubleshooting guide where you provide the solutions to the identified problems, updating it regularly. Add this troubleshooting guide to your website where it’s easily accessible.

4. Create a warm and welcoming atmosphere

Yoga is an exercise to rejuvenate the mind and body, and therefore, it must be taught in a welcoming and warm environment. Before the start of every session, ensure that the students feel at ease and comfortable. This goes a long way in creating a fulfilling experience for your students.

Conclusion

Starting online yoga classes can be a very fulfilling experience for you, both personally and professionally. If you know the right methods for marketing your business to generate leads and convert them into paying customers, you will have a recipe for success. You can follow the guide in this article and focus on building not just a profitable online yoga class but a complete experience — right from booking the course to attending it.

FAQs

There are several ways to market your online yoga classes to the right people:

  • Build a dedicated website for yoga classes
  • Create a business page on Facebook and/or Instagram
  • Post relevant content on your social media pages
  • Share moments from your yoga classes with your followers
  • Keep track of your social media engagement
  • Collect contact information of potential clients and create an email list
  • Send out newsletters with useful information regarding your classes
  • Use blogs to your advantage
  • Use the right keywords on your posts

One of the best places to promote your yoga classes is social media. You can create a business account on Facebook and Instagram and publish relevant content along with a call to action. You can also create a dedicated website for your online yoga classes and work on its search engine optimization. This will help you make your online presence visible to targeted keyword searches.