How To Market Your Yoga, Pilates or Meditation Studio

You wanted to change lives for the better.

So why does it feel like marketing to find new students takes all your time and energy?

Why is it so hard to get new yoga & Pilates students?

Marketing you feel good about is a challenge for all mind-body businesses. Whether it's Hatha, Vinyasa/flow, Ashtanga, Bikram/hot yoga, Iyengar, meditation, Pilates classes or teacher training, you've probably already encountered:

Crowded competition: local independents, YMCAs, Parks & Rec, health clubs, franchises, hospital fitness centers, online & video
Highly seasonal sales cycles create feast/famine problem
Concern that marketing is manipulative or conflicts with your studio's values and philosophy
Excessive focus on ClassPass, competitors or fads leads studios to undersell their unique value
Lack of clarity about each studio's unique strengths leads to "me-too" marketing & special offers + price timidity

Prospect fears: too awkward, too old, not bendy, overweight, spandex, clique-ish, religious conflict
Limited business hours/phone/chat coverage discourage prospective customers & deflect sales
Small marketing budgets, focus on easy/cheap but ineffective marketing (ex: social posts)
Underutilization of Google Ads and Google Business Profile vs other wellness businesses
Low-enrollment cancellations discourage people trying out your new student special
Instructor turnover disrupts student retention

What's the best way to get more yoga, Pilates & meditation students?

The Local Marketing Triangle^©
for Health & Wellness

To get more customers, you've got to get your business in front of people who don't know about you yet and are actively looking to buy services like yours.

The Local Marketing Triangle achieves both goals:

Google Ads promotes your business to people actively looking to buy services like yours
Your Google Business Profile earns your visibility in local 3-pack, next best thing to an ad
Your website does the heavy lifting: anticipating what prospects typically wonder and worry about

More about the Local Marketing Triangle >

"But...what about backlinks? Directory citations? E-books? Facebook? TV? Radio? Postcards? Etc."

Backlinks and directory citations? Important years ago. Today, no longer relevant for local search. You can safely forget about them.

TV, radio, newspapers & direct mail? They target everyone in a region, so you pay to show your ad to lots of people who will never care about what you sell. That makes it an expensive way to get prospects. Worth a look as a secondary strategy, but not as your primary marketing tool.

Facebook Ads? At least you can target people interested in a broad category, like fitness or yoga. But unlike Google, it doesn't show ads based on purchase intent. And it significantly restricts what health and wellness ads can say or show. Worth a look once you've got Google Ads, your business profile and your site dialed in—but it shouldn't be your primary advertising tool.

Facebook business page posts? At least they're free. But they only show up in newsfeeds of people who already know about you. You need awareness among people who don't know about you. Better for staying connected to customers you already have.

E-books or PDFs? Potentially useful lead magnets—once folks are in your sales funnel! But they don't help people discover your brick-and-mortar wellness business in the first place.

"Research shows that more than 90% of qualified leads for local health and wellness businesses come from Google Ads, your Google Business Profile, and your website, so that's what deserves your time and budget."
~Don Muchow, Radial's Chief Content Officer