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Growing a Yoga Studio in a Crowded Market

February 7, 2012 •

Are you con­fronting the chal­lenge of open­ing a new yoga stu­dio, get­ting estab­lished as a newly cer­ti­fied teacher, or attract­ing more stu­dents in a com­pet­i­tive urban area? If so, you’re not alone.

More Yoga Teachers

Yoga Pose Warrior 1There’s been an explo­sion in the num­ber of cer­ti­fied yoga teach­ers  — 70,000 at last count  (NAMASTA, 2005), plus the many newly minted teach­ers since then. The pres­sures of a sus­tained eco­nomic down­turn are caus­ing many to seek alter­na­tive careers.

Some of the new­com­ers want a more reward­ing sec­ond career, a means to give back to their com­mu­nity. Some are recent col­lege grads who’ve strug­gled to land a job that they find mean­ing­ful, peo­ple who see value in the yoga lifestyle. Oth­ers are peo­ple who have faced a major life pas­sage or health cri­sis, been trans­formed thanks to yoga, and now want to share the joy of their prac­tice.

What­ever their moti­va­tion, yoga’s increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity has led to an explo­sion in teacher cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, but this is not with­out risk for both new­com­ers and exist­ing stu­dios.

More Challenges for Yoga Teachers

If there are too many teach­ers within easy dri­ving dis­tance, it’s hard for new teach­ers to make an ade­quate liv­ing until you suc­ceed in attract­ing a loyal set of stu­dents who attend your classes on a reg­u­lar basis… Stu­dio own­ers man­age a lim­ited inven­tory of avail­able class times and space, so they pre­fer pop­u­lar teach­ers who can fill the classes.

This is the clas­sic “Catch 22” sit­u­a­tion for the the teacher.  It takes time to earn a good rep­u­ta­tion as a val­ued teacher, time to build recog­ni­tion for your con­tri­bu­tions, time for word-of-mouth to gen­er­ate refer­rals from your stu­dents to their friends.

The ques­tion is, how can new teach­ers speed that up? The answer is, by stand­ing out, being dif­fer­ent in ways that mat­ter to stu­dents and the stu­dio owner. (In the busi­ness world, this is referred to as “per­sonal brand­ing.”)

The chal­lenge boils down to fig­ur­ing out the authen­tic path that will enable you to attract the right stu­dents — peo­ple who will ben­e­fit from your par­tic­u­lar teach­ing and inter­ac­tion skills; peo­ple who will enthu­si­as­ti­cally rec­om­mend you and your stu­dio to their friends and fam­ily.

In a crowded urban mar­ket you need to stand out, be rec­og­nized for what is dis­tinc­tive and mean­ing­ful about your ser­vices, your stu­dio and its loca­tion, the cal­iber of your teach­ers and the vibrancy of your stu­dio’s com­mu­nity.

Be Different — But in Ways That Are Meaningful

Start by spend­ing some time look­ing around to under­stand what the other stu­dios are offer­ing in your area. Talk to other stu­dio own­ers to see what’s work­ing for them. Talk to yoga stu­dents about what’s miss­ing from their cur­rent class expe­ri­ences. Ask them how they would describe their “dream classes.” When and where would those classes take place. What would be dif­fer­ent about the stu­dent-teacher inter­ac­tion from what they’ve expe­ri­enced today.

Then invest some qual­ity time think­ing about how you can make your offer­ing more dis­tinc­tive — more directly rel­e­vant to prospec­tive stu­dents within dri­ving dis­tance of your stu­dio. What’s spe­cial about the peo­ple who live in your area?

If you’re in a highly com­pet­i­tive area (like Los Ange­les, New York or the Bay Area), think about ways to posi­tion your stu­dio or some of your classes to appeal more nar­rowly to a spe­cific set of stu­dents who share com­mon needs or inter­ests. For exam­ple,

  • Classes for boomer women, or mother-daugh­ter classes
  • Classes for peo­ple strug­gling with spe­cific health or mobil­ity chal­lenges: such as chronic arthri­tis, back/spine issues, or can­cer
  • Classes for peo­ple who need help restor­ing their self-esteem (or even their youth­ful appear­ance), as a result of being laid off or other painful life pas­sages
  • Classes for bik­ers, skiers and run­ners who need help relax­ing those overly tight leg mus­cles, or to build upper body strength
  • Classes for ten­nis play­ers, or skiers, or golfers — you get the idea

What about classes that tar­get spe­cific pain zones — the kinds of anatom­i­cal or bio-mechan­i­cal prob­lems that many peo­ple in your area are likely to expe­ri­ence? How about team-teach­ing with a like-minded phys­i­cal ther­a­pist?

  • Classes for peo­ple with tight shoul­ders, disk issues or neck prob­lems — the kinds of issues faced by peo­ple who spend too many hours at the com­puter
  • Classes for peo­ple with lower back weak­ness, or bal­ance chal­lenges
  • Com­bined nutri­tion and yoga classes for peo­ple who want to man­age (and main­tain) weight loss in a non-fad­dish way

Increase Your Reach

Have you explored whether peo­ple who work for the larger employ­ers in your area might be inter­ested in classes offered at their work­place (after hours, before the work­day begins, or dur­ing lunch hours)?

Classes at over-55 com­mu­ni­ties, senior cen­ters, churches, etc.?

In addi­tion to your pri­vate tuto­ri­als, have you devel­oped classes or other ser­vices to help your stu­dents get more ben­e­fit out of their home-based asanas?

Do you offer asana guid­ance via pod­casts that your stu­dents can down­load and lis­ten to at home or when they’re trav­el­ing? If you get good at this, you might be able to offer a sub­scrip­tion ser­vice for a series of weekly or monthly pod­casts that you mar­ket over the Inter­net.

If you have a friend with a dig­i­tal cam­corder, why not post some videos of your teach­ing style and phi­los­o­phy on YouTube?

Have you thought about ways you might pro­vide some online instruc­tion (yoga sequences, guided med­i­ta­tion, etc.) that stu­dents could use to guide their prac­tice, at the stu­den­t’s con­ve­nience, on days when she can’t get to a stu­dio for a sched­uled class?

Some Examples from a Seattle Studio

The stu­dio where I prac­tice is quite sophis­ti­cated; their classes are over­flow­ing. Here are some of the things my teach­ers do to keep them­selves in front of their stu­dents when we’re not in their class:

  • Cre­ate and sell an annual yoga cal­en­dar that fea­tures real stu­dents in a series of poses (includ­ing women over 80!)
  • Send monthly newslet­ters by email to stu­dents who choose to receive them. The emails con­tain poems or sto­ries writ­ten by the teach­ers, often with pho­tos that inspire med­i­ta­tion — and reminders about upcom­ing classes, retreats, and spe­cial events.
  • Host sev­eral spe­cial events each quar­ter (like week­end retreats in lovely set­tings within a few hours’ drive of their stu­dio) or classes on spe­cial top­ics.
  • And of course, they have a web site with infor­ma­tion about the teach­ers, the classes, the events cal­en­dar, etc.

If you’re strug­gling to keep your yoga stu­dio vibrant and full of stu­dents, I hope one or more of these ideas will lead to increased busi­ness suc­cess for you.

Soci­ety as a whole ben­e­fits when yoga val­ues infuse peo­ple’s daily lives and activ­i­ties. But for the strug­gling yoga stu­dio or newly cer­ti­fied teacher, explo­sive growth in teacher cer­ti­fi­ca­tions leads to increased com­pe­ti­tion in the local mar­ket. To thrive and grow in a crowded mar­ket requires a thought­ful strat­egy, one that’s put into prac­tice via a focused and dis­ci­plined set of tac­tics.

Namaste.

Trackbacks

  1. The Authentic Voice says:
    March 26, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    […] hours, unlike my hus­band who’s trapped in the cor­po­rate world. If I feel like writ­ing about mar­ket­ing con­cepts for yoga stu­dio own­ers – just for the heck of it – there’s no one stand­ing over my shoul­der ask­ing why I’m not […]

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Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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