Yoga marketing is all about establishing a dialogue with prospective yoga students and customers.  If a visitor to your website leaves your site without contacting you, then you’ve lost a sale and the potential to get a sale because no dialogue started.

This means it’s imperative you offer your website visitors as many opportunities as possible to start a dialogue with you once they arrive at your site.  Displaying a phone number, having a contact form, and an email subscription form are all great.  However, one incredibly powerful tool for getting customers is adding a “live chat” option to your sites.

What is Live Chat?

Okay, I don’t have live chat on this site – but it’s a blog – I’m not selling any products or services directly.  But you are – and that’s why live chat is a such a great tool.

Live chat is a way that website visitors can have a typed conversation with you or an employee of yours in real time.  It’s a button saying “Let’s Chat” or something similar you display prominently on your site(s).  You can indicate whether you’re available or not available.  If not available, your visitors can easily leave you a message (this is better than nothing).  It also gives you a way to deliver great customer service to existing customers.

If a visitor clicks to chat, you’re notified and both of you have text boxes in which to type messages back and forth.

Like an e-mail subscriber service, a great live chat service is very inexpensive.  I highly recommend Provide Support which costs $15 per month for an unlimited number of websites (they offer a free trial so you can see if it’s worth it).  The best part is you don’t need to install any software.  Provide Support’s entire system is web-based – you simply log in to your account and manage your entire console on the Internet (i.e. cloud computing).

Live Chat Offers Instant Gratification for Your Website Visitors

I don’t like calling businesses.  I don’t like waiting for answers.  Live chat solves both these problems for your customers who are just like me.  Often I’d rather avoid waiting for an answer than asking it through a form or making a telephone call.  However, when a website has live chat, I don’t mind waiting 20 seconds for a live answer.

Live Chat is More Efficient than a Telephone Call

When you’re on the phone, you can only deal with one customer at at time.  On live chat you can easily assist 3 to 5 customers at a time.  You can also keep copies of all transcripts and send a transcript to your customers).

What if You Don’t Have Time to Keep Live Chat Going 24/7?

No problem – you can simply set it to “leave a message”.  When you’re available, then turn it on again.  You can be available wherever you have an Internet connection. If you go to a conference or workshop, you can at least part of the time be available for prospective customer inquiries.  If you have a receptionist – then you can train your receptionist to be the live chat operator.  Your receptionist probably knows the answers to most questions anyway.

Live Chat Will Give You a Competitive Advantage

Most likely most of your competitors don’t use live chat.  Get an advantage now using live chat.  At the very least – if you have Web traffic to your website(s), give live chat a trial run and see whether you get inquiries and whether those inquiries result in paying customers.

Let’s Look at the Live Chat Numbers

In Part I I used a scenario of 50 website visitors per day.  I’ll do so here as well.  Suppose 5 of those 50 visitors per day start a live chat with you during which you’re able to immediately answer their questions.  If 1 out of 35 live chat customers become a student of your studio (taking 1 class per week at $10 / class = $520 per year), then your live chat service will add 52 students to your studio in a year.  You’ll earn $520 in revenue for the year on a live chat investment of only $180 ($15/month).  That’s a $340 profit.*

Okay, I acknowledge you’ll never know whether a live chat customer would have become a yoga studio customer regardless whether you have live chat.  There is no way to know for sure.  However, give it a trial and see if you get a bump in new students.  Besides, with live chat your existing customers can more easily contact you.  As you know, retaining yoga students is absolutely fundamental to building your business.  When you can easily and cheaply improve your customer service, then it’s well worth the time, effort, and nominal cost.

Click Here to Visit the Provide Support Official Website

Putting it all together

In my last two posts Putting Your Internet Yoga Marketing Campaign All Together (using microsites) and Part I of How Much Money is Your Yoga Studio Leaving on the Table as well as this post – I’ve given you the tools to build a solid Web presence and then turning website visitors into yoga students – all for the following low cost:

• Website theme with StudioPress:  $70 (unlimited number of websites and blogs);
• Website hosting:  $7 /month (unlimited websites);
• AWeber e-mail subscriber service:  $19/month; and
• Provide Support Live Chat:  $15/month (place it on an unlimited number of sites)

Total Cost:  $70 up front; $41 monthly.

With the example of 50 visitors per day to your sites using an email subscriber and live chat I showed it’s not impossible to earn $272 + $340 = $612 in annual profit (for the first year*).  Imagine if you get 100 or 200 daily visitors – all the more possible with more websites.

The point is: developing and executing an outstanding Internet yoga marketing campaign is not difficult and not expensive once you get informed.  Both AWeber and Provide Support offer trial periods so it’s risk free.  With StudioPress themes and Bluehost – you can leverage your investment because once you pay the initial cost for the theme and the $7 per month for hosting – you can build unlimited websites.

Once you put in these tools, continue building traffic.  More traffic with these great conversion tools equals more yoga students for you!

*The number set out in this post and Part I are illustrative.  Using any or all of the tools set out in this website does not guarantee results.  Results may vary.  Take advantage of the trial offers and see whether it works for you.

Part I of How Much Money is Your Yoga Studio Leaving on the Table

Related posts:

1. How Much Money is Your Yoga Studio Leaving on the Table? (Part I)
2. Live Chat Service Providers For Yoga Studios
3. Why Use Live Chat on Your Yoga Studio Website

Every visitor to your site is cherished – you worked hard or paid a lot of money to get those visitors – now it’s time to ask “how much money are you leaving on the table?”  In other words, how can you get as many of those visitors to become students and clients of your yoga business?

There are two proven tools that will result in more website visitors trying your yoga studio.  That’s all you ask – that they give your studio a try.  Those tools are:

• free stuff; and
• live chat (discussed in Part II).

Let’s start with free stuff.  Do you see the form with “Biggest Mistake” at the top of it?  When you fill in that form, you get free stuff.  That form is filled in almost every day.  I like giving away free information – after all this blog is loaded with free information for yoga marketing.  But I also like establishing a relationship with my readers.  When you ask for my free stuff by filling in the form – you not only get the report “Huge Mistake Many Yoga Websites Make”, but I send you other e-mails with useful information for growing your yoga business – some of which is not on this blog.

Here’s the key – you can do exactly the same thing with prospective visitors to your website(s).  Give them free stuff – all they have to do is ask for it.  You can then establish a relationship with them by sending them e-newsletters and e-mails in the future.  Even if they go to another studio for awhile, you’ll be able to gently remind them over and over that you’re around.

But isn’t sending out emails and e-newsletters a lot of work?

Nope.  That form to the right is created by AWeber (read below why choosing the right service right off the bat is so important) which once filled in by a person requesting my information, it triggers a series of pre-loaded email messages.  You can do the same.  Write up 50 messages and send one out each week or 12 and send one each month – whatever you think is best.  Offer free stuff every week.  Some examples might be:

• One free class
• One free week of classes
• Free videos of your classes so they can your routines at home.
• Informative / Entertaining articles
• Invitations to events and workshops you’re hosting.
• Yoga clothing / accessories sales.

You get the idea.  Even though not all visitors to your website may not become customers right away – you can dramatically increase the odds of them becoming a customer in the future if you maintain a relationship with them.

You aren’t limited to sending pre-loaded emails either.  You can send out a new email to your entire list any time.

A great sign-up incentive for your site visitors

I think the best sign-up incentive is to offer videos of you or one of your teachers teaching a class.  This way you’re pretty much giving away a free yoga lesson that people can follow along with at home.  Since the video file would be too large to send by email, send your email list a link to a page where they can view the video.

IMPORTANT #1:  DON’T BREAK THE LAW

There is a difference between the people who simply contact you and people who ask to get your free offering and end up on your email list.  YOU CANNOT send unsolicited emails to people who do not double opt in.  What is double opt in?  When you sign up with my form to the right (Biggest Mistake Form), you’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription.  This process is the double opt in – you fill in the form and then confirm your subscription.  The CAN SPAM laws forbid you sending emails to people who only fill in a form.  Therefore, people who contact you via a contact form cannot be added to an email list (a law I suspect many business break – but you can reply to inquiries set out in the contact form).

Should you have two forms on your site?

Absolutely.  Put your simple contact form in your contact page.  You don’t want a double opt in for simple inquiries.  Then place your free offer elsewhere on your site.  In some of my offline business sites I place both the simple contact form and my free offer form on the home page.  Experiment.

IMPORTANT #2: CHOOSE THE RIGHT SERVICE FIRST

Let’s say you don’t want to pay a monthly cost for AWeber (it’s $19 /month).  So you try a free service to start – such as MailChimp.  BIG MISTAKE.  Why?  Because when you do decide to upgrade to AWeber you can’t simply import or transfer your list.  You will have to get your entire list to confirm their subscription again.  Yup – you will lose most of your list.

Let’s look at the numbers

Suppose you get 50 visitors per day to all your websites.  Let’s say 1 out of 10 people who visit your site sign up for your free video.  That’s 5 subscribers per day.  Let’s say 1 out of 35 subscribers become a student (that’s 1 per week) and that the average student attends 4 classes per month ($10 / class).  That means your list will result in approximately 52 new students each year which profits you $520 per year.  If your email service costs $19 per month, you net $272 in your first year.*  However, as your list builds, you maintain the potential to turn existing subscribers to paying students years down the road.  As you send them more great information, the better the chance they’ll eventually check out your studio.  Your email list also adds huge value to your yoga studio if you ever wish to sell.

If in two years you switch from your freebie email service to AWeber and you lose 3/4 of your list, you will lose out on a great deal of potential profits just to save $19 per month.

How do I know this?  Because recently I switched from MailChimp to AWeber and I lost most of a list I had built.  I learned the hard way and it cost me big time!

What if you don’t switch from MailChimp or some other free service?

Yeah, you could stay, but it’s not as good of a service.  Besides, MailChimp is only free up to 500 subscribers.  If you add 35 subscribers per day – you’ll be at 500 in about a year.  Then you either start paying for MailChimp or pay for a superior service such as AWeber.

What’s so great about AWeber?

• Easy to use;
• You can set up your blog posts to broadcast to your list;
• There are dozens of great looking forms to choose from that will look terrific in any website design;
• You can get pop-up forms for even greater subscription rates;
• There are fantastic analytics reporting all kinds of data about your subscribers (email open rates, delivery rates, etc.);
• You don’t need to know coding at all – just copy and paste a snippet of code and plug it wherever you want it in your website;
• The email delivery rates are second-to-none; and
• The customer and technical support is fantastic (phone and e-mail support is available).

So – don’t break the law and don’t build a list that you’ll eventually lose.  Most importantly, start building a list now.  If you add 500 subscribers per year (35 per week), in 4 years you’ll have a list of 2,000 subscribers.  If you ever roll out DVDs for sale, start selling other products, expand your studio, or start any other revenue generating service – you’ll have a massive customer base right out of the gates.

Perhaps you’re thinking “I’ve signed up for email lists and they annoy me constantly with lousy sales pitches every day”.  This is a very legitimate concern.  But how you treat your subscribers is up to you.  Treat them like gold – send them nothing but useful information and you’ll have grateful subscribers who trust you and who may one day become a customer of your yoga studio.

Internet Marketers aren’t the only businesspeople using subscriptions

Fortune 500 companies, law firms, consultants, medical treatment providers, banks – pretty much all types of businesses build subscriber lists because “the money is in the list”.  Start building your yoga business bigger and faster with a subscriber list today.  You won’t regret it.

Click Here to Visit the Official AWeber Website

Part II of How Much Money is Your Yoga Studio Leaving on the Table

* The numbers used in this post are for illustrative purposes only.  I intended to be conservative.  Numbers and results may vary.

Related posts:

1. How Much Money is Your Yoga Studio Leaving on the Table? (Part II)
2. The Ultimate Yoga Business Start Up Plan – Step-By-Step!
3. Find Out One Massive Mistake Many Yoga Websites Make

What is the microsite marketing campaign?

Pretty much every yoga studio has a website by now.  It may be a personal blog or a full-out business website (or a combination).  A microsite marketing campaign is simply more websites or blogs that link to your main yoga business website.  It is critical that each microsite you build be unique and focus on one or two services your yoga business offers.  Do NOT create a bunch of identical websites.  This is why I prefer making my microsites into a blog-style format with articles that focus on one very narrow area of my services.

Let me explain with an example.

You have your main website.  It sets out all your services, pricing, schedule, contact, and maybe some yoga articles.  Hopefully it’s well optimized for your geographic area.  Maybe it’s a site with 5 -10 pages; maybe you’ve written 200 articles.  Either way it’s your flagship website.  This is a good start.

When you implement the microsite yoga marketing campaign, you will identify specific types of yoga (or other services such as Pilates or personal training) you offer.  Then you build websites that focus on these specific areas.  For example, suppose you teach yin yoga, astanga yoga, yoga nidra, and Iyengar yoga.  You have 4 potential microsites.  BUT, in order to fully capitalize on the potential of these microsites, you must avoid making a huge mistake made by many yoga websites.  I tell you the huge mistake many yoga website make in a 2 page report you can get for free – just ask for it in the form to the right.

The benefits of using the microsite campaign for your yoga marketing include:

• You can avoid the huge mistake many websites make – and in fact take advantage of a huge opportunity you get when you build a website from scratch (request “Biggest Mistake” report to the right to learn more).
• You come across as an expert in the type of yoga each microsite is about.
• You can take up more search engine listing spots which gives you a competitive advantage.
• You can link to your main website (don’t link from your main website to your microsites).
• You can capture more keywords – both yoga styles and geographic names (i.e. your city and surrounding towns).
• Huge local online exposure.  Just think when prospective yoga students keep running across your specialized websites.  You’ll appear as the studio to check out.

Dos and Don’ts with yoga marketing microsite campaings

• Do link from your microsites to your main yoga website.
• Do set out all your yoga styles in your main site.  Your main site explains all that you do.  Your microsites then specialize.  However, ENSURE all content in your microsites is unique.
• Don’t copy content from site to site.  This is why I like creating blogs for my microsites (rather than another business-style static website).  If you have the same contact page and other basic pages in multiple sites – you’ll look like you have a bunch of identical sites.  Blogs on the other hand appear unique; all the content is easily unique.
• Don’t link from your main yoga website to your microsite.

Something to consider

If you offer services other than yoga – perhaps Pilates, massage, and/or personal training – you might consider keeping those services out of your main yoga website.  This is something you may want to test.  Obviously if you have one website, you need to include all your services.  However, if you’re going to start creating microsites, consider setting up separate websites just for personal training, Pilates, massage etc.  The reason I suggest this approach is people looking for yoga don’t really want to see you do it all.  They want someone focused on yoga.  Same with personal training, etc.  When you offer everything, you come across as really offering nothing.  Again, you’ll have to test this concept.  In my business I keep all unrelated services separate because I like coming across as an expert in each area.

How much is this microsite yoga marketing campaign going to cost?

That depends.  If you hire someone, then maybe you can negotiate favorable pricing for the bulk order.  However, I strongly recommend you learn how to build your own websites in WordPress – especially if you do the “blog style” format and get your own hosting for your sites.  Buy a great WordPress theme and then get a hosting account.  Your sole cost if you do it yourself: $70 up front and then $7 per month for as many websites as you can build (plus the cost to register a domain name).

Here’s the deal.  If you dedicate 1 week to this project, you could easily have 4 new microsites up and running.  If you hire someone, you’ll spend almost that much time meeting with them, emailing back and forth, approving designs, etc. and then waiting months for one, maybe two finished sites.  Once you know how to build your own sites, you’ll never have to wait for or spend money on new sites again.  If you roll out new services or start selling products – you’ll be in full control of your Internet yoga marketing campaign – you’ll be able to add revenue generating campaigns to your yoga business model in hours – not weeks or months.

The Internet is called the Web for a reason – it’s a web of pages and portals.  Microsites let you build your own web on the Web.

Related posts:

1. How Much Money is Your Yoga Studio Leaving on the Table? (Part II)
2. Yoga Marketing 101: Capture Tons of Local Traffic to Your Yoga Site
3. Go Viral: Leverage Your Yoga Marketing with Partnership Marketing

Introducing Facebook Ads for your yoga marketing.  Facebook Ads are growing in popularity for businesses because of the low cost in extremely targeted exposure.  If you use Facebook, you know that you (and millions of other users) voluntarily provide Facebook all kinds of personal information – location, gender, interests, education, etc.  Obviously this information is part of the user-experience in Facebook, but it’s also used for Facebook advertising.  Advertisers can then choose with a fair amount of precision, who views their ads.

How do Facebook Ads work?

Facebook ads are the ads (usually with a photo) on the right side of a page.  When someone clicks into the ad, the advertiser pays for that click.  What’s terrific for advertisers is your ads only appear on the Facebook pages of your targeted people.

What about the no-cost element?

There’s two ways you can use Facebook ads – to encourage clicks OR for branding.  I encourage both approaches, but if you wish to keep your costs down, you can use Facebook ads for branding your yoga business.  Note, however, that over time, ads that don’t receive clicks get less prominent placement.  That said, until that occurs, you enjoy widespread branding of your yoga business for very little or no cost.  I learned how to execute both of these strategies with Facebook Ad Power (you don’t need this course to do Facebook ads well, but I found the course saved me a great deal of time in creating effective Facebook ads).

Proceed with caution

Facebook Restrictions

Facebook’s success is based on its Facebook community and user experience.  Facebook wants to ensure it does not annoy its community with inappropriate advertising.  This means Facebook has some stringent restrictions and guidelines for the ad content (including photographs used).  If you violate these restrictions and guidelines too many times, your ad account may be in jeopardy.  This is why it is imperative you do your yoga marketing with Facebook ads by the book.

That said, you can be creative with your photographs and the amount of content you can place in your ads is great.  You can actually place a decent amount of copywriting in the ad to brand and entice your targeted audience.

Conversion is critical

In order for your efforts and investment to pay off, it’s critical you write compelling copy and choose great images for your ads.  It’s amazing what great copy and a well-selected photograph can do for conversion rates and branding.

Doing Facebook Ads the Right Way for Yoga Marketing

I’m not an avid Facebook user, and frankly, I ignored Facebook Ads until recently.  I was introduced to Facebook Ads through Facebook Ad Power, which sold me on the fact that when done well, Facebook Ads can generate both traffic and branding.  I knew zip about properly creating Facebook ads, so I bought the Facebook Ad Power program to get a crash course in Facebook advertising.  I found it very helpful.  Ryan Deiss did a lot of testing with Facebook ads to see what worked and what didn’t work.  He also learned ad accounts can be cancelled.

Regardless whether you check out the Facebook Ad Power course, at the very least go to Facebook and toy around with advertising.  Again, you can control the cost, and the best part is – you can target people who do yoga in your area.

A final note on Facebook users – as I said, I’m not a big Facebook user – but I know many people are.  I also know that people access their Facebook pages often more than one time each day, and stay there for minutes or hours at a time.  When your ad is displayed on that page – just think of that long-term exposure.

Click Here to Visit the Official Facebook Ad Power Website

Related posts:

1. Putting Your Internet Yoga Marketing Campaign All Together
2. Yoga Marketing 101: Capture Tons of Local Traffic to Your Yoga Site
3. The Ultimate Yoga Business Start Up Plan – Step-By-Step!

Hi there,

This is my review of my favorite website design tool (used to build this site and many other great sites I publish).  What I’ll be reviewing is a complete Website design service that will let you build almost any type of website or blog within a day without knowing any special computer coding.

Note that this is an in-depth review, if you’re looking for the StudioPress Genesis Theme website, click here.

Why am I writing a review of the Genesis StudioPress Premium WordPress Themes?

I focus on Internet marketing for yoga studios.  The foundation of any Online yoga marketing campaign is your yoga website and blog(s).  When you can quickly and cheaply build your own websites and blogs, then you can seriously take your yoga marketing to the next level.  The best business decision I ever made was learning how to build my own websites and do my own SEO.  The Genesis Theme by StudioPress uses WordPress, which is one of the most popular website/blogging platforms available (and WordPress is free).

Even if you have a yoga website already, you may still be very interested in the Genesis StudioPress theme because I strongly advocate setting up more than just one website (I tell you all about that yoga marketing concept in my post titled “Yoga Marketing 101…”

Time to dive into the features, benefits, and my dislikes about the Genesis theme by StudioPress.

The Genesis Theme Framework is definitely the route you want to go with StudioPress.  Once you buy the Genesis theme, you can switch the style and design of your sites very easily simply by installing any theme you wish.

Genesis Theme Features for Yoga Marketing:

• Stylish out-of-the-box: In my view, the most stylish themes ready-to-go out-of-the box.
• Unlimited Design Options: First of all, you can customize the look and feel of your theme as much as you wish.  You can change your theme with one click in your WordPress dashboard.  If you want to totally customize your site from scratch, you can get the StudioPress Designer theme (it uses the Genesis Framework) and just by clicking radio buttons completely customize your site from scratch.
• Built-In Search Engine Optimization: This is one of my favorite aspects of the Genesis theme framework.  You have complete control of your on-site SEO for optimal search engine rankings.
• Business Website Designs: Many themes specifically designed to be a business website (perfect for a yoga business website).
• Multiple Package Options: When you buy the full-access package, you get all themes available now and created in the future (StudioPress is cranking out many themes these days).  If you wish to buy only one theme, you can do that as well.  If you upgrade in the future, you only pay the difference.  It’s a win/win.
• Website subscriber feature: Genesis comes with a built-in e-mail subscription feature for your readers.
• Decent forum support: I will say that since there are thousands of StudioPress customers, it is a dynamic forum.
• Page / Post Layouts: You have 6 layout options for your pages and posts.  A layout is how your columns are configured.  For example, a 3 column site layout may be sidebar/content/sidebar OR content/sidebar/sidebar.  This site is a 2 column layout being content/sidebar.
• Navigation options are many: You can create horizontal menu bars, vertical menus, and custom menus for your website navigation.  The sky is the limit.
• Widget-ready.
• Commenting is ready to go.
• Many tutorials for setting up and customizing your theme.
• Theme showcase for inspiration and ideas.
• Pricing: Great pricing options.  Get the Genesis Framework for $59.95; each additional theme is only $24.95.  If you want access to all the themes now and the future, it only costs $249.50 (I have the full access package).  If you start with a single theme purchase, you can upgrade anytime.

Click Here to Visit the Official StudioPress Website

Benefits of Using StudioPress for Yoga Marketing:

• Save Money: You can learn to set up a Genesis theme in a day.  Once you know how to do this, you can build your own websites.  If you’ve ever paid a developer or designer, you know building your own sites will save you a great deal of money.
• Build an Unlimited Number of Websites and Blogs: The StudioPress license lets you use the theme on as many domains as you wish.  Why build only one website when you can build several sites and blogs so that you get a lot more traffic.  See my Yoga Marketing 101 post about why multiple sites is such a powerful yoga marketing technique.
• Save time: Once you know how to build a StudioPress theme website, you’ll be able to build a new site in hours.  Compare this with hiring a web developer who may take weeks or months to build you a site.
• Revising Your Website is a Snap: How many times have you wanted to change your site?  I bet often.  If you build your site with the Genesis Theme, you can change your site any time you like immediately.
• Unlimited Content: One terrific aspect of using WordPress is you can quickly and easily add content such as posts and pages to your website.

My Criticisms of the Genesis Theme by StudioPress

• Forum support issue: not enough customization advice – unfortunately StudioPress wants you to hire designers rather than the senior moderators giving you full customization help.  I’m not saying there isn’t good support on the forum, there is; however, sometimes more customization support would be great.
• StudioPress theme showcase is slightly misleading because the customization you see requires, in some cases, advanced WordPress, php, and CSS knowledge.  I think many beginners think they’ll be able to do that much customization out-of-the-box.

Genesis WordPress Theme Pricing

• Single Genesis theme:  $59.95.  Get the Genesis Theme and one child theme for $79.95 ($5.00 discount of the child theme regular price).
  
• Each additional child theme:  $24.95.
• All-theme package: $249.50 – full Pro Plus membership lets you use all of StudioPress’ themes,  past and future, including child themes.  This is, in my view, one of the best premium WordPress theme deals available.

Don’t worry if you want to upgrade from a single theme purchase to an all-theme access package; you won’t have to then pay the difference between your single theme purchase the and full Pro Plus membership.

Click Here to Visit the Official StudioPress Website

Forum Support:

• for the single theme purchase, lifetime access to that theme’s particular forum.
• for the all-theme package, lifetime access to all forums.

License Granted with a Genesis Purchase

GPL.  If you get a single theme license, you can use that theme on as many websites and/or blogs as you wish.  You can sell, lease, or give away those sites.  If you purchase an all-theme package, again, you can build, sell, lease, rent, and give away as many of the sites using StudioPress themes as you like.  This is an ideal website solution for optimal Online yoga marketing.

Click Here to Visit the Official StudioPress Website

Related posts:

1. Is Your Yoga Website Lousy? How to Build a Great Studio Website
2. Should a Yoga Studio have a Website and a Blog?
3. Review: Builder Theme by iThemes WordPress Theme Developer

I haven’t been writing much about yoga marketing on this site lately because I’ve been experimenting with a new online yoga marketing approach using micro-sites built specifically to capture precision-targeted traffic.  I’m still doing plenty of testing, but some preliminary indicators are telling me this new concept is incredible.

I’ll give you the link directly to the product:  click here – but keep reading, because you may be put off by the sales page.  I explain how you can actually use this system to get tons of traffic via online yoga marketing for almost no cost.  It’s something else.

I’ve built over 20 micro-precision-targeted websites within a couple months.  These sites take about 1 to 3 days to create and cost me nothing other than $7 per month for hosting (that’s hosting ALL my sites for $7/mo. – not $7 per site).  The more “Sniper Sites” I build, the faster I get at it.

If you’ve been reading this website, you know I believe there is huge opportunity for yoga teachers to build up clientele with online yoga marketing.  To date I’ve talked about building large, content-heavy sites that offer tons of great info.  I still say do that for your main yoga business website.  But, now it’s time you start capturing a LOT more traffic with micro-sites.  It’s time to get a lot more traffic and phone calls to your yoga studio!

There are 2 elements to successful micro-sites:

1. The site structure; and
2. Off-site traffic-building.

Now, I would love to be able to claim credit for coming up with this approach to building websites super fast for next to nothing in cost and getting awesome targeted traffic, but I learned it from George Brown’s Google Sniper product.  I’ve been crazily implementing his approach during the last couple of months; it’s simple, fast, cheap, and early results tell me extremely effective.

Now, before grabbing Google Sniper, you must know that its primary approach as indicated on the sales page appears to be for building affiliate marketing websites.  It doesn’t discuss building local business websites like sites for a yoga studio.  Do NOT be put off by the sales page.  It’s loud and talks about making tons of money etc.  Just scroll through the hype.  There’s a money back guarantee – so no risk to you.  It’s one of the best website building and traffic-getting guides I’ve ever seen.  I use the Sniper approach now almost exclusively on many sites.  If Mr. Brown can do as well as he can in the competitive affiliate marketing game, then just think how well these sites can work for yoga studios that only have local competition!  You could take up several spots on page one of Google in no time.

How will Google Sniper Micro-Sites Work for Yoga Marketing?

As I was going through the materials, I couldn’t help think how powerful Google Sniper could be for local, small business websites including yoga websites.  In fact, it could be just as effective, if not more so for yoga marketing.

The real advantage to yoga studio marketing and yoga teacher marketing is you have far less competition for your keywords than most affiliate marketers have.

Maybe I jumped ahead a bit.  What’s affiliate marketing?  It’s getting a sales commission for recommending products and services via a link on a website.  Actually, this article is an affiliate article – if you click any of the links to Google Sniper and buy, I may receive a sales commission.

Don’t let my getting paid deter you.  I bought Google Sniper and use it extensively for my own offline business.  It’s effective and I know it could build your Internet exposure fast!

What You’ll Learn From Google Sniper

Most yoga studios hire web developers for their main site.  That’s fine.  I did too for my first business website.  But, now I build my own sites – Sniper Sites that is. Why pay a web developer hundreds or thousands of dollars on more sites when I can build them in a day for no cost?

If you’ve never built a website, George Brown will step you through how to build a site in no time.  He doesn’t miss a step.  It’s super easy and costs you nothing.  Trust me, learning how to build your own sites will be one of the best business decisions you ever make.

The most valuable aspect of the Google Sniper website-building course (if you will) is you’ll learn how small sites, that take very little time, can get on page 1 of Google for your keyword(s).  That’s the key.  You’ll learn how to:

• choose keywords that can dominate Google rankings;
• choose the best domain name (this is absolutely critical.  This alone is worth the price of Google Sniper);
• build your site from scratch at very, very little cost;
• properly structure your site for optimal search engine optimization and so you don’t have to write tons and tons of content to maintain solid Google rankings.  This saves you time to teach yoga and build more sites.
• quickly get your site indexed;
• do off-site to get even better Google rankings; and
• write effective sales copy (see below about one of my complaints about Google Sniper in the sales-copy area).

Complaints About Google Sniper for Yoga Marketing

1. First of all, as I said above, it won’t discuss building websites for small businesses specifically.  But, if you go through the materials and understand the concept (George Brown is a very good teacher – don’t let his young age fool you), you’ll easily adapt Google Sniper for your yoga marketing needs.
2. Second, I think Google Sniper is a great product, but I don’t engage in the “fake persona” approach to marketing.  Yes, I’m sure it’s lucrative, but it doesn’t sit well with me.  Just pay no mind to some of the sales-techniques.  Stay focused on how to build websites fast and cheap that gets you the exact traffic you want – i.e. local prospective yoga students.
3. Third, there will be parts of this product that won’t apply to you as a yoga studio owner or yoga teacher.  Don’t worry about that.  The parts that do – the important parts for building effective websites quickly and cheaply that get traffic will be absolutely invaluable to you and your yoga business.

I can’t tell you much more than this because Google Sniper is under copyright.  Like I said, I bought and use it on many sites now – for my offline business and my online businesses.  It is, in my view, an incredible opportunity for any yoga studio or yoga teacher to capture very targeted website traffic fast so that you get more yoga students.

Click Here to Visit the Official Google Sniper Website

If you get Google Sniper and have questions how to apply it to your yoga marketing, just contact me.  I’ve been thinking about it plenty and have some great ideas.  I’ve actually been doing it for local traffic and it’s incredible.  I had three local small business sites hit page one of Google within 3 weeks of publishing them – and those sites only have 3 or 4 pages of content each.

I know I sound hyped about Google Sniper, but that’s because I am.  It’s brilliant in its simplicity and perfect for small businesses.  Just apply the concept and you can crank out dozens of super targeted yoga marketing websites in no time!

Okay, gotta go and build more Sniper sites.

Related posts:

1. Putting Your Internet Yoga Marketing Campaign All Together
2. Facebook Ads for Yoga Marketing – A Perfect Union
3. Go Viral: Leverage Your Yoga Marketing with Partnership Marketing

Preliminary Yoga Business Set Up

1. Write a yoga business plan.  It need not be elaborate.  You simply need to make a series of decisions so you know where you’re going.  If you’re applying for a business loan, you’ll need a well-prepared business plan.
2. Choose a name for your yoga business.
3. If you require a loan, get pre-qualified for a small business loan.
4. Inquire about yoga insurance.  Explain you’ll be incorporating (if that’s the case) when you speak to a yoga insurance broker.
5. Decide on your yoga business location.  If you’re leasing or buying space, you’ll need to design your studio.
6. Incorporate your business.  I suggest an online service such as MyCorporation or Incorporate for cost-savings and convenience.  If your chosen yoga business name is not available for incorporation, you’ll need to choose a different yoga business name.  Why incorporate?  Primarily for liability protection.  Yoga students can get hurt.  Protect yourself.  You aren’t being evasive; you’re being smart.  The action step below, buying yoga insurance, ensures your valued yoga students are protected.
7. Buy a yoga insurance policy.

Yoga Business Bricks and Mortar Set Up

1. Design your yoga business studio space.  Have fun.  Visit other yoga studios.  Talk to people and check out our Yoga Studio Design post.
2. Buy yoga gear at wholesale cost for your classes.
3. Start simple.  You may want an elaborate studio. Start simple and scale up.  Focus on your core offering which is teaching yoga.
4. Get a toll free phone service online (I use this service and they are fantastic).  There are very reasonable toll free number services available online.  You can hook these services up to you cell phone.  There’s no need for a costly landline telephone service.

Marketing Your Yoga Business on a Shoestring Budget

1. If you prepared a thorough business plan, then you’ll have a marketing plan. If you opted for no business plan, then sit down and put together a marketing plan.  START WITH SETTING A MARKETING BUDGET.
2. You have to market.  How you market is up to you.  The rest of this yoga business action plan will be devoted to marketing your yoga business inexpensively with a focus on the Internet.
3. Think Internet marketing for your yoga business!
4. Create a website.  If you already have a website, create more following the step-by-step process outlined here.  You can have multiple websites targeting different prospective yoga students.  I use many websites to precision-target my clientele.  You can create a great professional-looking website for under $100 up front and only $7 per month.  How?  WordPress blogging platform (free) and hosting with Bluehost (I use Bluehost for all my sites.  Their customer service is outstanding).
5. Get a premium WordPress theme for your yoga business.
6. Sign up for Bluehost hosting.  I use them for dozens of websites and they’re fantastic.  They offer 1 button WordPress website installation.
7. When you create your WordPress-based website, read SEOBook and SEOMoz about optimizing your website (aka on-site optimization or on-page optimization) for attracting local yoga students.
8. Write some well-written optimized content and optimize your site (read SEOBook – a very good online SEO resource).
9. Don’t like or have time to write website and blog content?  Hire Custom Content or Need an Article.com.  I use both services when I need quality written content.  Both services deliver quality content for very reasonable prices.  Note that Custom Content costs more and takes longer, but you will not be disappointed about the quality.  FYI: I write all the content for Yoga Baron.
10. Get your website in the top 10 in local Google Maps (now called Google Places) for your town.  How?  Read David Mihm’s outstanding article on local Google.  Local Google Maps will get you tons of business and it’s … Free!  You just need to know how to rank well.  David Mihm tells you all about it.
11. Advertise on Facebook.  Facebook is a massive goldmine of very targeted traffic.  You know all the profiles people fill out in detail?  Well, you can surgically target your prospective yoga students – by interest, location, education, employment, relationship status, and more.  However, Facebook is also very picky about the way you create your ads.  I use Facebook ads and they have driven some very targeted traffic to my sites.  I learned about creating and bidding with Facebook ads after going through the Facebook Ad Power program.  I found Facebook Ad Power very helpful – you can even learn how to use Facebook ads paying little or nothing, yet gain fantastic targeted exposure.
12. Register your yoga business with local online directories.  Use direcotry submission software.  I use Directorybot.
13. Submit your sites to RSS aggregators and direcoties with RSSbot (I use this product and am very happy with it.  Very easy to use).
14. You need to get your yoga business website on the first page of Google in order to attract yoga students.  You do it with great website content (articles and blog posts) and getting quality links to your website.
15. Read the seminal 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity for more linkbuilding ideas.  This article pretty much covers the entire link building concept – telling you what’s good and what’s bad.
16. Write comments on the yoga blogs of other local yoga teachers as well as yoga blogs in general.  Look for yoga blogs that have “do follow” links so when you place a link you get a link to your website.  You can determine if a website has “do follow” comment links by using the Firefox web browser and installing the NoDoFollow addon for Firefox (it’s free!).  Just be sure to write great comments and contribute to the dialogue.
17. Send out e-newsletters to your students about once a month.  Use Mailchimp as an email service.  It’s free up to 500 people on an email list.  Once you have 500 people, you can use Mailchimp’s premium service or try aWeber or iContact.  I use aWeber (started with MailChimp).

Don’t get discouraged.  A website takes 2 to 6 months to start doing well in Google.  Be patient and persistent.  Do this process over and over.  Build several sites, all with a different angle (don’t post the same content).  Continuously build links to all your sites.

Inexpensive Offline Marketing Ideas

1. Go old school with flyers pinned up on bulletin boards in public spaces.
2. Don’t waste your money on a Yellow Pages ad.  I have and it was a massive waste of money.
3. Send out letters to local spas, massage therapists, physiotherapy clinics, chiropractors, and family doctors introducing yourself and the type of yoga you’ll be teaching.  Don’t do a mass e-mail.  I’m always impressed when I get a nice snail mail letter of introduction from a service provider who is relevant to my line of work.  I keep those letters and often will contact them if I need those services.
4. Offer referral incentives to your existing yoga students.

Be creative, read marketing resources, like this website, offer great yoga classes, don’t quit, and you can have a thriving yoga business.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Ads for Yoga Marketing – A Perfect Union
2. Yoga Marketing 101: Capture Tons of Local Traffic to Your Yoga Site
3. Article Writing Tips for Yoga Teachers and Yoga Studios

Yoga studio design refers to your color scheme, décor, and furnishings. You can do this yourself or hire an interior designer. I’m not an interior designer, but I’ll make some basic recommendations.

The sky is the limit to creating a beautiful and functional yoga space.

However, one must is a hardwood or laminate (looks-like-wood), bamboo, or cork. Avoid linoleum, vinyl, marble, carpet, and concrete. Wood flooring is warm. If you want padding for your clients, offer bolsters, blankets, and foam blocks.

You have to consider the style of yoga you teach also. If you teach kids, make it kid friendly. If you teach Iyengar and will us the wall, keep pictures off the walls.

Other basic considerations (not an exhaustive set of décor considerations by any stretch of the imagination):

Yoga Studio Lighting

• Natural light is good for yoga studio design. However, if you’re on a ground floor you may have students who wish not to be seen from outside. Also, if you need the walls for postures, you don’t want lots of windows.
• No fluorescent lights.
• Ambient lighting is best.
• Candles: only if supervised closely. I would opt for lights that look like candles if you wanted the candle ambiance.  Why? Fire hazard.

Yoga Studio Mirrors

In my humble view, mirrors are more a distraction than a benefit.  That said, mirrors allow yoga students to observe their form and technique.  It’s a judgment call.  I prefer no mirrors and instead prefer the yoga teacher to observe and correct technique.  Also, it’s handy having wall space available for inversions and support; mirrors take away wall space.

Yoga Flooring

• Hardwood is optimal in yoga studio design. Other decent options: laminate (looks like wood, but doesn’t feel quite as nice), bamboo, or cork. Avoid concrete, vinyl, linoleum, marble, and especially carpet.  Why especially carpet?  Because it’s dirty, it smells, and is chemically laden.
• If you want to create a padded space, provide blankets, bolsters, and blocks.

Yoga Wall space

Generally, for optimal yoga studio design, it’s a good idea to keep your walls available for posture assistance – especially inversions. This means paint them or use wood, but don’t decorate them in a way that prevents posture assistance.

Yoga Equipment

I strongly urge you provide mats, and all the accessories for your classes.

Scent/Incense

Avoid strong incense. Also, request that people not wear perfumes/colognes because lots of people are sensitive to scent. That said, I suggest you create a consistent, pleasant, subtle smell to your yoga studio.  Subtle scent is good to cover up body odor.  It’s a delicate balance between just enough scent and not too much.

Yoga Studio Parking

Even if you’re in an urban setting, do your best to secure some parking for your students. If your building has pay parking, see if you can arrange that it’s free for your students if the ticket is validated in your studio.

That said, if much of your clientele are vigilant environmental advocates, maybe you’re better off not providing parking in a gesture to encourage public transit, cycling, and walking.

Noise

If you can, choose space that isn’t noisy from adjacent businesses (i.e. a factory).

Yoga Studio Cleanliness

• Keep your studio spotless. This means your mats, equipment, your floor (especially your floor), the bathrooms, and all place your clients will be.
• Clean your mats and the room for your students. This is a very nice client service. Don’t tell your students to spray down the mats (unless they bring their own mat).

There’s a lot more to studio décor and furnishing than this meager list. I’m not an expert. I hope my list gets you started thinking about the myriad of studio design options you should consider. Visit lots of yoga studios for ideas. Talk to other yoga studio owners for ideas. Explore, investigate, and inquire.
I’ll end with this: for every design feature you’re thinking about installing or implementing, ask whether it will hinder, enhance or have no effect on your students’ yoga asana/meditation practice?  Do what enhances delivery of your benefit to your yoga students.

Related posts:

1. Yoga Studio Amenities and Layout

That’s a huge number.  Given there are 276 towns/cities in the USA with more than 50,000 population, chances are many people where you teach yoga are looking to learn about yoga for back pain.

This tidbit of information presents to you, a yoga teacher, an incredible opportunity to turn your website into a cash machine – in two ways:

1. Advertise yoga classes for treating back pain on your website; and
2. Become an affiliate for a terrific holistic back pain treatment program.

I’ll go through both cash machine options in detail:

1.  Advertise yoga classes for treating back pain on your website

It’s not difficult to put together yoga routines designed to treat back pain.  Put a class together and then put a web page targeting “back pain treatment” in your town/city.  Other great search terms include “herniated disc”, “bulging disc”, and “neck pain”.  Be sure to include your town/city and “yoga” as part of your keyword.  You can rank very quickly for these terms in your geographic area.

2.  Become an affiliate for a terrific holistic back pain treatment program

What if you could receive $3.00 every time you showed a website visitor how to get a free 200 plus page book (print and digital) that explains how to treat back pain naturally?  That’s a serious win/win for you and your website visitor.  Again, all you need to do is set up a “yoga back pain treatment” web page(s) in your site and set out the free offer.  But, you must become an affiliate for the offer first (see below).

Every time a visitor requests the back pain book from your website, you get $3.00.  This is almost unheard of as an affiliate marketing offer – it’s a great opportunity.  Even better is once that person from your website orders the free book, any other purchases made in the future for back pain treatment from the Healthy Back Institute, you get a percentage of the sale – for your lifetime.

You might be thinking – are you actually asking me to be an affiliate marketer on my own site?

Yes, but look at it this way.  You’re actually showing people how they can get treatment information for free.  Affiliate marketing can be extremely rewarding because you’re simply making a referral to products and services you believe are quality and could help someone else – in this case a back pain sufferer.

See for yourself about this particular back pain cure book.  Grab your free back pain treatment book (called the 7 Day Back Pain Cure) – it’s a natural back pain treatment program.  Go through the book.  If you believe it’s a worthwhile product (remember it’s free), then become an affiliate of the Healthy Back Institute.

Click Here to Become an Affiliate of the Health Back Institute.

Many business websites embrace affiliate marketing as a way to generate additional revenue.  The KEY is you recommend products you genuinely believe are good for your website visitors.

No related posts.

Broadly speaking, there are 2 yoga class prices options:

• Per yoga class (low, average, and high)
• Creative pricing options and packages

Cost per yoga class:

Until you choose your yoga studio’s location and know your studio square footage and rent amount (or mortgage payment amount), you won’t be able to precisely determine your yoga class pricing model. However, the pricing model you may want may determine your studio space and customer service level.

That’s why your yoga prices are part of your USP. Generally, most yoga studios price their classes fairly similarly. There are some low-cost providers, but that’s the exception. Of course the low-cost model is easy to implement, but you have to make sure that you’ll generate enough revenue to survive or thrive.

Unless you’re in an upscale area or are the only yoga studio in town, you probably don’t want to price your classes too high. The typical range (and this depends on the city/town) is $9 to $23 per class. $16 to $23 per class is the price in more expensive rent areas in urban settings.

Yoga classes aren’t super price elastic. In other words, you won’t greatly influence demand with price. Of course if you price classes at $100 per class per person, you’ll probably have no students. Likewise, if you offer and advertise free classes, yoga students will pound down your door. If your yoga prices are within the $9 to $20 range, you probably won’t see too much difference in demand.

It’s important that you deliver what your students want; that is a superb yoga class experience. If you deliver this, you can charge more. If your classes are the same, your customer service is terrible, and you teach like you’re bored and a robot, you’ll see a drop off in the number of students.

Your yoga studio’s success depends on a lot more than just price, but if you implement creative pricing packages, you can create exciting options for your valued clients. Also, your pricing will change as time goes on. If your classes are always full, think carefully about increasing your price.  You don’t want to anger your students with too much and too frequent price changes.  When you increase your yoga class prices, explain it and give warning.

If your classes are empty, consider lowering your prices or run promotions. However, be cautious when lowering prices because it’s not easy to increase them again.  Well it’s easy, but your students may not appreciate it.

Consider target pricing your yoga classes.  Target pricing is pricing based on demand.  Classes that get fewer students may increase attendance with a lower price.

That all said about per yoga class pricing, I’m particularly keen about yoga pricking packages, which is the next section.

Creative yoga pricing options and yoga class packages

I suggest you offer a variety of  yoga pricing packages. Don’t just offer drop-in rates. Consider unlimited yoga packages, multiple class packages, batching packages, sharing packages, private packages, on-site packages, promotions, referral bonuses, first class/week free, holiday specials, and any other pricing plans you can think of. Also, ask your yoga students what type of pricing package they would like. It’s important you seek and receive client feedback.

Be sure to post your prices clearly in your studio and on your Web site. Create a menu. After each package, if it’s possible to calculate, give the per class cost. This is a great way to sell larger packages. As a business person, you must always strive to get a dollar today rather than tomorrow, because a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.

Related posts:

1. What Yoga Classes will your Yoga Studio Offer?
2. Creative Yoga Class Pricing Packages for Better Service
3. 7 Tips for Getting More Men to Your Yoga Classes