I mentioned in a recent post that I’ve been doing some testing for offline businesses using what I call microsite marketing campaigns. All I have to say is that it works incredibly well. The best part is it’s cheap, very fast to set up, and will generate long-term revenues for your yoga business.
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:
- How Much Money is Your Yoga Studio Leaving on the Table? (Part II)
- Yoga Marketing 101: Capture Tons of Local Traffic to Your Yoga Site
- Go Viral: Leverage Your Yoga Marketing with Partnership Marketing
- Complete Yoga Studio Marketing System is Now Available
- Polish Your Online Image by Publishing Yoga Articles on the Internet