Effective Local Marketing Tactics for Yoga Studios to Boost Your Business

By Dennis Bluthardt, Namaste Studios®

Yoga studios are now everywhere, and this means it’s essential to differentiate yourself from the competition through local marketing. Know what the people in your city, town, or neighborhood like, how they talk, and the yoga they might follow; produce your online and in-person events to match them.

Local marketing can mean a lot:

• Instagram, as a version of the same, is scenic. If you’re looking to attract more members of a city’s existing scene, then your studio had better look like it belongs to the scene.
• Instagram is great for “come to our next workshop” CTA (call-to-action) marketing.
• Targeted ads with an integrated software solution are great demographic marketing tools because (look at the comments) studios are also selling clothes, and stylistic/aesthetic tribes run where fitness customers often gather.
• If there are a lot of businesses around your studio, make “noon during lunch hour” and “/ZogX/bodyX/startupX types come in after work” a regular “membership marketing drive” or a daily “class/cancellation/waitlisting time slot.”
• If you live out of the city, in a town with high school sports, make a class for “you/your parents,” as in not from your high school alma mater’s rival. All parents, especially parents preparing for college, are alike, you know, and disdain/love your alma mater for the same reasons. Do the work on the other bodies infringing on your space/territory, not on someone else you’re going to blame.
• Ugly kale needs to be shown for what it is (less than what it needs). Growing in dependability, Studios that do kale do well.
• Multi-class passes for friends to bring a friend is another dependable “/lead/conversion (to the fun)” tactic. Most of you reading this probably enjoyed reading number one on this list. Still, a series of shots showing a yoga studio, a Comix-run Carne, and beer injection shots for Bolognesi would not be a wrong-targeted marketing or gritty traffic ad idea for multi-class passes!

Understanding Local Marketing for Yoga Studios

Local marketing is essential for fitness centers for one key reason: it enables businesses to promote themselves to customers within their local area.

Unlike regular marketing, which employs a wide-ranging, catch-all approach, local marketing focuses on a specific community. This allows you to get extremely granular with the services and messaging you push, enabling you to tailor your offerings to the exact audience you want to reach. If you’re delivering in-person, on-site services (such as yoga or personal training), have an online presence, or ship to a limited number of specified locations, you may be eligible for this program. Your services will require customers to be in or near your local area.

Moreover, for a local marketing strategy to thrive, it is essential to invest in local SEO (search engine optimization). Sixty-four percent of people have used search engines in the past month to look for information in their area. Local SEO helps businesses promote their goods and services to customers at the exact time they’re looking for them online. That’s why it’s a good idea to get into the habit of using keywords optimized for local SEO, in addition to establishing a “Google My Business” listing and garnering online reviews.

Local fitness marketing also provides a fantastic opportunity to expand your network by hosting or attending local events or participating in gyms. These don’t even have to be related to your niche. Networking is all about creating lasting relationships and getting your business out there for your community to see so that they know you exist and respect you. Don’t be afraid to show your face and support local businesses, classes, or gyms; you might find your best advocate at the coffee shop down the street!

Essential Yoga Studio Marketing Strategies

Yoga studios can enhance their local SEO by strategically incorporating specific keywords relevant to the area. If people search for yoga in their neighborhood, they probably want to be able to walk or take a short car ride to their destination. This work of incorporating city names and location-specific details should be incorporated into the public-facing side (e.g., your website) of your yoga studio, as well as within some of your site’s metadata.

Additionally, you can create articles that attract potential yoga students by discussing local partnerships or community events. People care about their community, as is the nature of people who live in the area (at a fundamental level). This type of content often engages people more effectively, especially at the start of a studio opening, as individuals will be more likely to naturally seek community within a fitness class (or a developed aggregate space of thought leaders) in the PMA space.

Google My Business is another essential type of SEO. As with the rest of these suggestions within this article, you should choose phrases (for GMB) that are location-specific and most likely to allow area residents to locate your yoga studio. When they eventually search for you on Google, whether online or in person, they will likely find your Google My Business (GMB) account. This type of SEO also allows “shop-ical” people to see your studio’s listing in the search results (from Google Maps), which often includes a list of company bios, including one made for your studio. With GMB, you can update your hours (more on this later), get in touch, and view descriptive information, such as a list of classes. Note that if you are outside the building, you might still see information for the previous business tenant (because people can receive excellent reviews on GMB… Keep that in mind!).

Local SEO encompasses many types of listings. Some listings may incur a cost to be included (see below) and utilize data from the Moz SEO tool. Some examples of standard listings (for local SEO) include Google and online communities (Yelp [often has wrong numbers in MANY data lists], Facebook, and other local classified marketing/advertising listings). Most of this, however, is also available on websites that exist outside of Bing and Google (also accessible through Google and Bing). The point of this work is to develop an effective website. All you will have to do when you list your studio (everywhere) is to take people (from other directories) there, as well: Moz Local, citation lists, and/or location-based finders will all do this. You’re not convincing people on a random spam site, but where can you find your brand? Many search engines and local websites exist for people looking to discover places to shop.

Engaging with Your Community

For yoga studios, engagement with the local community is essential for two key reasons: to build a loyal student base and increase visibility. Host local events and workshops to attract individuals who may not have otherwise tried yoga. This ranges from free beginner’s 101 yoga (the best!) to a wellness workshop on yoga, meditation, and nutrition. This not only helps your studio but also opens your community as a place to learn and connect more with others on a social “hangout” level.

Team up with other related local businesses (via the form of cross-promotion) in the health field. Some examples of this include health food stores, local restaurants or cafe shops, and other wellness centers (such as gyms, massage spas, and aesthetician services) in your local area. 

Create a unique deal with these businesses that involves cross-promotion, such as offering a 10% discount on a yoga package for referrals. This will help the local community refine itself and give traffic to your business!

Go big by going home. Following the above tip, growing your network could also lead to even bigger opportunities, such as partnering with Whole Foods to organize a local “Cleanse Day” where everyone participates in yoga poses on the beach and enjoys brunch afterward. Who could turn down the chance to be part of something that brings the whole community together in an act of unity, which is so empowering and thoughtful?

Utilizing Social Media for Local Engagement

To effectively engage and connect with patients, the practice must be present on all major social media platforms. Instagram and TikTok, for example, might be perfect for Dr. Stan to reach a younger audience that may be interested in the practice.

Email platforms like Mailchimp allow email lists to be separated into audience categories. This will enable Dr. Stan to send different emails to different people. For example, lead emails could be sent weekly and contain a high volume of advertising-oriented content. Emails to patients contain more wellness information and fewer advertisements and could be sent out monthly. 

Some ideas for what the emails could include might be:

• Newsletter format
• Special offers/a plug to call and book for referrals
• Testimonials
• Blog posts
• An ad for a retail product
• Events at the office

Individuals on this list who have expressed interest in multiple lists in this area should be our primary campaign targets. Let’s grow this list in a speedy and laser-focused manner.

Building a Referral Program

Within the yoga community, earned media, through word-of-mouth referrals, is powerful. To harness this power, think about creating a well-structured and enticing referral program. Start by determining what motivates your customers, then build a library of easily shared assets and codes.

Next, make it easy for your members to refer you. Either provide them with a unique code to share online or with physical cards that they can give out. Both make referrals easy and simplify tracking new student referrals.

Finally, take the opportunity to offer classes and events that interested members can bring friends, family, and coworkers to. These are things that the studio (that’s you) can heavily socialize both physically and digitally.

They can be combined with unique offers and codes to attract new audiences, generate a significant amount of revenue for your studio, and establish you as a local yoga industry leader.

Now more than ever, studios, large and small, need to master local marketing to win the war for the yoga student’s share of the mind and wallet. Be prepared to take an integrated approach to your local marketing. This likely involves strategies in three main “buckets:”

Digital presence, Community outreach, Current student (i.e., “customer”) communications

What is your goal on social? Share fun stuff. New classes. A pose of the week. Teacher features. Client stories. Calming inspirations. Sales, promos, and challenges. Get your name out early and often, and you become the go-to when someone is ready for their first class.

Nothing beats face-to-face. Try teaching or setting up a free demo at a local health fair. Or a “free the first time” class at a church or school. Heck, open your back doorway to a park and host free introductory classes outside! Be creative and think target demo, and partner with like-minded businesses.

In terms of “current customers,” there is only one rule…whatever you do, and no matter what, always remember to use their name (hello, Norm from “Cheers”), wave (I see you!), and connect. Highlight them in your newsletters and on your website. People love to be part of a bigger story, and if they feel important and recognized, they’ll return time and time.

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