Yoga Marketing
You have decided to live your dream and become a yoga teacher. To get a job in the field you need to start somewhere. As a yoga teacher you are the brand; your personality, your style and the way you teach is the reason people will come to your classes. So, what you really need to do is market yourself!
Where do you start? Everything is digital these days so an online presence is essential. You could start with writing a blog from when you did your teacher training. Hopefully you wrote a journal during that time period. Russle up all the yoga photos you have ever done and start an Instagram account if you don’t already have one. Most teachers often get a .com of their name and put HeatherAndersonYoga.com to get started.
So, thinking up a company name or using your name is a great start. If you have no photos to speak of it would be wise to grab a friend or an experienced photographer and get some professional photos done for your Instagram, Facebook and Website.
Recently I have been told to do more online presence as I need to become the face of my brand. I have zero interest in doing this I prefer to be behind the scenes but unfortunately you have to let those thoughts disappear as people are coming to your classes to see you. So, you have to start becoming confident in selling yourself. Now a days people seem to be more interested in videos then photos as we like to watch things in short clips of time as we are constantly multi-tasking so getting some cool videos will help you market your brand too. A lot of these things can be done cheaply but if you want them done correctly you might need to pay to get a good video made.
Generally, the first people that will come to your classes are friends and family so just figure out who has the biggest house and use someone’s living room to start classes. From there they can invite their friends and it will grow into perhaps you renting a space somewhere. Remember you normally start teaching beginners when you are a beginner yourself so target market people that are new to yoga. Perhaps creating an 8 week course for beginners could get you on the ladder to becoming a yoga teacher full time.
Maybe you would like to start teaching at your local yoga studio or gym. If they know you already and are a member it is an easy in for an interview. If not, ask them if you could teach a sample class just to see if maybe there could be substitution work later on. Things change quickly in studios one day they don’t need anyone and the next they are looking for 2 or 3 new teachers. If you do not know the studio try to take a class with the owner if you can figure out who that is. As a studio owner I receive tons of emails from yoga teachers looking for work. It is the ones that say they used to come to the studio or research about my business that I will usually email back. For some odd reason most emails do not come with a CV – send your CV with the email or try calling the studio for an interview. No one calls any more and I would be more likely to meet with someone if they called me. If the studio does not respond to your email just send it again. We are busy and sometimes read the email but do not respond. Also send another email 6mth from the date you originally sent it as was as things change.
Another good way to get into a studio is do a workshop. There is often free weekend space for courses and it could be a good way to get a foot in the door at the studio. Try a beginners course in Vinyasa or anything else that you feel you are an expert in. You normally get between 50% – 70% of the sales for a workshop so it could be a great way to make extra cash and market your brand!
If you have a corporate job try to ask the HR department if you could do a yoga class for the employees at lunch. You could post a little flyer at the coffee corner of your office and use word of mouth and get started! Even doing a 30min chair yoga class could be very benefical to employee work improvement so maybe you can even get the company to pay you for the classes. It doesn’t hurt to ask and using your contacts is the best way to get your first paid yoga class started.
Making up flyers is another cheap way to market yourself once you have a venue to teach in. Making a tear off flyer is great but make sure you check the rules of posting flyers in your city or town as you might get fined for putting them up. But you are normally allowed to leave them in cafes or organic stores and civic centres so just ask in your neighbourhood. In Toronto, Canada for example bus stops have corkboards where you can put flyers up for local events.
The most important thing is to start teaching so do whatever you can to get out there. Make an effort and you never know what will happen.