A common question among yoga studio owners is how to create and maintain a loyal base of students who attend their classes regularly. From personal experience, you probably already know that plentiful yoga studio website views and followers on social media don’t necessarily translate into full classrooms. The key to solving this problem lies with engaging your clientele both in person and remotely. Here are four proven engagement strategies that will help convert new visitors into regular members of your yoga community.

Get to Know Your Yoga Studio’s Client Base

Engagement is a two-way street; if you want your clients to listen to you, you need to first speak their language. Successful yoga studio owners have a good understanding of their customers’ backgrounds and preferences, and use this information to inform their class offerings and marketing techniques.

So how can you get to know your yoga students better? There are many methods to choose from, from informal, in-person discussions with clients at the front desk (which you should be doing anyway!) to intake questionnaires for new students, to brief online surveys. Information you should gather includes demographics, motivations for attending classes, preferred communication methods, and feedback about how to improve your offerings.

Armed with this newfound understanding, you will be well prepared to engage clients in the future. For example:

• If many of your students are in college or stay-at-home-parents, you may want to schedule classes during the day. Conversely, if most of your clients work 9-to-5 jobs, you should stick with classes on nights and weekends.
• If many clients express an interest in losing weight or becoming more physically fit through yoga, you can share content on yoga’s health benefits through your website and market special workshops accordingly.

Use social media strategically

If you aren’t using social media already, you’re missing out on a valuable tool for reaching your local yoga community. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are free to join and are incredibly popular with people of all ages. Social media is also the preferred method of online engagement among millennials, who are guaranteed to make up a large portion of your client base.

But simply having social media accounts isn’t enough; you need to be strategic about how you employ them. Here are some good rules of thumb when engaging your clients with social media:

• Be mindful of how often you post; if people feel that you are spamming them, they will tune you out or unfollow you!
• In addition to news about your yoga studio and promotional offers, you should use your accounts to share interesting content that is relevant to your clients. Clients do not want to feel like they are just being marketed to!
• Explore ways to open a dialogue with your followers; for example, you can host a live chat, hold a contest, spotlight a student or staff member, or just ask your followers questions. This will also allow you to gain immediate and constructive feedback about your studio. Just make sure you are responding quickly, so people know their voices are being heard!
• Prominently display links to your social media hubs on your studio’s website, and vice versa.

Build a Yoga Studio Client Email List and Send Periodic Newsletters

You would be hard pressed to find a form of communication that is more ubiquitous, affordable, or easy to use than email. Because of this, it is a good idea to capture student email addresses and establish a regular e-blast or newsletter to keep your community engaged. What type of information is best conveyed through an email newsletter?

• Changes to your studio’s class schedule
• New workshop offerings or other special events
• Promotional offers and discounts
• Educational and entertaining content geared towards your client base

As with your social media posts, you should take care to create newsletters that people look forward to reading; they should be concise, memorable, and relevant. Send out your newsletters monthly; frequently enough to stay on your students’ radar, but not so often as to become annoying.

Don’t bury your Yoga Studio Website’s Calls to Action

This is a simple rule of thumb, but one that can have an immediate impact on your sales; don’t bury the “calls to action” on your website and social media pages! Place invitations to buy tickets, sign up for alerts, redeem promotional offers, and contact your studio up front so that they cannot be missed. Customers are looking for simplicity; if they have to hunt on your website to purchase a membership, they are much less likely to follow through!

Know When to Enlist Expert Engagement Help

If you are having difficulty attracting and keeping yoga students, don’t be afraid to ask for advice from a professional. A yoga digital marketing company like Downdog Creative can help you get to know your client base better and design a comprehensive marketing plan that focuses on long-term customer engagement.

Contact Downdog Creative today to find out how you can better engage your clientele and meet all your business goals.