Mindful Marketing Day 4 – Affordable Advertising

Gone are the days where advertising needs to be expensive (hooray). There are endless ways in which we can promote our services or products. In today’s lesson I’d like to discuss some affordable ways to advertise to your target market and how to speak TO them rather than just feeding them information.

So where do we even begin? Firstly, I would decide how much funds and time you are willing (and able) to dedicate to advertising. This way you have a yard stick to measure how successful each advertising campaign is. It doesn’t matter if you have $10 or $1000, a couple of hours a week or all week, there are always ways in which you can effectively advertise.

What are you trying to advertise? Is it a special event, course, workshop, your studio/space or a type of class? You may want to have advertising material for your ongoing classes or studio and consider creating more advertising for special one off events.

By now you know your target market inside out and although you can’t predict exactly how they will respond, there will be ways (or combination of ways) to draw them in which are more effective than others. Here are some affordable advertising techniques and factors for you to consider:

1. If you’re bringing yoga into a new area, think about creating a sign up sheet in an area with high traffic such as a train station or a busy strip of shops so that people can provide you their contact details and preferred time they could attend a class. Free and will take you about 10 minutes!
2. Good old fashion word of mouth. I dare say that the majority of us yoga teachers LOVE what we do, so spread the word! Whether it be at your local coffee joint, out at dinner, your children’s school or at any other social event – you may be surprised at how receptive and interested in people are in yoga. And word spreads fast if you have something unique and valuable to offer.
3. Hold a complimentary class or event and let your local newspaper know around a week in advance. There’s nothing like free publicity whilst helping your community.
4. Are you a member of Yoga Australia or Yoga Alliance? If that’s a yes, then both organisations have a wide range of print and digital advertising options ranging from complimentary to paid. Contact them at Yoga Australia and Yoga Alliance
5. Make yourself some business cards and/or small flyers. You’ll never know who you will meet and when you will meet them. It’s best to be prepared and it shows some professionalism too! Some great affordable websites for printing include Vistaprint and Moo.
6. Go online and check out websites that offer free or paid listings of yoga classes, studios, events etc. Some good ones include Find Yoga and Yoga Journal. There are also
7. Gather followers and potential customers through Social Media and Email Direct Marketing (EDM). Tomorrow, during Day 5 of Mindful Marketing, we’ll delve deeper into all things digital marketing.
8. Use language that suits your target market but also shows off your personality. Just like in your yoga teachings – speak from the heart. Say what is authentic to you and speak to your target market. Keep your language concise and try not to feed the reader too much information, just the necessities.
9. Research or keep and eye out for any obvious trends that your target market may be interested in. Whether it be Pokemon Go or following the hottest new restaurants, this information will provide you insight on where to advertise and what channels could be most effective.

And don’t just stop at one of these techniques. Effective advertising involves a mixture of trial and error, tweaking your formula, adding, subtracting and sometimes transforming. Another bonus is that there are no right or wrong answers when in comes to advertising.

Before you determine your full advertising strategy, check out tomorrow’s lesson on digital marketing where we will be covering social media, email direct marketing, websites and more!

Mindful Marketing Day 4 Workbook