Setting up your own business is always going to be a big deal. Even when it’s been your goal for a while, or you have business experience, setting up your own company is a huge step. For a lot of people, setting up a yoga business can seem simple. When you love yoga and you’ve spent a lot of time working on your business plan, getting the studio up and running can feel like a huge achievement. Even when you’ve got lots of members interested and attending classes, if you’re only ever focusing on the studio itself, then you’re missing a trick. Because in today’s digital world, everything is online. And even though you have an offline physical business, you still need to make sure that you’re creating an online presence for your company.

From raising awareness of your business to actually running it well, the digital world and technology are invaluable. So you need to work with it. And here’s what you need to be focusing on in the online world to make running your yoga studio that much more effective.

Creating A Website

So first of all, you’re going to want to build a business website. When you have a website set up, you will find that you can provide valuable information and gain more custom. Your business may be offline, but you need this platform to be able to access your audience. Not only will customers search for local studios online, but they may look to your website for information on classes or anything about the studio. So this should always be your starting point.

Setting Up Social Media

After your website, you then need social media. Don’t feel the pressure to be everywhere at once. Instead, pick one platform and go from there. Take Facebook first, set up a business page, and look to grow an audience and engage with them. Then, when you feel confident with this, think about moving over to Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, or any other platforms that you feel your audience will be using.

Marketing Online

While having a social media presence is technically marketing, you are going to want to make sure that you’re promoting your business online in a range of ways as American Express shows. From advertising on social media to getting some PR in place, you should find that when you start to market more online, you’ll get the custom for your studio that you want.

Creating A Blog

As a bit of an add-on to your website, you should think about starting a blog. Right now, you might be wondering why you need a blog. But this is something that’s going to benefit your online marketing abilities. Not only is this going to help with your SEO and ability to be found on Google, but it’s going to give you content that you can then promote on your social channels.

Advertising

We briefly mentioned advertising in the marketing online section, but you really do need to make sure that you are advertising online. Think about using Google Adwords and Facebook advertising to begin with. These are both options that allow you to target your audience to get a set result. A great idea for this would be to promote a class sign up offer, so that you can track how many people register and come to the studio.

Selling Online

Now, you may also want to think about selling online. You don’t just have to wait for customers to come from you. Take that advertising example. If you allow customers to pre-pay for their classes or buy packages online, then you have a direct way of tracking your activity and boosting your business.

Setting Up A Retail System

To help with that and to ensure that your studio runs efficiently, you will need a computerized retail system. When you’re using retail software, such as Pronto, you’ll be able to run your business in the most efficient way. You can make sales and track them, and ensure that you’re generally running the studio in the best way to become successful.

Running Online Classes

From here, you could then even look to run some classes online. Yes, you’re a yoga studio, but what if there are people out there that really want to do yoga, but they can’t get to your studio? Offering online classes or live streaming session is a great way to boost your business and provide more value to your business.

Creating Content

You’ll also want to start creating content. And this is different from your blog or your social content. While that still counts, you’ll want to go one step further. When you give away free content, you’re able to engage your audience more and strengthen your brand. So why not create an ebook or information that your audience may need in exchange for an email address? This is a great way to build up your email database as well as increase your reach.

Managing Your Business

But that’s not all. Because yes, the online world does make it easier for you to market your business, but it’s also great to help you run your business too. There are so many other pieces of software that you can be using. Alongside things like analytics and intelligence, you have productivity software, project management software, online bookkeeping, and even cloud services that can help you to stay efficient and organized. So as much as your business is in the offline world, it’s going to be able to flourish when you take it into the online world too.

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