Many yoga teachers don’t have a background in marketing, and it’s not too hard to understand how that could happen. Yoga is all about holistic health, spirituality, calm, and purpose, and none of those things connect in a very clear way to business-minded marketing.

At the end of the day, however, marketing is as essential for yoga professionals as for the most hard-nosed businessman out there. Whether you use a service such as Shout Our Biz to enhance your social media engagement, or put posters and flyers up around town, you’ve simply got to get comfortable with the idea of putting yourself in front of your potential clients.

Not convinced? Well, then. Here are a few reasons why marketing matters, even for yoga instructors.

Every business markets, whether they want to or not

The first reason why you shouldn’t neglect marketing, is simply because every business in the world markets, whether they know it or not.

The only difference is that some businesses market effectively and reap the benefits, and others market poorly and don’t.

Often, “marketing” is seen as a dirty word, and summons up images of obnoxious door-to-door salesmen or the like. Forget about those negative stereotypes. At it’s core, marketing is the art of getting your customers to pay attention to your service.

And what’s a yoga instructor without anyone to instruct?

The world is more full of choice than ever, you need to stand out

Once upon a time, when transport and communications weren’t what they are today, and when the internet wasn’t yet on the scene, local businesses could often get by based on the fact that they were the only ones providing a particular service in a particular area.

Today, that’s much harder to pull off. With the internet connecting us all to a massive database of resources, and with cars, trains and buses allowing us to travel widely in search of the services that best suit us, competition is constant.

To be successful as a yoga instructor, or as anything else, you need to be able to convince people that it’s worth their time using the service you provide, and that you’ve got certain unique qualities that your competition doesn’t. In other words, you need to be good at marketing.

People don’t know you, it’s job to introduce yourself

Many of us have a natural assumption that as long as we act with integrity, and our best, everything else will come right and people will see from a mile off that we’re worth dealing with, and flock to us as a result.

Unfortunately, that’s not really how things work in reality.

Sure, having integrity is essential, and yes, people really can spot a shady person from a mile away, a lot of the time.

But none of that really matters until you’ve had the opportunity to make your introductions and get someone’s attention to begin with.

The way any professional gets the attention of the general public is via effective marketing. After that initial stage your charm, skill, and integrity can work their magic.

Featured Image by Pixabay