30: Yoga Marketing: The Old Way Vs. The New Way – How To Increase New Students And The Amount Of Introductory Offers You Sell

What Is This Episode About…

In this episode, John and Chris will talk about the difference between general marketing (the old way) versus direct response marketing (the new way). They will dive into the old forms of marketing they’ve done in the past and contrast them with the new forms of marketing that they do now while looking at it all through the first three core functions of a business, namely; lead generation, lead nurture, and lead conversion.

One core way of differentiating between general marketing and direct response marketing, is to look at how they are evaluated. General marketing is designed to increase awareness while direct response is evaluated on the basis of sales results. In reality, direct response focuses on a brand and the long term impact of the messaging being put out into the market. Unlike general marketing, it’s designed to produce a sale now rather than in some distant future.

General marketing on the other hand, is all about putting out ads, which are usually too costly for most mom and pop yoga studios to afford, and hoping that potential clients will see them and come in to purchase whatever you have to offer. Doesn’t sound so worth it, right?

Well, if you’re a yoga entrepreneur and you wanna learn more effective marketing techniques that will also save you thousands of dollars in wasted money, then stay tuned as John and Chris dish out more actionable advice on that. Enjoy!

Key Points Discussed:

• How John and Chris burned $3,500 on a newspaper post-it note that brought zero leads (00:52)
• General marketing versus direct response marketing (03:07)
• It’s all about putting the messages out there without any way of measuring the results (04:43)
• How direct response marketing fits into the yoga studio world (09:23)
• The area where yoga teachers can really thrive (12:07)
• Do direct response marketing instead of general marketing, and Facebook is where it’s at (15:58)

Learn More About The Content Discussed…

Join The Facebook Group –> http://bit.ly/yogaentrepreneur

When Was It Released…

This episode was released January 15, 2020

Episode Transcript…

Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

00:00          Alright. So today, we are super excited. We are going to talk about the difference between general marketing, or what we call the old way versus direct response marketing, which is the new way, and we’ll just break it all down and give you everything we know. This can save you thousands of dollars in wasted money.

00:21          What’s up everyone? You are listening to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets. I am Chris Yax, and I’m John Yax. We are part of a small group of yoga entrepreneurs who are committed to making a living, doing what we love, without feeling guilty about making money, or ashamed of being successful, because we know the real value of yoga and how the world needs it now more than ever. This podcast is here to teach the strategies and tactics so we can thrive financially as yoga entrepreneurs. We are the Yax brothers and welcome to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets.

00:52          Okay. So, here’s a great story. We… as it was 2000 and… January. January 1st, 2017. Just prior to that, John and I were preparing for this impending split of our business where the four partners were splitting up. We, our oldest brother lived up North in the capital of Virginia in Richmond, and there’s two studios there, and we’re all set. We had the contract signed, and he was taking control over those, and we were taking control over the two yoga studios, hot yoga studios in… one in Virginia Beach and one in Norfolk in what’s called Hampton Roads. And we were collectively all three of us buying out our fourth partner. Alright. All good. It was tough there towards the end, but we got to… finally got to agreement, we signed contracts and all of a sudden we’re like, “Man, January one. This is the go time for hot yoga. Like we are ready. We gotta be like, what are we going to do? Like what are we… how are we gonna market it? Let’s do something. Let’s go big though.”

01:49          And so, what do we do, John? We had a contract with a marketing company in the area, and we had to spend a little money, I think at that point with them. So we decided to put a post-it note on the front of the very first paper of the year. So, this is… this paper is the Virginian Pilot. It goes through all of the seven cities of Hampton Roads, and the post-it note is on top of it. We knew from their data, that this January 1st newspaper is the most read newspaper of the entire year, and so they’re like, “Listen, this post-it note on the front is going to cost you $3,500, but it’s going to be delivered to this number of thousand…” I don’t remember what it was. It was like 60… or 60,000 people. So 50, think about it, “50 or 60,000 people that live in this area of the seven cities where both your students are located, are going to see this post-it note, first thing on January one, the New Year’s resolution time. They’re going to be so excited.” And, so drum roll. Zero. Zero. We had no crickets… come in that we knew of, and this is one of the problems we’ll talk about, that we knew of that came in because that post-it note.

03:07          We basically took $3,500 and lit it on fire. Darn it. Darn it. Darn it. It was one of those, you never fail, you always learn in there, cause… because there’s always a result. Right? And so we… if… as long as we keep that mindset, we spent $3,500 for a good lesson, but this… what this story highlights is the difference between the old way of marketing, the new way of marketing. What we’re going to talk about is general marketing versus direct response marketing, and how this plays into the five core functions of business, which was what we talked about last time. We’re going to break that down a little bit. So, so general marketing is what we just described. Right? You throw an ad out there, and you put it either on like the radio, or in the newspaper, or TV spot. And, there is zero way of measuring it.

04:01          So we don’t know. Like we put this ad out and like we don’t know the response and what these media companies say is, Oh, we know that this number of people watch at this time or view at this time or they read the paper and so we can tell you that your ad will get eyeballs on it, but I don’t know what they do with it. I did know that post-it note, nobody did anything with it because we even had like, Hey, if you see this and you come in, mention it and we will

04:31          give you such and such discount. Yeah, bring it in and you get a discount. We even had a, we had the call to action call action, right-click on this link that was actually on there and you can get a discount. So we had ways of tracking it and we did not get it.

04:43          Anything from it and that’s the problem with general marketing is that you’re putting these messages out there without any way of measuring it. And those forms of media, they are expensive. I mean literally like this little post-it note going on, all those things. $3,500, right? We are fortunate, we’ve been in business for that long and we had the ability, the marketing budget to spend on it. But man, yoga studio, small mom and pop yoga studios don’t have that in their budget to gamble on general marketing in the hopes that someone will come in because of it.

05:12          And so what we’re really talking about is lead generation. Like this was the very first core function of a business lead generation. How do you get people, how do you get eyeballs on your ad? How do you get people in your studio? How do you get people moving in your direction? Right? How in the old way it was exactly what Chris said, it’s newspapers, rags. It’s a TV. If you can get a TV spot or it’s a radio spot and then you’re kind of praying, hoping that people see it and come in from it.

05:41          And so the lead happens when someone walks through your yoga studio doors, right? Then, Oh, there’s a lead. There’s someone who’s interested. And let me give you information or let me give you a tour. One of the problems is that like if you were to do general marketing, most of yoga, close their doors and lock them 30 minutes beforehand, that’s when they opened. And once she was behind the desk, a teacher who doesn’t know how to sell and doesn’t know all the ins and outs of actually what compels people to buy and what they’re looking for. And so or, or at worst they just said, yeah, come on in and give it, we’ll give it to you for free. Right? And it’s like, so it’s crazy how backward and archaic most yoga studios are operating. Now back to the direct response lead generation. So when we started learning this, like we were in earnest in 2015 right through 2016 we joined a mastermind group.

06:32          We started learning and it was really all like online marketing, direct response marketing and that’s what it’s called in the world is direct response marketing. What that means is you put an ad out [inaudible] someone like has an action to take and only one action to take. So some of you may be thinking, well I do. I put an ad out and then I give them a link to my website. No, that’s not it. Because there are so many things that can distract them on that website. There’s not one thing to do. There are a thousand things to do. Oh, your website has a testimonial page. It has about us. It has. Why the heat? It has, why yoga has the traditions of yoga. I mean, how many years contact us and here’s like how many schedules? And there are literally hundreds of tabs, hundreds of ways to get lost inside.

07:15          Think about every tab as a doorway that people can get distracted and eventually click off, right? So this is what happens with most of us is we put our ad out, we say go to our website and we hope that they get to our website and are interested enough in all of those things that they contact us, right? That is the recipe for them to get distracted and disappear and never contact you at all. Your website is just an online brochure. That’s it. So what we mean with direct response marketing and so when we joined these mastermind groups back in 2015 what they taught us was online marketing and we’re like, but we’re a yoga studio and we’re offline. But we understood enough that men, there may be a way to marry these two things together, a brick and mortar online yoga studio with an online understanding of how to get leads, how to get new people to the doors because they are the lifeblood of your business.

08:06          There was a, I think a 2016 study, but it was by I think yoga lions and they joined with I think yoga journal. Yeah. And they did this big meta-analysis and it said that 60 or 80% I can’t remember what was it, it was between 60 and 80% of the people that are with you now as new students will not be with you in a year. So between 60 and 80 I’m going to go check the numbers. I didn’t check it before this percent of the people that are with you now as new students are not going to be with you. They’re just going to fall off. They’re going to be out. And so what that means is we need a process by which we can keep new people coming in and general marketing doesn’t do it. It’s very expensive. You can’t measure it and you don’t know how good you’re doing. And then if you bring people into the studio, then do you have a process by which you talk to them and sell them in the studio to be able to buy the introductory package? Yeah, it’s 80%, Chris. It’s almost 90% yeah. Some studios that do a good

08:56          job with all of this, get that attrition rate down to closer to 60 bucks, 80% for on average for gyms and yoga studios. So let’s define lead generation a little bit more. Let’s go. Let’s clarify that. Cause we’ve been talking about new marketing versus old marketing, kind of what we did. So specifically if someone’s listening to this and they’re like, okay, what is lead generation exactly. Is it like if I just put an ad out and then get them to do an action? Like what defines lead-generation? Chris,

09:23          back in the day a lead was someone walked into your yoga studio. They are now a lead. Meaning they have walked in. There they are, you can shake their hand, you can get their name. Hopefully, you can get their registration form. So you have a number you can call them and follow up with them. That’s the nurture aspect of it. But let’s pivot now. So that’s old-style new style is you actually acquire an email from them. This is in the online world. Again, we’re going to bridge the gap because like some of you may be thinking, but I’m a yoga studio. How does online marketing, even like direct response marketing, how does it fit into my world? And we’ll tell you how it fits into your world right now. So Chris,

09:59          I can hear yoga studio owners saying like, well I do online, I do social, I post social almost every day

10:08          and they punch and they mistake this love in my heart and they mistake this for advertising.

10:15          Right? And this is not just obviously not in the yoga world but in brick and mortar studios everywhere. And what people think of as online marketing is, Oh, I’ll just do a social post

10:25          once a day

10:26          and get people to do stuff of my social posts. Like what are we talking about? Like online, the difference between like doing the social posts every day or once in a while and saying, okay, I did my, my free online marketing, uh, versus actual online direct response marketing lead generation.

10:43          Well the difference is when you’re online doing like the direct response marketing, you’re throwing an ad out and they have one action to take and you’re giving them value. Like you’re giving them information that they like really want and need in their lives because they find value in it because it’s going to help them solve a pain point that they have a problem that they have. And then but in exchange for that value, and you can do this in a number of different ways, but we’ll just say for like the concept itself, in exchange for that value, they give you their email address with which you can then follow up. So the lead has been generated when you now have a way of communicating with them. And so we’ve thought we were going to separate these in different podcasts, but it’s hard not to talk about all of them.

11:23          So we’re going to talk about lead generation, lead nurturing, lead conversion all in this one because once you’ve got their email address you can then follow up with them via email. Now if you’re on Facebook and they express interest in the post that has what, it could just be a video or it could be like, Hey, here’s a video and here’s a link and here’s the information that if you want you can have it. Just give me your email address and I’ll give it to you so that you can then follow up not just via email or, but you can also follow via Facebook and what that leads you into. Once you have a way of communicating with them, you can now nurture them. And all that means is continue to like talk to them about stuff they care about and provide value and help them like solve problems genuinely from the heart.

12:07          This is where I think studios and yoga teachers can really thrive is because like we have huge hearts and we want to help people. It’s like it’s pure that the intention of what we’re doing and what we’re offering [inaudible] like it’s pure and it’s good. And so when you can marry that, like that intent with the power of direct response marketing, you have something very, very powerful, very potent. So if I collect an email or collect emails and then I start to nurture meaning specifically meaning I consistently send them emails with some really great information and good value. At what point do I make an offer? At what point do I then jump to the next phase of lead conversion? Is it I send one email with something cool and then say, Hey, I got this great offer. So well the answer to the question is it varies.

12:55          There’s some statistics say that they need to see and hear from you at least seven times before they’re now ready to make a commitment and actually purchase your introductory package called touchpoints. But it really depends on like their level of awareness with their own pain. And there are other problems that they have and what they believe is the solution. So people that need more nurturing, they need more touchpoints, more contact from you are people who don’t have readily the pain apparent to them or they just don’t know that what you do as a solution for them. And so there’s the education process that happens. So anywhere between probably minimally seven points and all the way up to 16 it was one of the last things I heard. 16 touchpoints. So what this is what’s so interesting. He says then at some 0.1 of those emails says, Hey, if you’re interested in doing yoga with us, here is an offer and click on this link to go to not your website, not the website page that has one action and that is push this button to purchase this offer and fill on your credit card information and then you will get X offer and you’ll be able to come in for this duration of time to practice whatever the offer is, 30 days or two weeks or whatever it is.

14:14          But once they’ve done that, once they’ve made the purchase, you’ve converted them. So you’ve gone from lead generation to lead nurture, you’ve nurtured them, you’ve communicated, you’ve educated them, and then you’ve converted them. This is the thing, once they’ve converted, that’s when it actually starts because we have these like two tiers of leads. One you, they don’t know who you are and they give you information so that you can communicate with them and then now you’ve nurtured them enough and you’ve said, Hey, I can help you. And they say, okay, I’d love to be helped. And then they buy. Now it’s time to fulfill on what they’ve just bought because as a yoga studio owner, our lifeblood is memberships, memberships, getting people who are paying you every single month, recurring eat day or month in and month out so that we know we can look ahead and say, Oh, this is the guaranteed revenue that I have coming in next month, which allows us to take the news of that financial news of not knowing and like loosen it and be like, okay, I know this is going to come in next month. Now let me figure out how to get more people.

15:11          It gives you breathing room guys. And so if we can understand in our businesses how to get leads, right, how to bring people in into our orbit literally into our orbit, like whether it’s online, through email and or if it’s on Facebook and I’m just putting out great content and people are engaging with it and then I’m nurturing those people through direct email or with more online information, retargeting through Facebook, Facebook, this amazing stuff. As far as marketing goes and then I’m able to convert them into that initial intro package. Then the work begins. The next podcast we’re going to talk about delivery and we’ll talk about the resell upsell and retention of the last two parts of the five core functions of a business. But I hope this was helpful and you’ve got a bunch of golden nuggets out of it. So little recap.

15:58          Don’t do general marketing. Do direct response marketing. Yes, get and right now Facebook is where it’s at. Like you go in there and put some ads out, put some content in there and then have one call to action. Have them link them and don’t link them to your website. Link them to a page that has just the information that you talk to them about with one thing to do on that page. One thing to do, whether it gives your email or actually sign up for the intro package. And then what’s beautiful about Facebook too, that’s our main source of marketing right now is you can then nurture them. Even if you don’t give them email, someone can actually watch a video and you can take the people who have watched a certain percentage of that video and send them more information because if they watch more of the video, the likelihood that they’re interested and they have like are there higher prospect to actually come in and join your yoga studio? [inaudible] has increased and so you can retarget them. Now Facebook owns all of that information and so it’s powerful, but always know that getting their information, an email, a phone number or something is the high watermark and direct response marketing because then you can now reach out and follow up with them on your own without having to depend on Facebook’s algorithm.

17:03          Yeah, Chris, like a leprechaun. He just wants to throw more gold nuggets all over the place, so join us for the next episode because it’s going to be awesome. We’ll wrap this, the five core functions of a business and talking about delivery. Talk about retention and resell and upsell. Hope this helps and if you haven’t yet, please rate, review and subscribe to this podcast. It means the world to us right now. Just a passion project for us to take what we’ve learned and really just deliver it and hopefully you find value in it and helps you in your business, help you in your studio’s, helped you in your business and help you find some financial freedom. So remember, everybody, thanks for listening. Do the work. Honor the struggle. Make more of a better place.

17:45          Talk soon. Peace.

17:50          Yes, thanks so much for listening to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets. Do you have a question that you’d like us to answer raw and uncut on the podcast? If you want your questions answered, all you need to do is head over to Apple Podcasts, and do three simple things. One; rate and review telling us what you think of the podcast. Two; in that review, ask anything you want related to yoga, and three; if you want to shout out, leave your Instagram handle or name and that’s it. Then listen in to hear your question answered Live, raw and uncut. Join us next time on Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets Podcast. Thanks