That’s me with another Starbucks Coffee in Madrid last year
As I walk up the Northern Quarter on my way to a yoga studio, yet again I find myself with a cup of Starbucks soya cappuccino in my hand.
In reality I don’t always want to buy another Starbucks coffee, but by the time I reach Northern Quarter I have to pass at least 5 Starbucks shops, regardless of which route I take (there are at least 3 backstreet ways to get to my yoga class).
Is this a co-incidence, Starbucks management popping up shops every corner? or carefully planned brand strategies? and how can you use Starbucks brand ideas even with a tiny yoga budget?
Let’s think about it.
What is the point of opening one more Starbucks shop around the corner? Well, that’s where the brand awareness comes in. You see, when you see something once, in this case say Starbucks shop you tend to ignore, you see it the second, third, fourth time and you start to notice and by the time you see the same shop 10th time, even though you are mildly annoyed you give in and stop to shop.
And that is a valuable peace of information to have when you are planning your yoga brand advertising whether through offline, or online channels.
Here’s why…
How many times have you seen a yoga advertising on a FaceBook, and then you’ve Googled something and you saw the same advertising message you saw on FaceBook a day before, and then you visited some websites, and there again the same advertising message popped up, and then you checked your Gmail and you saw the same ad again on the right hand side… and so on and so forth until you finally gave in and clicked on the ad to see what it is all about?
Do you think that’s another co-incidence? or have you been a “victim” of another brand awareness campaign? Or are you thinking you need to pour a lot of money you don’t really have in studio advertising budget to achieve the same level of brand awareness online?
Or perhaps you are thinking raising brand awareness is not applicable for your small yoga business? or maybe you found one or two ways of bringing new clients in and settled for now?
Whilst it is advisable to keep using proven one or two marketing strategies that work for your yoga business, you can easily raise your brand awareness and reach wider audience using mixture of different marketing strategies, all of which designed to raise brand awareness and ultimately bring your customers to your studio, just like Starbucks does … luckily you don’t have to have a big budget, as long as you have a tiny budget and a big imagination you can achieve same if not bigger success than your “big” yoga competitors.
So, here’s what you have to consider for your yoga brand awareness…The principle of brand awareness and the very reason of investing time and money into it…
Raising brand awareness is more than selling more of your service. The whole point of the exercise is that next time your customer thinks of a yoga studio, they think of YOUR BRAND not your neighbors. So the goal is to play your message on your customers minds all the time, just like I think of Starbucks on my way to a yoga class. Why? because what happens if suddenly you drop your one way of marketing for whatever reason? Or perhaps your competitor comes along with bigger budget and swallows your advertising message? You want to raise enough brand awareness in your city or local community to maintain competitive edge over competitors. And don’t assume your competition will quit, or your customers will remain loyal forever. Yoga is a highly competitive, ever growing market…
No budget is a small budget, we deal with customer accounts that have 50 million in advertising budget and we deal customers who have only a thousand dollars to spend, and it makes no difference… Whatever your budget and aspirations are there is always a way to do more from everything you’ve got.
For more information and if you would like to use our marketing services and discuss some options for your yoga studio business get in touch, contact us today.
Happy Yoga Branding
Tamara Machavariani
Work With Yoga Business Academy
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