Today I want you to put yourself in your students’ shoes, or better their yoga pants, know their needs, their struggles, and their habits.
In an ideal world, we would like to attract every single student who steps on a yoga mat. However, the truth is that in order to create a business that creates a ripple effect and manages to market itself, you need to define who are you talking to—in your leaflets, your Facebook posts, your emails, whilst doing your weekly shopping.
Once you know who your “ideal student” is, you will be able to spot the problem that is keeping them awake at night, and find the triggers to effortlessly invite people to join you on the mat.
Who Is Your Ideal Student?
Focusing on what we call ‘target audience’ tends to scare many teachers because they feel they are ignoring a whole range of people who might attend their classes. Admittedly, this can be a painful and a difficult decision to make, but it is absolutely necessary to make your marketing work.
The good news is, you can create as many ideal students as you’d like, and you can apply them to specific workshops and offers you are planning on launching. If you have some students in mind that you know will benefit from your offering (perhaps you even designed it with them in mind!), don’t be afraid to talk to them about WHY they chose you, which problem they were trying to solve at the time, etc.
Be a detective, and an amazing listener. Funnily enough, the listening muscle is one we don’t strengthen enough.
Why Having An Ideal Student Helps You AND The Students
Having an ideal student in mind gets you really clear on who you’re meant to serve and improves our whole practice because you know exactly who you’re talking to.
You may be better able to guide students with specific needs and situations, so this serves your students better. And for you, it’s much easier to stand out in a crowded industry (there are thousands of teachers out there) because you have a unique audience ready to listen (curvy bodies, cyclists, hip-hop lovers, runners, you name it!).
Ultimately, when you teach people who are going to find peace and pleasure in your classes, it also serves you on a deeper level as it’s more fulfilling for you as well.
Do you like working with young bodies, curvy bodies, pregnant women or runners? Do you like teaching power yoga or a kundalini workshop? Once you know who you want to teach and what you want to teach them, everything gets easier — you don’t have 7 billion people to help all at the same time, your communication gets clearer, you can develop better classes, and the right students start naturally coming to you.
