Let’s face it. Social media advertising, like this Facebook disaster, can get very expensive and paying for search engine optimization(showing up #1 on google) and search engine marketing(using Google adwords to show up in Google searches) can really eat into your budget quite quickly. They’re sometimes considered necessary evils in the world of small business ownership, but there’s always that four-word-phrase that makes every small business owner smile (I’m smiling right now!)…..word-of-mouth marketing.

My friends, it doesn’t get better than word-of-mouth. Having your current members talking up your business with your friends is as valuable as having the #1 website on Google AND being the most shared article on Facebook. It doesn’t get much better. If you’re looking for more reading on how to get more word-of-mouth advertising, check out Contagious by Jonah Berger.

Give Out FREE Branded Clothing to Your Members

This might come as a shock, but giving our FREE clothes to your members is one of the best ways to get them talking about your business. Take a page out of the tech-startup playbook. Prior to starting FitnessTexter, I worked for a Denver company called PaySimple. They gave us as many t-shirts as we could handle. I think at my prime, I had at least 6 different PaySimple sweatshirts and hoodies. What happens when you give employees free clothes? They start wearing your logo outside of work. People start asking them about the company, and the employees start promoting your business, for no charge. You’ll have to make a small investment to get 50-100 shirted printed, but once you have them, they’ll pay dividends, I promise. You can spend $700 on Google AdWords and $700 on free apparel for your yoga studio members, and I can almost guarantee that you’ll see better results from the free apparel.

Hold Monthly Social Events to Create Member Friendships

Are your yoga students friends outside of class or just yoga class friends? Are they meeting up for Sunday brunch and talking about how great the Saturday night sculpt class was? There’s nothing wrong with having “in-class” friends, but that’s not going to help increase word-of-mouth marketing. It’s time you started building some friendships inside your business. You don’t need to get too fancy at first. Just have something like a Friday afternoon happy hour at your studio. Provide some beverages (be it booze, wine, or whatever) and encourage your current members to come (and maybe bring a friend). Your goal is to get your current members hanging out together outside of the yoga studio. Once they do, they’re bound to bring up your studio when they’re out with friends. Maybe they’ll even convince a mutual friend to come in for their first class.

Hand Out Multiple Bring-a-Friend Passes

First and foremost, I’m still laughing looking at the picture of those two deer. All the “refer-a-friend” pictures were boring stock images so I decided to get a little clever. I’m happy with the results!

Okay, back to business. Start giving out bring-a-friend passes to all your members. You can hand them out by the dozen since they’re not all going to get used at the same time. However, once your members have them in their wallets and purses, they’re going to start talking about your yoga studio a LOT more. It’s simple. If I have a bring-a-friend pass in my pocket, I’m going to try to find someone to come with me. That means I’m going to be chatting up my yoga studio quite a bit. Go on! Get out there and start generating more word-of-mouth advertising for your yoga studio.

Image Credits:
Greene County Photo
Bikram Yoga London
Pin Img
Creative Commons Attribution Go Main Stream