How to Run a Successful Yoga Studio

If you want to know how to run a successful yoga studio, you’re in luck! Our guide will tell you everything you need to know so that you can get the most out of your business and get as many class members and customers as possible!

Before we dive in, the most important thing you can do to grow your expertise and business is specialise in a particular style of yoga. You can do this with OriGym’s Level 4 yoga teacher training course!

You can also download our full course prospectus for free to find out more about all of our yoga instructor training courses.

#1 Realise Your Yoga Studio Vision

Realising your vision means paying a great deal of attention and detail to picture exactly what you want your yoga studio to look like. 

You should also know what you want to teach and what you want your brand to reflect, and make sure that you’re being unique and matching your studio’s aesthetic to your yoga studio mission statement.

This means paying attention to:

• Colour scheme
• Images on the walls
• The space itself and whether it’s light and airy or dark and cosy
• Whether you want plants in the studio
• Branding, especially logos and names on equipment or the walls
• The classes you’ll offer

You want your studio to reflect the style of teaching you do and your particular approach to teaching.

Having a clear vision for your studio will not only make your brand more professional but will also communicate your USP or niche to class members.

How you set up your studio will inform the teaching in your studio and hugely contribute to class numbers.

If people love your studio, they’ll want to be there more and find it an immersive and relaxing experience!

For example, if you’ve become a yin yoga teacher or will be teaching restorative yoga classes regularly, you want to create an environment that’s cosy to reflect this relaxed style.

You could do this with pictures or designs that feature yoga symbols and other things related to yoga’s philosophy, or include candles and dark colours to create an ambient, cosy mood!

Eleven:Eleven in Liverpool do this through the aesthetic and environment of their yoga studio. 

Their “about us” page on their website tells you about the vision of the studio and what they want to reflect:

The studio is multi-sensory, using a heated space as well as projections on the walls, music, and incense, to reflect this ‘power of stimulating our senses’.

Once you’ve established your style and vision for your studio, the rest of the steps in our guide will help make it a reality and help you build a studio that thrives!

#2 Maintain Your Studio’s Safety and Appearance

One of the most important parts of running a yoga studio is maintenance and fixing any damages straight away.

Not only will the studio look unappealing if it’s in any disarray, you will also potentially be putting your students at risk.

If you’re aware of potential risks when you’re starting your studio you can take preventative measures and precautions to ensure that your environment is as safe as possible.

Attention to these details will not only make your yogis feel safe but also contribute massively to the class experience.

If your studio is always safe and any damages fixed immediately, this will never be something that distracts your class members and stops them being fully immersed during practice!

There’s several ways you can do this to make sure you’re not putting your studio and your business at risk.

For example, when you’re setting up, pay attention to doing a full risk assessment and health and safety check. 

You should make sure to regularly check the safety of things like:

• Light fixtures
• The roof 
• The security of any mirrors or fixtures
• The electricity or connections used for any heaters if you’re having a hot yoga studio

Of course you won’t always be able to catch issues before they happen, you just need to make sure you fix everything immediately and it won’t have to affect your classes!

#3 Maintain Your Business Responsibilities

It may seem like the more boring side of running a business and a studio but maintaining your paperwork and other organisational tasks is super important.

Not letting things pile up will mean that you’ve got more time and energy to focus on developing your brand and finding creative and exciting ways to attract more customers.

If you’re efficient with the following, you’ll be on top of everything to maintain your business and get the most out of your studio:

• Managing your finances and any expenses of the studio
• Managing employee payroll
• Cleaning of the studio, changing rooms, and any showering facilities
• Paying bills such as electricity and internet on time
• Doing your tax return on time

Not only should you work hard to maintain the cleanliness and hygiene of your studio but you should never be complacent with your organisational duties.

For example, staying on top of your expenses and tax return will mean that at the end of the tax year you won’t have to be relatively absent from the studio because you have to do everything at once!

If you want to know how to run a successful yoga studio then even when you’re established and can afford to hire an accountant, keeping your finances and expenses in order will speed the process up for them too!

#4 Put More Time into Marketing Your Yoga Studio

Part of how to run a successful yoga studio is not only bringing any previous class members with you, but getting new ones too.

You will have built up a reputation and brought some of your loyal customer base to your new place, but now you’re running a yoga studio, you need to increase this and attract more people.

The best way to do this is by investing in different marketing strategies as well as making the most of platforms and tools such as:

• Doing email marketing with programmes like MailChimp and coming up with yoga newsletter ideas
• Using social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
• Use social media ads
• Use Google Ads

You can choose to run ads for as long as you like and set your own budget depending on how long you want the ad to run.

For a full step-by-step guide on this check out our article: How to Create Effective Fitness Facebook Ads.

Advertising yourself and marketing to new customers will allow you to keep growing as a brand and a business and become a well-known name in the industry!

When you’re starting out, you might just want to get your name out there and start building up your customer base.

This is what The Yoga Loft have done with their own ad below:

However, if you want to know how to run a more successful yoga studio, the more specific with your ads and posts you can be the better.

Offering deals and introductory offers will attract new customers and even persuade any previous ones to return to make the most of the deal.

This might include:

• A certain amount of classes in a month for an introductory price
• A discount on a bulk package
• Workshops or courses

This is what Norwich yoga central have done, focusing their ad on a beginner’s yoga workshop to attract new customers and start to build your reputation.

It will also help you to build brand loyalty. If you work hard to get new customers, they will promote your business and services too. 

This is another thing we’ll touch in our next section ‘Create a Community Around Your Studio’. 

You can find out more about marketing your yoga business by checking out our Ultimate Guide to Marketing a Yoga Business.

#5 Take Advantage of Social Media Platforms to Create a Yoga Community Online

One of the easiest ways to run a successful yoga studio is to make the most of social media platforms.

You can use Facebook especially to create an online space for your yoga studio community to interact with each other, share tips, and respond to your posts.

You should also include them in your posts and stories and follow them on other platforms like Instagram!

As well as including pictures of them during class, with their permission, you can share their posts and stories you’ve been tagged in to create buzz around your studio.

You can post a group photo, with anybody who wants to take part, if you’ve just had a particularly tough class.

Giveaways are a great way of motivating people to join your group or online community in order to make the most of benefits.

You can offer a free class or a free pass for a friend or family member if people are a member of the group and they like, share, and comment on the post!

This works for both Facebook and Instagram and can be used across the different platforms to encourage people to engage with the group.

This is why having a Facebook group is one of the best ways to incentivise students to become active participants in the community and engage with you and each other!

In our first section we touched on the importance of your vision and how the studio looks. This will also mean class members are far more likely to take pictures of the space and share them on Instagram.

People tagging you in their posts and stories is free marketing that you can share and use for your own purposes!

You will also reach their followers and increase your pool of potential followers and, therefore, customers this way.

When they post, you’re increasing the pool of people that your content reaches, which will drive traffic to your page.

This is what A Fine Balance Studio have done, gathering stories from class members into a highlight called ‘Reviews’:

This instantly gives a feeling of community and gathers together reviews and stories from existing customers to help persuade new ones to join!

Another thing to remember for how to run a successful yoga studio with a community is to base your own organic content around them too. 

This is content you generate for free using the platform such as stories and posts. Workshops and events are some of the best opportunities for this which we’ll touch on next. 

If you’re finding this a helpful read and want more tips, check out our other articles below:

• 25 Essential Yoga Teacher Resources
• 11 Effective Yoga Cues for Teachers
• 5 Yoga Sequence Builders (Plus Tips for Planning Classes)

#6 Build Rapport with Your Yoga Studio Members to Create a Physical Community

Another important thing for building a community around your studio is building rapport with your class members.

This means showing your customers that you take an interest in them as people, contributing to the positive environment of your studio. 

When you build rapport with your class members this will mean they keep coming to your studio as well as contributing to your reputation in some of the ways we’ve mentioned already.

Having good rapport with your students will mean:

• They’re more likely to mention you on social media and post about you 
• They’ll bring friends or family members with them to classes
• They’ll encourage others to come to workshops and retreats
• People who come to workshops, retreats, and courses will sign up for subscriptions and start coming to lessons

This is why if you want to know how to run a successful yoga studio you should make sure you work hard to build rapport with whoever visits the studio!

Some of the ways you can do this include:

• Learn class members’ names
• Take an interest in them as people, mentioning something you saw them do on social media or asking if they’re okay when they miss a class they regularly attend
• Be relatable and personalise your brand and content on social media so that people can put a face to the brand

#7 Expand the Services You Offer in Your Studio

If you want to know how to run a successful yoga studio you should always aim to scale your business up when you start to get more popular.

Once you’ve established your business, and fully formed your yoga studio business plan, you should be aware of ways you can expand to include other yoga styles or other services that complement your yoga classes!

You can work towards creating a holistic wellness environment. This will attract new clients as well as meaning you can create different yoga packages and payment plans.

For example, you could start to offer some of the following services if you’ve scaled your business:

• Aerial yoga
• Barre classes
• Pilates classes
• Meditation classes
• Sound baths

If you expand your studio to include complimentary services you’ll attract people who aren’t necessarily familiar with yoga.

You could then offer a range of packages to include all of your studio’s services or create monthly subscriptions for just yoga.

This way you’re still maintaining the focus of your studio but catering to a huge amount of people with diverse interests and needs.

For example, Eleven:Eleven, who we mentioned earlier, have done this with their own studio, expanding to include a wider variety of classes:

Their own extension includes barre and pilates classes as well as more yoga classes.

If you expand the space itself, increasing what’s on your class timetable, you’ll be able to fit more people in and run classes at the same time as each other.

However, obviously this isn’t always possible due to costs and space of the studio so you can still rejig your timetable to add variety without having to undertake an extension!

Once you’ve made these changes, you can repeat the tips above, making the most of marketing, the community you’ve fostered, and social media to promote your yoga studio and the changes you’ve made.

Expand Your Services by Running Yoga Workshops and Retreats 

If you want to know how to run a successful yoga studio, one of the best ways is to expand the services you offer beyond just additional types of classes- with some preparation, you could take your yoga studio to the next level by running advanced workshops and even retreats. 

How You Can Offer Yoga Workshops as an Additional Service 

Workshops are a great way to encourage people to bring their friends and family and increase your class numbers by offering them a taster of what your yoga studio has to offer, either for free or for a one-time payment.

You can structure workshops around particular styles of poses or particular goals. For example:

• Hip opening workshop
• Inversions
• Arm balances
• Beginners

Take a look at how Blooming Bamboo operate their workshops:

You can borrow from this model and then encourage people to sign up for regular classes or an extended course for beginners!

So, that’s why if you want to know how to run a successful yoga studio, one of the best ways is to run workshops like these!

How You Can Offer Yoga Retreats as an Additional Service

Another option is for you to run a yoga retreat. This will usually take place over a weekend and include several kinds of yoga and other related activities.

You can showcase the different range of classes you offer in your studio. The best yoga retreats will usually include different types of yoga for different times of day.

This is what Collective Vitality have done with their own retreat timetable:

As you can see there’s a few different kinds of yoga as well as some complementary services such as meditation and walking.

We have an entire guide on how you can set up and run your own successful yoga retreat if you'd like a full walkthrough!

#8 Keep an Eye on Rival Studios

Managing a yoga studio means staying in touch with what’s going on in the yoga world and that involves keeping an eye on your competitors!

You’ll be aware of the market competition when you’re getting started and developing your business plan and niche.

However, you’ll need to keep doing this so that your ideas stay fresh and your yoga studio isn’t left behind with any developing trends.

This could even just be starting to offer a style that a few other studios offer where you can see there’s a high demand for it.

For example, you might decide to become an Ashtanga yoga teacher and develop your training further.

You might want to consider some of the expansions we mentioned earlier if you want to accommodate plenty of different styles and complementary classes.

You should also consistently keep an eye on competitors pricing. You don’t want to undersell your services but you don’t want to be priced out either.

This is where some of the bulk packages or introductory offers come in that we touched on earlier.

For example, you might want to offer a standard price for an introductory month. This would usually include a certain amount of classes within that time frame, encouraging people to try different ones.

This will attract people to then sign up. If you match this offer to a slightly more expensive standard price, for the same package, people will sign up for this to keep doing the classes they enjoyed!

This is what Yogacita in Liverpool have done with their own prices, offering an introductory offer to sample different classes:

As you can see there’s a huge amount of different pricing options and this is something you should be aware of when deciding on your own pricing system.

You might want to introduce or change your offers based on the changing market.

How to run a successful yoga studio means maintaining your awareness and staying on top of all of these things, no matter how you want your business to grow.

You want to make sure that you’re always keeping your eyes open for opportunities to expand your business and develop to attract more customers and ultimately more money!

Before You Go!

That concludes our article on how to run a successful yoga studio. Hopefully we’ve covered each step you’ll need to take to be a big name in the yoga business and attract as many yogi students as possible!

Don’t forget that the best way to scale your business and offer a range of services is with high quality courses and qualifications!

Check out all of our yoga teacher training courses and personal training courses by downloading our free course prospectus here!