The Challenges of Marketing Unity Woods
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
Yoga is currently a $6 billion industry in the US. In the world of yoga marketing, a very different environment exists from the one that pertained when I first started teaching. Back then, there were no yoga centers in the Washington, DC area, and classes were held mostly in county run rec facilities plus the occasional dance studio or private home. I ran ads in local papers and posted flyers everywhere I could to let people know where I was teaching and to promote free classes, a marketing tool I used then and continue to use. In those days, I wasn’t computerized, and the internet didn’t exist! Now, there is a yoga center on every corner, and every gym and fitness center has yoga classes. Although the yoga pie is pretty big (one reason everybody wants a piece of it), everyone now has to scramble to get a share. That means that all of us centers and teachers are constantly flooding the area with ads and information to let people know where we are and what we do.
Yoga, by its very nature, is not competitive. The business of yoga is, however. You have to have students to survive, so one way or another, you’ve got to get the word out and the students in. I’m old-fashioned in that I don’t see other yoga centers/teachers as competitors. We’re all sharing what we’ve learned and trying to make the world a better place in the process. (Yeah, I know there are a few folks who are only in it for the money, but really, not many.) My feeling is that students will wind up where they’re supposed to be and that the best teachers/centers will ultimately rise to the top. I learned in the music business years ago, however, that some really fine players languished for want of exposure and some pretty schlocky folks somehow got recognition. So while I trust the universe, I see no reason not to do what I can to grab its attention and remind it that I’m here.
By now many of you must have noticed the new logo, the new look of the newsletter, and the new website. We changed the logo and the newsletter with the Spring 2011 edition. We launched the new website on May 4. These are some of things we’ve done to catch the eye of the universe—and prospective yoga students.
Over the 32 years of our existence, the newsletter has been a primary avenue for us to communicate with our students and the community at large. It has changed in several ways during that time: in layout, font, and content. We’ve instituted these changes to make the newsletter more pleasing to the eye, easier to read, and more informative. Now we also send out monthly e-bulletins and our new website has a blog.
The new logo is the second logo redesign in our history. The previous redesign, which occurred in conjunction with our thirtieth anniversary, was a minor color/shading change, leaving the basic design intact. As you can see, the new logo retains some of the former design, but is really quite different in a number of ways. The triangle and circle are still there, and, as always, yoga is at the center, but the points of the triangle now extend beyond the circle, and a three-petaled lotus-like shape replaces the inner circle. Gone are the words health, serenity, and awareness, which appeared at the points of the triangle. They still show up in various places in the newsletter and on the website, but they were too hard to read in small print ads and took away from the simplicity and boldness of the new logo design.
Unity Woods' original logo
I have to admit, non-attachment and all that notwithstanding, it was hard for me to change the logo. Not that long ago, in the four Summer 2008-Spring 2009 editions of the newsletter, I wrote about the original logo, its inception, and the concepts behind the design. In my mind, it represented the underlying experiences and ideas that spawned Unity Woods and formed an integral part of UWYC’s creation. To change the logo felt almost like a betrayal, as if I were abandoning the principles that lie at the heart of Unity Woods. That’s not true, of course; health, serenity, and awareness continue to be the intended fruits of our practice, and yoga still resides at the center of what we try to share with our students. Nevertheless, it felt to me as if, by taking those words off the logo and changing the original design, I were repudiating Unity Woods’ history in some fundamental way. So I resisted.
What finally persuaded me to make the change? Sue Lyn, our marketing guru, held up the old and new logo side by side about five feet in front of my face. I looked at them. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even see the old logo. The new design jumped off the page and so caught my eye that it was a no-brainer for me. Certainly a logo should accurately portray the essence of the entity it represents—and ours does. But even more, in this day of mega marketing of everything, a logo has to be noticeable: the more so, the better. And that is why, along with changing the logo, we have redesigned the website as well.
These days, if you don’t know anything about yoga and/or the local yoga scene, you’re going to either ask someone who does know something (and there are plenty of them) or go on line and see what’s there.
Our primary source of new students has been and continues to be word of mouth. Our students tell other people about the good experiences they have at Unity Woods: the excellent facilities, our topnotch teachers, the great classes and workshops, our caring professional staff. Our next most prolific source of new students is online. Used to be that print ads and yellow pages listings led students to our door. Not anymore. We still have a minimal listing in the yellow pages (DINOSAUR ALERT: I still use them myself!) and continue to run a few print ads to publicize our free classes between sessions. But next to word of mouth, the vast bulk of our new students come from online, specifically through our website.
Our old website, which served us well for many years, had become something of a dinosaur alert itself, not always easy to navigate or search for things. And in a time when tech stuff becomes obsolete in months, not years, our website was prehistoric. So we set out to make the new site attractive, more informative, easier to read and navigate. We searched other sites to see what features we liked and what designs caught our attention—and didn’t. We planned, outlined, designed, and redesigned for months. We tweaked and deleted and added and tweaked some more until we arrived at the website you can click on today. Of course, there is still more tweaking to do. That is a never-ending process in this arena, but we are very pleased with the results and hope that you are, too. Please feel free to let us know what you think. We want the site to work for you.
All of these changes—the logo, newsletter, and website—are part of a coordinated effort to create an immediately recognizable identity in the marketplace. We hope that the resulting visibility will let folks know that we’re here and is inviting enough that they’ll want to come check us out. But we know that no matter how effective and up-to-date a marketing program is, what’s being marketed has to be worth all the effort. And therein lies our strength. Earlier I mentioned our spacious facilities, superb teachers, excellent staff, wonderful classes and workshops, and the favorable word of mouth we get from the people who really know us: our students. Whatever happens as a result of our efforts to get the word out, the kind words and heartfelt recommendations that you share with others will always be the best marketing we could have. And for all the kind words and recommendations you have given us over the years, we are deeply grateful. Many thanks.
Tags: John Schumacher, John's Letters
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