The Connected Yoga Teacher Podcast
097: Focusing In On Your Niche [Consultation Call] with Susan Hopkinson
Description:
Do you have trouble finding your niche and communicating your unique offering as a yoga teacher to your audience? The niche work that you do in your business is an ongoing process, and it can be difficult to clarify that in your messaging. On this consultation call, Shannon guides Susan Hopkinson through some of her struggles in this area.
Susan Hopkinson is a writer, mother, and yoga therapist. She started practicing yoga in 1985 and became a yoga teacher in 1998. As a yoga therapist who has studied with teachers from all over the world, including Europe, India and North America, Susan believes in teaching people, not poses. On top of writing and teaching yoga, she also offers retreats in both Europe and India.
With such a wide array of services, Susan grapples communicating her niche to her audience. After teaching group classes for over 20 years, she finds her calling in teaching more 1:1 yoga therapy, but isn’t sure of how to convey that to her students. Shannon helps Susan identify some key strategies that will help her focus more on her niche - from updating her website to content creation for her newsletter, to becoming more active on social media.
This episode is full of great tips on how to effectively market your niche to your audience, and to make sure that people know about your unique offering as a yoga teacher. Whether you’re looking for ideas on how best to clarify your message or strategies for sharing content on different channels, this episode is sure to give you some ideas.
Key Takeaways:
[4:40] Shannon introduces her guest for this episode - Susan Hopkinson.
[6:29] Who does Susan work with, and what kind of work does she do with them?
[8:51] How would Susan define the work that she does?
[11:14] Susan explains more about her move away from group yoga classes to more individualized attention to the student.
[12:26] How is Susan finding students to work within her niche?
[14:53] Susan struggles with the guilt of not teaching group classes anymore. Shannon and Susan walk through her difficulties overcoming that guilt, and how best to tackle that.
[19:34] Susan's website does not immediately showcase her key value proposition. Shannon has some ideas on how she can niche down.
[22:12] What questions was Susan being asked in relation to the 1:1 work she wants to offer? Shannon and Susan discuss how that could fuel the content she was creating in her newsletter.
[26:09] Susan shares how she is using her newsletter to drive traffic to her website through the content she creates.
[29:08] How is Susan sharing content on social media channels? Shannon gives Susan some "homework" to up her game on social media.
[34:53] Susan and Shannon work through her calendar to create a more cohesive calendar that makes sense to her work style, commitments, and financial needs.
[40:20] Susan and Shannon talk through Susan's clientele and brainstorm ideas on booking clients, and some mindset issues associated with that.
[45:30] Susan touches on her challenge with offering yoga therapy - that if you're doing your job, the client will not be coming back.
[50:24] You need to create original content for social media. Shannon shares some ideas for creating original content with Susan.
[53:44] Video gets higher engagement than anything. Susan and Shannon work through if this medium would be a good fit for her.
[55:30] Shannon has some advice for Susan on picking the right season for each of her offerings.
[59:29] Get in touch with Susan via her website to book a session.
[1:01:33] Shannon suggests some activities you can try if you're looking to niche down and clarify your offering.
Links:
Gratitude to our Sponsor Schedulicity
Quotes from this episode:
"90% of the time, I'm not working with postural yoga. I'm working with yoga around mindset, around focus, around working with mudra, working with mantra, working with all the different aspects of yoga that are a little bit more obscure nowadays." - Susan
"I get a lot of people coming that are the wrong people." - Susan
"We want to know immediately when we get to your homepage who you work for, and what you offer them." - Shannon
"Most of the time, it's that people have no idea what you do offer." - Shannon
"I try to keep my business in line with my yoga." - Susan
"The way I look at it is if you have repeat clients, it's because you're not doing your job. So it's kind of like you put yourself out of your own market." - Susan
"Video gets higher engagement than anything." - Shannon