how to grow your yoga brand internationally with online courses

By: Tallat Mahmood
Edited date: November 6, 2022Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

use online courses to unlock the value in your teachings and expand your brand across borders

Nowadays many yoga teachers have followings of hundreds or thousands courtesy of social media that they otherwise wouldn’t have. However, the practice of yoga is such that it the past, it has typically been difficult to effectively teach students in a different location as you.

Things are now changing as some of the most established yoga teachers are offering online courses to their followers and I’ll explain below why you should do the same.

Why offer an online course.

An online yoga course allows you, the yoga teacher, to add value to students who may be on the other side of the world.

Not only does an online course make it easier for the student to learn from you at a time and place that is most convenient to them, but it also allows you to save time given you only need to create the course once, and can then sell it indefinitely.

In addition, selling an online course allows you to operate a truly scalable yoga business as it’s not unfeasible to sell courses upwards of $97.

What should your course cover?

The simple answer is to teach whatever you typically teach in your weekly classes. The mistake many people make is they think they need to be a worldwide expert in something before they teach it. This is plain wrong.

Many students prefer to learn from people who are just a few steps ahead of them, with someone who can still understand what it feels like for a beginner in the class.

How do you differentiate yourself?

There are thousands of yoga courses out there in the world now. How do you differentiate yourself? Niching down will differentiate you from those competitors. For example, if you are an offering a yoga course for people with injuries, rather than just for everyone, those with injuries will buy your course over everyone else. Doing this lets you connect deeper to a specific group and give them greater value rather than introduce yourself the same as every other course.

Niching down will differentiate you from those competitors. For example, if you are an offering a yoga course for people with injuries, rather than just for everyone, those with injuries will buy your course over everyone else. Doing this lets you connect deeper to a specific group and give them greater value rather than introduce yourself the same as every other course.

How to create your course.

Most yoga teachers go to unnecessarily struggle with how they go about creating their first course.

Relax – this is easier than you think.

With the advent of technology, there are sites such as Teachable that allow you to create your course in no time. They will take care of all the technical mumbo-jumbo such as making your course secure, taking payments, delivering the course and hosting etc. All you need to focus on is creating the content.

The one thing to bear in mind is that just as you would focus on the quality of your teaching in the classroom, so you need to do the same when it comes to developing an online course.

This means a focus on where you film your videos, the quality of your videos, and the quality of your sound.

You’ve created your course, now what?

Creating the course and hoping people will buy is not a strategy that is likely to work.

In the online world, it is imperative you generate an email list of prospects you will sell to. Having an email list is important because this is a list of people the relationships with who are owned by you, not Facebook. You can contact them directly with the offer for them to buy your course.

If you have an Instagram following, ask people to join your list. If you have a blog, ask people to subscribe to receive more up to date content. Sites such as MailChimp or ConvertKit are great at being able to capture emails and deliver communications.

Selling your course.

Price is a topic that many people struggle with whenever selling anything online. As a yoga teacher, you’ve committed a lot of time, money and effort to your knowledge and experience. You’ve went through a yoga teacher training program, you’ve been on he job learning, went to retreats and have done other learning’s that build up value you may not even be aware of.

The problem is that too many people under-price their offering not taking all of those things into consideration, which undermines what they are teaching. If you believe your course is worth $97 or $297, or more because of where that will get students who go through it then you should price the course at that level.

No matter what your price is, if the value is truly there, there are people who will buy.

And guess what? The students who do buy your course at the price you believe it to be worth will be the people who are willing to commit the time and effort to their practice and will be your best students.

Then, once you’ve sold your course, you need to divert your attention to looking after your new students who will be from all over the world. Serve them as you would your class students by answering any questions or queries they have. This will help you build relationships and allow you to help them further as they progress on their own yoga journey.

Conclusion.

Having an online course as a yoga teacher is an extremely powerful way to serve students from all over the world, and to introduce them to your teachings. This is made possible today by the advances in technology that make it possible for anyone to create a yoga course.

By doing so, not only can you save time and increase your earnings potential, but you expand your brand internationally and in the process spread a little bit of ‘your yoga’ all across the world.

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