3 data points that will help you grow your yoga business

“Growth is relative. More is relative. Knowing what your numbers are will help you make more money and grow your yoga business.” — Amanda McKinney

In last week’s episode (79) we talked with Ashley about how yoga philosophy can help you with marketing your yoga business. She talked about how she did the work and then looked back at the data to help her make marketing decisions. I knew I would get more questions about “what data” and “how can I use that information to make decisions” so I wanted to follow up that episode with this episode.

What are marketing analytics? Why are they important?

The concept of “analytics” and “data” can be overwhelming but it can be simple too. Analytics are simply data points for your business that then help you make informed decisions.

Just like we look back on past experiences in our life in order to make better decisions going forward, this is what data can help us do in our business too.

How to interpret analytics in your yoga business?

First, you have to know which pieces of data are important to you, not ALL the data points. Ideally, you’ll focus on just one or two data points per marketing channel so you don’t get too overwhelmed. For example:

• Ex: email — know your open rate, what this means and what your business baseline is
• Ex: social media — know your engagement and watch to see if this goes up or down
• Ex: website — know your page views per month and what pages are being looked at more often than others

Second, once you know the data points you’re focused on, you have to know where to find them.

Email Analytics — What they mean and how to let them help guide you

Where to find the data:
Your email service provider collects this data for you and it will be found in your “dashboard” for that service. Most likely as soon as you log into that service you will see these numbers.

What data point you care about:
Open Rate and Click Thru Rate

Open Rate — the percentage of people who are opening your emails
This tells you about your subject line. If it was good enough to get the open.

“What’s a good open rate?”
This is where you need to know your benchmark because good for you is different than good for Target. Different industries have different numbers. However, the average across ALL industries — 15% — 25%.

Click Thru Rate — the percentage of people who clicked a link inside your email
This tells you about your content. If it was good enough to get the click.

“What’s a good click thru rate?” — — you have to know your benchmark but in general. However, the average across ALL industries is 2.5%.

Once you start looking at these numbers you will be more informed about your email marketing and it will get better and better.

Goal idea — increase your open rate by 1% in the next month.
You guessed it — you have to send emails to make this happen!

Website Analytics — What they mean and how to let them help guide you

Where to find the data:
Google Analytics collects this data for you. I also highly recommend connecting Google Search Console as well.

• Meg Casebolt’s resource — connecting google analytics
• Meg Casebolt’s resource — connecting google search console

Or you can Google “how to connect google analytics to XXX website” and “how to connect google search console to XXX website”. Where the XXX’s are you would insert your website provider (ex: Wix, Squarespace, etc.)

If you’re just starting out, get this hooked up but don’t worry about it for a while. Just let it collect the data. If you’ve had it hooked up for a while, it’s time to look at numbers.

What data you care about:
Page Views overall and your Top Pages

Page Views — how many people are actually looking at your site and know what pages they are actually looking at.

Where to find your Page Views Data Point:
Google Analytics > Audience > Overview

You can change the date range but the default is the past 7 days. There’s a lot of other numbers and data points here, put your blinders on unless you really want to dig into this. It’s better to focus on one number at a time as you’re getting started

Top Pages — the pages that are bringing in more people to your site

Where to find your Top Pages Data Point:
Google Analytics > Behavior > Overview

From there you will see a list of pages and the ones at the top are the ones that are being seen the most. You can change the date range but the default is the past 7 days.

The idea is that the more people you can get to your website, the more likely it is to get a conversion — whether that’s an email sign up, a registration or booking, etc. Don’t get too caught up or overwhelmed in this area. It’s easy to do but remember to start with just one number and know your goal with it too.

Goal idea — increase your page views by 2% over the next month.
What will you need to do? Tell people about your website more!

Social Media — What they mean and how to let them help guide you

Where to find the data:
The specific platform tracks this for you and it’s called “insights” on both Instagram and Facebook. You only have this when you have a business account — make sure to have a business account.

What data you care about:
Engagement, Engagement, Engagement

Please don’t get caught up in the number of followers you have. It’s easy to focus on that but that is not the best metric to focus on. I would rather you have 100 engaged followers than 10,000 not-engaged followers.

Facebook
To find the “insights” section on Facebook follow this:
Facebook > Facebook Page > Insights (left side) > Post Engagement

From here you can see which of your posts are getting more engagement. This tells you what marketing message is working more effectively than others. Do more of that!!!

Goal idea — increase engagement by 1% next week.
How? Post more of what was the most engaged with post the previous week

Instagram
To find the “insights” section on Instagram follow this:
Instagram > Profile > Insights > Content You Shared

Click on posts and/or stories to see that specific type of content insights. You can change the date range at this point — the default is a year. You can also change the data point here too. The default is “reach” but I suggest looking at: Saves, Shares, Post Interactions, Button Taps. These are all “better” than “likes”. If someone saves a post for later, that’s powerful. If they share the post with someone else, that’s powerful. Much more powerful than hitting the like button.

With social media it’s really easy to get caught up in the vanity metrics — likes, comments, and followers. But the people who are making money by using social media aren’t looking at that. They are looking at the powerful stuff like saves and shares and allowing that to inform their future marketing.

How to let analytics help guide your yoga marketing?

Once you start looking at this information from these channels, it’s important to let this actually help you. You don’t want to simply look but not take action.

If you’re wondering what to say on a certain platform — email, social media, etc. — look at what worked the best and do more of that! It’s really that simple.

“To be clear what’s working “more” is relative.” — Amanda McKinney

Let me share what I mean by “more” being relative by sharing a story with you about how I learned this lesson from YouTube.

I posted weekly videos that didn’t get much traction at all and one week I shared a video that got 12 views in just a few days. In that season of my business that was HUGE growth! When you go from 1 or 2 views to 12 — that’s a big jump to notice!

You might be laughing at the fact that it was 12 but I took notice and talked more about that topic and things grew more. So don’t think you have to have 100’s of comments or shares or views of something for that to help inform you.

Growth is growth!

Look at percentages more than the amount of something and it will help. Then allow what’s performing better to help guide your marketing. Double down on what’s working and your marketing will continue to improve.

Your next step

Put it on your calendar to start looking at your data points every week. Just once a week look at everything for 10 minutes. I do this each friday and it takes 10–15 minutes for me to take quick inventory of my data. I don’t allow myself to look for too long or I’ll get analysis paralysis. Instead I take note of what’s working and do more of that the next week. That’s your new marketing plan my friend!

Until next time, give yourself permission to use the data to guide your marketing and grace along the way. I’ll talk to you soon!

For more stories like this, listen to the Marketing Yoga with Confidence Podcast.

About Amanda McKinney (Marketing Coach for Yoga Teachers)

Amanda McKinney is a Marketing Coach with a passion for helping yoga teachers find the tools and the confidence within themselves to build the yoga business of their dreams. She does this through her podcast: Marketing Yoga With Confidence and online offerings. All of which focuses on building confidence and community with an extra dose of encouragement every step of the way.