Discounts and sales can harm your studio
Discounts will harm your yoga studio. There, I said it.
Yoga studios tend to have pretty small profit margins as it is, especially in this post-COVID environment, and offering discounts or sales means that you are likely giving away any profits you may have had. And if you still haven't worked your way back to profitability yet post-COVID (are we post COVID?), you might actually harm your business growth moving forward if you offer a discount or sale.
The truth is that many studios don’t have their services profitably priced in the first place. Offering a discount on a membership that is already underpriced is like drilling holes in a boat that is already taking on water.
As a small business, discounts, sales and free classes come straight out the owner's pocket, and reduce profit. And if the business makes less in profit, then there is less for you, as the owner, to take home to your family, and less available to invest in new programming, new staff, and upgrades. This is why I am so committed to helping studio owners see the VALUE in what they offer their communities, and to price their services for profits. It is not greedy to run a profitable business. It is how you get to stay in business.
And yet somehow, ESPECIALLY in Yogaland, discounts and sales have become expected, leaving the owners either feeling guilty or pressured into making a deal with someone who claims they have a need. Yoga should be free, right? Um, no.
Or worse, we fall victim to the expectation that there has to be a summer sale or a Black Friday deal or whatever the occasion is, because the "market" tells us so. But a big box store selling a TV at a loss to get you in the store is very different that a yoga studio dropping the price of classes that they offer every day.
I have been in the yoga industry for almost 20 years, and I have not met a studio owner yet who drives a fancy car and lives in a mansion from their studio earnings.
None of us got into the yoga studio ownership game thinking we were going to get rich.
But we are entitled to make a living, and not feel guilty about pricing our services fairly, and paying our staff what they deserve.
I know that yoga studio owners sometimes pressure from very vocal people who tend to think that our services should be priced equally to the local gym, or that their son/daughter/significant other should attend for free or at a reduced rate. And there are some members of some professions that believe they are entitled to pay less simply because of what they do for a living.
The reality is, you shouldn't take pricing advice from anyone who isn't participating in paying your bills.
Your client or teacher who wants to tell you what your services should cost has no idea what running the studio actually costs.
“You should” rolls easily out of the mouths of others peering at your business from the outside.
So what do we do, when the holiday sale expectations are approaching, and we really do still need new members
Build a strong studio with memberships based on the value provided and the revenue needs of the business to be profitable.
Only offer assistance, support, scholarships, etc from a place of stability and surplus.
Use upsells and special memberships to entice new clients that do not make your loyal members feel shortchanged.
You can be committed to your community and discount and sale yourself right out of business. Everyone loses. Especially you.
Or, you can be committed to your community and offer tremendous value and transformation from your fairly priced memberships, and then offer financial support where needed and where you feel called. Not to everyone, just because it is the day after Thanksgiving.
The current COVID environment has allowed for a lot of frankly, b***s*** judgement about yoga and other boutique fitness businesses. Don’t listen. There is nothing wrong with building a strong business and profiting from it. Truthfully, it is heartbreaking that fitness businesses that should be on the front lines of moving us out of the pandemic were the first to be closed and the last to re-open, but that is another discussion.
As we head into the holiday season, the requests for discounts and sales will get louder. Craft a holiday strategy TODAY to offer tremendous value, best in class service, and your studio’s unique offerings to both new and existing clients, that don’t take money out of your own pockets.