About Yoga Movement

The company was set up in 2013 and has since expanded to 5 locations mainly around Central Singapore. They currently have 28 instructors who hold classes from Monday to Sunday. Currently the business is facing problems due to competition from rivalling yoga studios such as Pure Yoga and True Yoga. Another pressing issue is the arrival of spin cycle in Singapore, a fitness alternative that has caught the eye of many trendy fitness fans lately.

 

Problem

Yoga Movement has thus seen a shrinking membership base with slowing membership uptake and lower attendance. So far, their current attempts to engage with members have not been entirely successful.

However, as an established yoga studio and the growing popularity with the healthy living culture, we believe this is a problem that can be resolved with better branding and consumer engagement over social media. We are especially interested in Yoga Movement as they have been promoting the idea of a healthy lifestyle through yoga (The YM Life). However, promotion of this idea has been sparse and the spread of this movement has been weak.

 

Goals

Through social media, we intend to increase awareness of the yoga lifestyle through social media and promote this to current and potential members. We intend to take advantage of this as a stepping stone to differentiate Yoga Movement from other yoga studios. We see these as stepping stones to accomplishing the ultimate goal of retaining and expanding the Yoga Movement membership base.

 

Target Audience

There is a great deal of potential for Yoga Movement to further engage its existing clientele and tap into possible customer demographics. We have outlined these two options for Yoga Movement below:

Target #1: Existing Yoga Practitioners

• Existing yoga practitioners of varying level
• May or may not have sampled different forms of yoga (eg. aerial yoga, hot yoga)
• Joined different studios
• Use yoga as primary form of exercise to keep fit
• Predominantly female, ages 19 – 50

This demographic makes up a significant portion of the Singaporean yogi community. By targeting this demographic, we hope to allow Yoga Movement to connect more with the bulk of its existing clientele and ultimately improve membership uptake and retention.

Target #2: Businesses

• Corporate companies in high-stress industries (eg. banking, law)
• Seek to introduce staff-bonding to improve company culture and reduce employee stress
• Likely to purchase yoga packages in bulk for this purpose
• Consists of both male and female working adults ages 24 – 55

Businesses are increasingly looking to improve their company culture through bonding activities – especially for organisations in high-stress industries like banking and law. To create a more cohesive, relaxed company culture, corporations are turning to yoga for their employees due to its meditative and social nature. Tapping into this customer base could allow Yoga Movement to work closely with large corporations and become one of the leading options for corporate-targeted yoga, ultimately increasing membership intake.

 

Method

Our method has been simplified into three steps to achieve the goal of retaining and expanding the membership base through promoting the yoga lifestyle. We intend to firstly develop lifestyle marketing collaterals, this is because we understand that people don’t really understand what the yoga lifestyle embraces and how it can improve almost every facet of your life.

We will then promote this on the Yoga Movement social media pages, and expand this to more social media platforms such as YouTube (that Yoga Movement does not currently have). This will help us retain out new members through allowing them to access our lifestyle messages while outside of class and pick up on new ideas and inspiration that can influence their life outside of the yoga studio. In this way, we hope to influence members to adopt the Yoga Movement way of life and subscribe to our lifestyle through yoga.

Our final step is aimed at generating a larger membership base. We intend to target corporate firms. Yoga has been proven to relieve stress and increase focus, thus, we see that it would be appropriate in the context of the workplace. We see that promotion of the Yoga Movement life can be done over corporate social media websites such as LinkedIn, where we can connect with the relevant parties and promote corporate packages.

 

Main Message

We want the world to know that yoga is for everyone! Regardless of shape, size, background or anything. The yoga lifestyle is wholesome, inclusive and for everyone! We also want to spread the word that the Yoga Movement lifestyle can permeate almost every facet of your life and affect your outlook on life and lifestyle choices in a positive way.

 

New Social Media Engagement

YouTube

Increasing awareness of the yoga lifestyle requires content that is easily shareable and wellness-related. We feel that the creation of a YouTube channel to produce shareable video content that elucidates potential customers on the yoga lifestyle could be greatly beneficial to the company. The bulk of content on social media networks like Facebook come in the form of video, hence by using YouTube videos to reach out to consumers, Yoga Movement will be able to achieve a dual-effect of increasing awareness on the yoga lifestyle and expanding online reach.

LinkedIn

Yoga Movement currently does not have its own dedicated LinkedIn page. To connect with businesses and organisations to offer corporate-targeted yoga, a LinkedIn page would be the best social media tool due to the network’s distinctly corporate and professional slant. In addition to connecting with Target Audience #2 as outlined above, the LinkedIn page will also shape Yoga Movement as a more professional and credible brand.

Snapchat

A large number of organisations like Buzzfeed and Cosmopolitan are turning to Snapchat to expand their consumer reach. Snapchat is one of the most popular social media networks amongst the younger generation, especially for those in their teens to late twenties. This is a bandwagon Yoga Movement should ideally jump on, as Snapchat allows for bite-sized, up-to-date content to be disseminated to users. The expirable nature of Snapchat content translates to an organic, slice-of-life and intimate connection with consumers, as Yoga Movement could send ‘snaps’ of ongoing yoga classes and feature yoga teachers.

 

Research Methods

Right now, we don’t really have all the information we need. We intend to gather all the information we can relating to this issue through several means.

Our primary research will consist of several means. We will begin with an analysis of social analytic tools like social bakers to assess the effectiveness of their current social media marketing collaterals. We will also organize a focus group for our first target audience (current practitioners of social media), this group can be approached on the Yoga Movement Facebook page. The focus group is aimed at getting a general idea of Yoga Movement’s branding and the effectiveness of their current strategies. We will also organize a focus group for the target audience who are not yet practitioners, we hope to get references from current members, but we will also approach them at areas like the CBD. This focus group is aimed at finding out what this group expects from a healthy lifestyle, and to gauge their attitude towards yoga.

Our secondary research will revolve around analysis of online articles and published journals. These will be used to back up our primary research and will also be used to generate a qualitative conclusion to our research.

 

Effectiveness

We will assess the effectiveness of our campaign in term of quality and quantity.

Quantitative:

• Compare number of organic engagement and traffic with target audience on social media platforms pre and post campaign
• Measure profits/revenue/sales before, during, and after social media interjection

Qualitative

• Measured by the goals set prior to social media campaign
• Awareness and recall
• Increased inquiries
• Surveys

 

Conclusion

Yoga Movement currently has a comfortably wide online reach on its two existing social media platforms – Facebook and Instagram. However, this online presence is not without its shortcomings when it comes to building an organic online community and breaking into unchartered demographics as it falls short in brand exposure. Our group feels that through a multi-pronged approach on various casual and corporate social media networks as expounded on above, Yoga Movement will be able to improve its online presence and membership intake and retention to create a tight-knit, organic community of Yoga Movement fans.

Prepared by: Ong Jie Xin Sarah Lauretta, Ng Wan Ning, Chia Neville