The Studio CEO: Business Coaching For Yoga & Pilates Teachers & Studio Owners

Marketing is a Skill: How to Find—and Master—Your Recipe for New Students

• Jackie Murphy

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In this episode of The Studio CEO Podcast, Jackie Murphy breaks down one of the biggest shifts creative entrepreneurs and studio owners need to make: treating marketing as a skill—not a task or a mystery.

If you’ve ever found yourself “doing marketing” (posting, emailing, launching) and getting little in return, this episode will help you understand why. Jackie dives into:

  • Why most marketing isn’t working (and how you’ve been taught to think about it wrong)
  • The problem with treating marketing like a checklist item or guessing game
  • How skilled marketers think differently—and get better results with less stress
  • A behind-the-scenes look at real marketing tweaks that increased sign-ups and conversions
  • The three essential questions every piece of marketing must answer
  • Why clarity, not volume, is the key to attracting new students

Whether you’re launching your first offer or refining your flagship program, this episode will help you stop second-guessing your marketing—and start leading it with strategy.

🎯 PLUS: Don’t miss Jackie’s free marketing webinar! Learn how to diagnose and improve your marketing in real time with expert support. Register now via the link below.


Work with Jackie Murphy

Speaker 1:

This one question is something I ask every single one of my clients. What do you believe is the biggest obstacle to reaching your goal? And, more often than not, people tell me marketing invisibility. If marketing feels like a guessing game for you and you don't know how to get new students in the door, you're not alone, and in this episode, we're going to break down what marketing really is so that you can hit your goals.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Studio CEO, the only podcast that empowers yoga and Pilates teachers and studio owners to step confidently into their role as CEO. If you are ready to show up with passion, take your business seriously and scale to new heights without burning out, you are in the right place. I'm your host, jackie Murphy, an award-winning certified business coach with over 12 years of experience inside the yoga industry. I have seen firsthand what it takes to build a profitable and scalable business. Join me as we dive into strategies, insights and real-world advice that will help you grow your revenue, build a thriving team and create a business that serves you as much as you serve your students. It's time to embrace your inner CEO and make more money without working more. This is just the beginning. Without working more, this is just the beginning. Hello and welcome back to the Studio CEO Podcast. I am your business coach, jackie Murphy. How y'all doing when this episode airs it will let me double check before I say this, but I am pretty sure that when this episode airs, yep, it is going to be July, which means we are halfway through the year. What I was just thinking back to Thrive in 2025, my three-day workshop I did at the beginning of January, and how this year has already proven so much of what I talked about in that workshop true, and I'm keeping an eye on the trends for next year. Y'all know we're going to do something early 2026. So if it is feeling like you are crushing your goals and you are on track, amazing congrats. Let's celebrate.

Speaker 1:

If it doesn't feel like that, if it feels like the first half of the year went slower than you wanted it to, or you feel a little bit burnout or overwhelmed, I just want to encourage you and motivate you that the next six months can drastically change everything in your business, but you have to remain open to that possibility. So one of the things that I see happen very often and I see it on a month to month basis is around the 15th of the month. Sometimes my clients will be like, oh, I don't think I'm going to hit my goal this month. This might be our lowest month ever, but it's only halfway through the month and I get them back to possibility and back in the game, and often they can turn it around and make it their highest month ever. It is a human nature to want to tap out early, to give up halfway, and so I'm just telling you hey, if you're feeling like that for 2025, let's get back in the game. We can check the scoreboard at the end of the year, but right now, so much is possible for you for the next six months.

Speaker 1:

All right, my friends, I have a really important episode for you today, and it is inspired by one thing that I just experienced in my business and one thing that a client just experienced in her business. So we're going to start with a couple stories and then go into the teaching content for the day. So go ahead and pop in your earbuds, get your drink cozy up, or let's go for a walk together. However you want to listen to this episode, I am going to take you along to really show you that marketing is a skill that you can learn and master so that you can get new students on repeat without guessing, like what's working, what's not working. I don't really know what to do, so let me start with my story, then I'll start with the client story. So right now I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast, but I am in the process of rebuilding an evergreen webinar funnel. Now, if those words sound like a different language, don't worry about it. All it means is that there's a workshop that runs on repeat and people can come into that funnel and there is an offer at the end of it. Repeat, and people can come into that funnel and there is an offer at the end of it.

Speaker 1:

Part of what I am doing in order to attract new clients to my business is running meta ads. Now I teach meta ads inside of the Grow Mastermind, and so I always will preface this when I talk about ads like you cannot just start ads willy nilly and have them work for you, because there's nuance to meta ads and I teach that nuance so that you really can get a return on meta ads. However, I will say this this is totally a tangent. I was on TikTok last night and I saw this studio owner be like. The biggest mistake I ran the first year in business was running ads. Ads only work for product-based businesses. Y'all know, I commented. I was like hold up, that's not true. Ads are amazing. Ads can bring in new students. Ads can bring in new members. It should be a part of your funnel once you know what to say and do and how to actually operate meta ads. So I'm going to step down from that tangent. Anyways, so we're running ads in my own business and we put an ad out Some of you might have seen it for a workshop called Hustling Teacher to Studio CEO.

Speaker 1:

Now, studio CEO is a name that I have developed for this brand. If you want to hear more about that. It's like episode two of this podcast where I go into. What does that actually mean? And we launched a workshop that was based around that. We put our ads out. We use the same audience on Meta that we always use. We know it works and the results were awful. I'm talking super high cost, not a lot of return, and it wasn't working. And this is going to happen to every business owner at some point, no matter how long you've been in business.

Speaker 1:

So I sat down with my business coach, because y'all know, if I'm going to be a coach, I better be getting coached, be a product of my product. And I sat down with my business coach and I'm like, let's talk about this, let's figure out what's going on. Here are my guesses, here's what needs to shift. And in my gut I knew that the title of the workshop we were putting out was wrong. I like never felt connected to it. I was kind of checked out. It didn't excite me. I'm also a generator in human design, so you know, if I'm not lit up then no one else is going to be lit up about what I'm doing. And I knew it wasn't speaking to the actual problem that you guys have. So it wasn't attracting the right person the right way.

Speaker 1:

And so what we did is we stopped those ads and we changed the name of the workshop. I tweaked a little bit of the creative or the photos that we were using to make them look more organic, and then we put them back out into the world and, lo and behold, that one tweak got us the results that we wanted Within hours, because meta ads work fast. We were getting lower cost leads who were the right fit, who were wanting the thing that we were offering. So you may be like Jackie that's amazing. But like that's you because you have business knowledge and you've been doing this for, oh my God, 13 years now. What that's crazy. And I do have a lot of experience. But I will say the experience that helped me the most in this situation was knowing that my ads tanking wasn't a reflection of me, my business or the current economy, because I think that's where our minds can go Like, oh my God, this means everything is broken and awful. And I'm not going to say that I maybe didn't go there for a minute, but I'm able to very quickly be like actually, this is like a math problem I can solve. Marketing is a skill and I know how to use that skill well.

Speaker 1:

But this just happened for one of my clients too. One of my clients inside of the Grow Mastermind came to a coaching call and she was like you know, I haven't really sold my retreat. I've been kind of talking about it, sending out the announcement in our newsletter, but we only have three people signed up and it just doesn't really have a ton of traction. So I had her talk me through her messaging how she was talking about it if she had a sales page, how many emails she was sending, like her whole marketing campaign. And the very first thing that I noticed in this campaign from the data that she was giving me was that her messaging was also off. She was promoting this retreat not wrong. Right Like this isn't wrong. This is what a lot of people do as a yoga and embodiment retreat, which, if you're in the industry, we know what that means and we can say, yes, we want that. But for most average Joes out there, that is going to be like white noise, it's going to fall on deaf ears. So we did the same thing. We tweaked the title of her retreat and the sub headline to specifically attract a person and within a week she came back to the next coaching call and she's like Jackie. I've had four people sign up for the retreat since we've talked just from our messaging tweaks alone.

Speaker 1:

So, while you may want to be like Jackie, that's just you, because you have the skills I want to say what about Nicole? What about my client? And there's so many different examples of that. What it proves and what it shows is that marketing is a skill. And listen, if you are putting out a weekly or monthly newsletter. If you have a website, if you are even posting on social media but you're not seeing the number of new students come in or it just feels like a to-do list task item that you need to do market my business but you're not actually connected to it and really sure what to say to bring people in. It's not you. It's literally that you haven't been taught to think about marketing like a skill. You were taught to teach a really good class. You were taught to serve. You were taught to deliver really well.

Speaker 1:

But if you're anything like me, in your certification, no one sat down and said, hey, let's talk about how to package what you're offering to people so that people care and not just some people care, but like many new people who've you've never met before, will care. And no one said like here's how you can name an offer, here's how you name a class, here's how you need to write a subject line or a landing page so that people are clicking and moving to the next step in your client journey, in your funnel. You probably have heard you need to be consistent, post regularly, build your email list, but you're like what do I post how regularly? What does consistent mean If I'm just posting, you know my class times consistently. Is that going to work? The answer is no, it's not going to work. So we end up doing marketing but not really understanding marketing.

Speaker 1:

And that is the gap where you're going to feel so much doubt. You're going to experience a lot of burnout, you're going to be disappointed and you're going to constantly be seeking for some secret strategy that's going to change everything for your business and when it's not working, you are going to be not getting the signups that you want. You're going to be doubting your price, maybe even lowering your price, and you are going to be just guessing let's try this, let's try this, like just try this, not intentionally, but just out of, like throwing spaghetti at the wall. Something will work and I want to paint the vision for you of what is possible. We are about to host another workshop and this time, because of all of the work that I've done on messaging, because I have been a business coach for this industry for five years, I 100% know like I say these words to these people and that will create them signing up for my free workshop. It's not like I'm wondering how it'll perform this time. I mean, part of me is like, okay, there's always could, there's always could be a curveball, right, like something could happen. But even that I'm like that's not a big deal, we can definitely fix it. I know for sure when I step up and I do these things, it is my recipe for new people finding my business and for my current people to reengage with my business. And that level of confidence is available for you. Imagine that when you post, when you send an email, when you lead some kind of workshop, imagine knowing when I do this, I know I can get X result because I know exactly what to say, when to say it and who to say it to. I really want you to think about this analogy.

Speaker 1:

Marketing is just like baking In order to be a great baker, you go into the kitchen and you tweak the recipe with talent, with intention, with skill, intentionally to create the cookie that you want, right. So if you're a baker and you want to create chocolate chip cookies, you might go into the kitchen and be like you know what? This time I'm going to add more flour and that's going to make these fluffier. Or this time I'm going to melt the butter versus soften butter, and that's going to do this other thing to my cookie, or this time I'm going to. I'm trying to think of, like I don't know if you've seen the picture before of all these different types of chocolate chip cookies. When you don't have enough flour, they're super flat. When they don't have the butter melted, they're kind of wavy. When they have too much flour, they're super puffy. When the egg is overbeaten, they're kind of in between.

Speaker 1:

Like every single piece of the recipe tweaked ends with a different result, and in order to be a great baker, you have to be skilled at tweaking the exact right part of the recipe to get the result that you want. This is what happened for me. This is what happened for Nicole, right Like. I looked at my data and I knew for sure the part that I needed to tweak was the very top of the funnel we call it in the world but the messaging, because we needed more eyeballs on it. If I looked at my funnel and we were getting tons of people but they weren't clicking, that's a different part of my marketing strategy to tweak If we are getting a ton of people clicking but they're not turning into buyers. That's a different part of the recipe to tweak If we are getting a ton of people clicking, but they're not turning into buyers. That's a different part of the recipe to tweak. And so, as a skilled marketer, I can look at this entire system and say, okay, this is exactly what we need to tweak in order to get this result that you want, just like a skilled baker can go into a kitchen and say these are the exact ingredients and this is what we need to tweak in order to get the cookie that we want. This is what's possible for you, but only when you put time and intention into it.

Speaker 1:

Learning the skill of marketing. It's not something that you should have been born with, or you should already know, or like it should come naturally to you. No, this is a skill. It's not like you were born knowing how to bake a chocolate chip cookie. It's a skill that you put time and energy and intention into. And, hey, some people put more time and energy and intention into it and open up a cookie shop. And some people like me, I just do the bare minimum and serve the cookies to my kids, right, you don't have to take the skill to the extreme. But I would recommend for all of you asking yourself do I have the skills that I need to market my business in order to get the result that I want, whatever revenue, whatever amount of new students that you want to have each week.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that I want to highlight here is that skilled marketers don't panic when something's not working, like I know. For a moment it is so tempting to be like oh my God, I'm not getting the new students I want Throw everything out, burn down the studio, shut the business down, crawl under a blanket and I would ask you like what phase of your cycle are you in? Or did you drink enough water today? Because those reactions are typically I'm like joking, but not really. Those reactions are typically just your, um, your primitive brain, your nervous system, reacting to in the moment, what's happening when you can be a skilled marketer, like this happened for me.

Speaker 1:

I looked at my results and I'm oh dang, we're spending way too much money and not getting the result that we want. Let's isolate and change this so that we can get the result that we want. And it wasn't a panic. It was done quickly because, hey, who wants to dump money down the drain. But it wasn't done from panic or urgency. It was like I know we can fix this. I know it needs to tweak this thing. So this is what a skill marketer does. They're not just going to do more and more and more and more and more marketing, guessing, guessing, guessing. They're going to work smarter and more intentionally at the exact right thing, because you're going to track and the data's going to help you and you can get outside opinions and eyeballs and support For me. I went to my business coach and I was like, hey, this is what I'm seeing, this is what my guess is. What do you see? Because two brains on one problem are better than my brain on one problem, and that was so helpful to be like. I'm so confident in the tweaks that we're about to make because I thought them, she thought them, it's a team decision, let's go and then we track that change and make sure it gets the result that we want.

Speaker 1:

So just to wrap this up when you don't have marketing as a skill, you're going to guess and doubt yourself. You are going to start copying what other people are doing, even if it doesn't necessarily fit your audience or your town or your price point, et cetera, your niche, and you're going to feel like results are out of your control, like sometimes new students come in, sometimes they don't. Sometimes those new students convert, sometimes they don't. But when you do understand that marketing is a skill you're going to test, you're going to tweak, you're going to lead yourself and your team and you're going to understand why you're doing everything that you're doing to get the certain result that you want. Most importantly, you're going to feel confident, knowing how to fix it when it's not working for you. And that's what I want for all of you, because that's when your nervous system can actually relax in business and you can put your best energy out there, versus a chaotic, scared energy. So you're no longer at the mercy of, like, the algorithm or the open rate. You are in charge and it starts to feel predictable, not personal. So how do you start building this skill? Today?

Speaker 1:

I just want to give you three things to kind of go with from this episode. Number one I want you to ask yourself every time you're putting something out is who is this for? And it cannot be for everyone. Every, not every time. That's a dramatic way. My brain wants to say this, but very often people will tell me but, jackie, I can really help everyone and, darling, that's not your job to help everyone. Your job is meant to be the teacher for the student that you are meant to help.

Speaker 1:

So, specifically, what kind of student is this? For what level? What need, what pain point, what want, what desire? And that brings us to our second question. You got to ask what do they want? Your marketing can't be about what you're teaching. It has to be about what they desire. And number three, you have to ask why. Now, why is this important for them? To read today, click today, do today. If your marketing doesn't answer those three things, it's not going to convert as well as it could.

Speaker 1:

So, my friends, if this is heading home for you, if you think and realize that marketing is a skillset that you have kind of been lacking in or missing, or maybe you have a little bit of, but you want to develop even further, I want you and our next free workshop inside we are specifically going to talk about the insider secrets on how to fix the most important skill in your business and scale to those five figure months you want. On repeat, we're going to talk about the three biggest mistakes keeping yoga and Pilates studio owners from growing when it comes to marketing and some things to adjust. So this isn't going to be all about hashtags or trends although you can do those in your marketing if you want but this is really going to cover like the three marketing mistakes that I see happen most often within our industry, so you can make sure that you're not making those. You can click the link underneath the show notes to register for that workshop. It is going to be live on July 17th but there will be a replay available. If you can't make it live, you'll have a limited time to watch that replay.

Speaker 1:

And I just want to tell you this you don't need to hustle harder and I really want you to stop thinking that there's some secret marketing strategy or secret intro offer or secret way that you could just click your fingers together and have everything solved in your business.

Speaker 1:

Really, business comes down to being really good in the skill sets that you need the marketing skills, the sales skills, which we didn't cover here. You need the skills and you're allowed to learn it from the beginner stance, the intermediate stance, from the advanced stance. You should always be developing the skill set. It's not a gift that you're born with, it's a skill that you build and it's a skill that you keep and continue to develop for the entirety of your business. So if you know that this episode would help someone maybe a fellow studio owner or another teacher who's been stuck in like I'm posting but I'm not getting results, or I just don't know how to be consistent, or, oh my God, I don't even know what to do in my marketing Share this with them and I will talk to you guys in the next episode.