The Studio CEO: Business Coaching For Yoga & Pilates Teachers & Studio Owners
Welcome to The Studio CEO, the only podcast that empowers yoga and Pilates teachers and studio owners to step confidently into their roles as CEOs. If you're ready to take your business seriously, show up with passion, and scale your studio to new heights without burning out, you're in the right place.
I’m your host, Jackie Murphy, an award-winning, certified business coach with 12+ years in the yoga industry I’ve seen firsthand what it takes to turn your passion into a powerful, scalable business.
Join me as we dive into strategies, insights, and real-world advice to help you grow your revenue, build a thriving team, and create a business that serves you as much as you serve your clients. It's time to embrace your CEO mindset and make more money without working more.
Someone once told me, kind of proudly, that he scrolls right past every sponsored listing on Google. Like it was a small act of resistance. I've thought about it ever since, because I don't think he was talking about Google at all. He was telling me what he believed about paying to be seen.
A lot of you believe some version of that about your own advertising. You're just not saying it out loud. It shows up as the ad you keep not running.
This is the final episode of ads month, and we're going through the four beliefs you have to shift to grow your yoga or Pilates studio with paid advertising: that ads feel gross or "not who I am," that a $20 to $30 lead is too expensive, that your town or niche is too small, and that you couldn't handle the volume if it worked.
You'll get real numbers: what a healthy business puts toward marketing, what a normal cost per lead looks like on meta ads, and why $5 a day is working against you. If growth has felt hard, listen before busy season hits.
The Studio CEO Ads Agency application takes under two minutes. Link below.
TIMESTAMPED OUTLINE
[00:00] The Google conversation I've never forgotten
[03:41] What the data says your marketing budget should be
[06:00] Running the math on a $300,000 studio
[09:17] Belief 1: Ads feel gross, icky, or not who I am
[11:30] Why an organic listing doesn't mean better teaching
[14:58] Belief 2: A $20 to $30 lead is too expensive
[20:17] Belief 3: My town is too small, my niche too narrow
[22:28] Belief 4: What if I can't handle the volume
[24:31] The four flipped beliefs and your next step
KEY TAKEAWAYS
✓ Every business pays to get new students. The question is whether you're doing it on purpose or whenever the local magazine calls about their January issue. ✓ Businesses under $5 million in revenue typically put 7 to 8 percent of gross revenue into marketing. Businesses going after growth run 10 to 12 percent. ✓ A healthy cost per lead on meta ads sits between $20 and $30. Dialed-in ads with strong creative can hit $12 to $18. ✓ Being the organic result doesn't mean your teachers are better. It means your website is set up the way the algorithm likes. ✓ Your ad buys visibility. Your landing page builds the trust. ✓ A small town or narrow niche is an advantage. You're not competing with national brands at national spend.
PULL QUOTES
"You are not buying credibility. You're buying the chance to be seen." "The route is never the point. The trust building, that's the point." "The paid listing at the top is just a business owner who knows what they're doing." "That's a next-level problem. That's a good problem to be solving."
FAQs
How much should a yoga or Pilates studio spend on marketing? The Small Business Administration recommends businesses under $5 million in revenue put 7 to 8 percent of gross revenue into marketing. Studios going after growth routinely run 10 to 12 percent.
What is a good cost per lead for a yoga or Pilates studio? $20 to $30 is normal and healthy on meta ads. Strong creative and close management can bring it to $12 to $18. Above $30 means something needs work.
Do paid ads make my studio look less legitimate than organic? No. How someone finds you doesn't determine what they experience once they're there. The ad buys visibility. Your testimonials and reviews build the trust.
Will Facebook and Instagram ads work in a small town? Yes, and a small market is an advantage. You're not competing with national brands at national budgets, so your ad gets seen well by people who can walk in your door.
Why aren't my ads working when I only spend $5 or $10 a day? Low budgets keep you in the platform's learning phase much longer. Meta and Google need data to figure out who buys from you, and small spend slows that down.
What if I get more new students than I can handle? That's an operational problem, not a reason to wait. You control the spend, so you can dial in how many new students you can serve well each month.
This is a conversation that I literally have never forgotten about. Someone told me that they always scroll right past the sponsored listing on Google. And he said it kind of proudly, like it was a small act of resistance. He wasn't going to be fooled by the business that had paid to sit at the top. He was going to scroll down and find the real one underneath. I have thought about this ever since because I don't think he was talking about Google at all. I think he was telling me what he believed about paying to be seen, that there is a legitimate way to be found and a slightly cheap way. And the businesses who bought their spot didn't quite earn it. A lot of you could believe that about your own paid advertising, but you're not saying it out loud. It just shows up as the ad you keep not running. So that's where we're starting today. And then there's three more beliefs underneath this that we're diving into. 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.
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Studio CEO podcast. I am Jackie Murphy and we are wrapping up our month that has been focused on ads. Have you listened to all the episodes? In the first episode, we talked about whether or not your business is ready for paid advertising or not and how to tell. In week two, we really dove into how paid advertising plus organic marketing is really the win-win scenario for growing your studio and your business. And last week we talked about money and numbers and ran some real math on trying to be your own ads department, which if you haven't listened to that episode, I definitely would go back and listen to that one. I have so many people reaching out to talk just after hearing what they heard on that episode. Today, we're gonna talk about kind of these four beliefs that I think you have to shift in order to successfully use paid advertising to grow your business.
And before we dive into those four beliefs, I just want to give you some data. I'm all about like concrete. What does the data say? Let's just like ground this in reality. You should have a marketing budget for your business. Regardless if you are opening a studio, you've been open, you have the desire to grow, you are in the scaling phase. Part of the money that either you're borrowing or you have a loan or you've gotten investors, part of that money should be set aside for paid advertising. Part of your monthly revenue should go straight to paid advertising. The Small Business Administration recommends that a business that's making under $5 million in revenue a year puts somewhere around 7 to 8% of gross revenue into marketing. Another survey, this is Gartner's survey of marketing leaders, puts the average right around 7.7%. And Deloitte, they did a survey and they put the average around 9.4%. But businesses that are specifically going after growth, like if you come to me and you say, Jackie, I really want to grow my yoga and Pilates business, the ones actively trying to get bigger routinely run 10 to 12% of their revenue to paid advertising. So let me translate that for you because sometimes those percentages cannot really land in what does this mean for me, until you're talking about money. So let's say that your business is doing around $300,000 a year. 7% of that is $21,000 a year, which comes out to around $2,000 a month going into marketing. That is what a normal healthy business that size spends to market and find new students every month on purpose. It is a line item, it is like rent, like payroll. You want to run it. And that was the conservative number, right? Like if you're coming to me and you're like, I really want to grow, we are gonna spend more like 10% of your revenue every month on paid advertising. And I know some of you are like, Jackie, $2,000 a month, and you feel it in your chest. And some of you are like, Yeah, that I wouldn't even feel comfortable spending less than $5,000 a month. Like everyone's different listening to this podcast. But here's what I'm really trying to tell you: your money that you're making in your business should be used to continue to grow your business, to continue to find new students. And if you're stuck and in this place where growth has felt really hard or membership is plateaued, then one of the things that I would look at is what are you spending in paid advertising to acquire a new student, a new member for your business? The question isn't really like, should I do paid advertising? It really is every business does. And it's whether or not you're doing it on purpose, intentionally, with a plan, with expertise, or just whenever the local magazine asks you to have a flyer in their January issue. Y'all know what I'm talking about. So I really want you to think about that because if you can wrap your mindset around, I need to set up my money in my business to support paid advertising and to make sure this is a non-negotiable, one of the first things that you'll start to see is where is that money gonna come from? Most studios, I think I mentioned this in different episodes, but most studios have way too high of payroll and they actually don't even have the wiggle room to spend that much on paid advertising. And so that might be one thing that you're looking at. And I'm not saying that anyone, like I'm a huge advocate for paying your teachers well. I'm not saying that we don't pay people well, but sometimes we need to look at are we paying them well in a way that the business can support and sustain, or are we paying them well in a way that's gonna actually end up costing the business longevity and sustainability? And then some of you are in the place where maybe you have a high profit margin in your business and you've been spending money on ads, but it's $5 a day, $10 a day, $25 a day. And it's really time for you to dial up that spin because you have the proof that it works and you also have the profit. And this will only help you bring in more revenue into your business and hopefully help you create more profit. So we're just starting this episode to say, let's make sure your money that you're making is being used in a way to help you grow your business. If that is your intention, which if you're listening to this podcast, I'm guessing it is. Now, there are four beliefs that can kind of stop you from spending that amount of money on ads or just starting ads in general. We're gonna go through those one at a time.
Belief number one is this idea that ads feel gross or icky, or that's not who I am. And I'm starting here because this is one that I think at some point in time I also thought, but never said out loud until I really started to love paid advertising and like rework my relationship with it altogether. So let's go back to the story I told at the very start of this episode. This was a conversation I was having with someone, and he was like, I scroll past every sponsored listing in Google. I scroll down to the organic listing, and essentially he was telling me that the paid result was somehow less legit than the organic one, that the business who showed up naturally earned it more, and the business who paid to be at the top didn't earn it, kind of like this idea that they cut in line. And it was such an interesting conversation and it was so honest and raw, and I totally get what he's saying. Here's the first thing ideally, you want to be both results. You want your SEO to be so good that you are the top listing when someone searches yoga near me. That's the goal. But you also want to be the top paid listing as well, so that you show up there. So you show up organically and in the paid spot. That's not double dipping, that's just being visible in a way where new people can find you super easily and come into your studio. But here's the deeper thing: it's not more legit to be found organically. Being the organic result doesn't mean you're better necessarily at teaching Pilates than the other studio down the street. It doesn't mean that your teachers are more experienced or your studio is cleaner or your members get better results. It means that your website is set up in a way that the algorithm likes what it sees and wants to show it to people. What I want you to think about is like how someone finds you doesn't necessarily determine the quality of service that they'll experience at your business. We have all had this, we've all had this experience before. I'm thinking about this time. My family and I, we were up in the mountains on our 4th of July vacation and we wanted to go get Mexican food. And so we searched Mexican food near us and we went to the restaurant that came up with the most Google reviews and the top listing. And I cannot tell you how bad this Mexican restaurant was. It was just terrible, terrible food. We walked out of there being like, what? Like that was crazy. It just because we found it, it was this top one, doesn't mean that it was a good experience for us. Now, organic does do something real, and I'm not like trying to put it down at all. Your organic placement in Google or your organic marketing, your website, it can build trust. When someone finds you on their own, reads your post, sees your face, watches how you like show up, watches how you build a community, something gets built, and that's trust. That is true. So the job of your ad is to show up for the person searching so that they can be sent to somewhere, to a landing page, to a sales page, to your website, to your Instagram, that they can automatically feel that same trust. Your ad should always land on a page that has testimonials on it. One of the things that I recommend is using Prove Source, which can showcase your Google reviews or your testimonials or when people are purchasing on your website. When you have real photos of members smiling with their testimonial and their name, or better yet, videos that people can watch, when they can see that kind of stuff, it doesn't really matter that they came from a paid ad. It matters that they're seeing the trust that's there afterwards. So the paid path on the organic path can arrive at the same place. They can give you a new person who trusts you. The route is never the point, but the trust building, like that's the point. So if some part of you has felt like running ads is a little bit like cheating or a little bit desperate or not the kind of thing that you want to do, I want you to just release that today. You are not buying credibility, you're buying the chance to be seen by the new student who's already looking for exactly what you do and is currently finding someone else in your place. So you're buying the chance to be seen. The credibility is built afterwards. And here's how I flipped this thought for myself. I went from being like, oh yeah, organic listings are better than the paid listing at the top of the page, to the paid listing at the top of the page is just a business owner who knows what they're doing. It's just a business owner who is working smart. That that actually tells me that the service, the quality, the experience, it's probably pretty good because they have it together enough to be the paid listing, to show up. Like now I trust the paid listing in a way that I didn't before.
Okay, belief number two is around how expensive ads can be. Thinking $20 to $30 for a new lead is super expensive. And we just have to change your mind around the numbers behind it. So stay with me. Let me give you an actual map for our industry because most likely no one has said this to you before. For yoga and Pilates Studios running meta ads, a normal healthy cost per lead sits anywhere between $20 and $30. That's your very general line. That's fine, that's working. If your ads are strong, you have really good creative, they're managed closely, your targeting is dialed in, then you could get a lead that's somewhere between $12 and $18. And if something's be off, like the account isn't being managed enough, the setup is wrong, the audience is wrong, that's where you're gonna start to see anywhere $30 a lead, $40, $50 and up, $100, $200 a lead. So let's think about those three numbers because that is your evaluation tool. And you can look at your own cost per lead and see does this line up with industry standards? Because when you start to pay for leads to come into your business, you may not make a profit from them buying your intro offer or downloading your freebie. You're really thinking, I'm going to bring this person in because I know that a certain percentage of these people are going to end up becoming members and stick around for six months, or they're going to buy a retreat or a teacher training. And paying for that lead is so worth it because of the lifetime value I'm going to get back from this person. Now, in the ads agency we run, we have clients who are getting leads for a dollar. We have clients who often get leads for their new student offer for seven and eight dollars for $15. Like we are hitting really good costs per lead for our clients. And as soon as that number starts to change, we're immediately on it. Let's flip the script, let's do new creative. Here's what we suggest. Let's is why this is going up. Let's pivot this. Because that is what really will make or break this. If you end up getting too high a cost per lead, it isn't going to be sustainable over time for you to keep experiencing that. Now, I really want you to think about this too. Most platforms, especially Google and Meta, they have a learning phase where they're trying to figure out what audience is going to buy from you, what audience is not going to buy from you. And so if you're spending $5 a day or $10 a day, you're in what's called the learning phase for a much longer period of time than someone who's spending $200, $300 a day because it will take more time for Meta to get the data, for Google to get the data on who your ideal person is. Now that's not wrong or bad, right? Like I'm not saying that you have to spend more than $5 or $10 a day, but a lot of times I see this idea like I want to spend $5 or $10 a day. I want conversions immediately, and I want it to happen all within the first few weeks. And it's just not how the platform is set up. Now, that doesn't mean you can't turn an ad on, be successful right away, and bring in leads right away. It just means that the more you spend and the longer you spend with these ad platforms, the better results you get. That's it makes it work for them. It makes it work for you. Like it's a win-win for both people. So a lot of the times when you're not clear on what your cost per lead should be, when you're wanting uh super fast results but not understanding the learning phase, that's when I see people who will kind of do the start-stop, on, off love ads, hate ads relationship, where then they're they're shooting themselves in the foot rather than letting it run so that you can figure out how to get a low cost per lead. Now, you also want to be thinking about, you know, how much does it cost for me to get a referral? How much does it cost for me to do a pop-up event? And how many leads do I get? And you're like, Jackie, those things could be free. I could get referrals for free. I could get leads if I do a pop-up class for free. Yes, and you're paying for someone to teach, you're paying for someone to be there, for someone to set up, you're paying for someone to organize it, you're paying for someone to follow up. Like there's cost with every single new student that comes into your door. So you want to start to think about what is my best source of new students? What is my lowest cost per lead across the board? And it may not be referrals, it may not be your pop-up class. Okay, this is a unique one for a brick and mortar business.
And it's kind of this idea that, you know, my town is too small, ads are not gonna work for me because my market is just not very big. And I really want you to see that this means you have an advantage. You can also have an advantage if your targeting is a niche that many people aren't in yet. Like there is a huge, huge opportunity for the prenatal and postnatal space right now. And not many people are running ads to your local audience about those things right now or to an audience about those things right now. So you have a lot of opportunity. You're not competing with a ton of national brands at a big, big, big spend. Now, the same thing is true if you're brick and mortar, right? Like you want to have a rather small area that you're targeting with your ads so that you're showing up there. So being from a small town is not a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. It means your ad is gonna be seen really, really well. Being really hyper-specific and niche down, that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing because you're not gonna be competing with other people who are trying to also show up in that space. So I want you to think about like your ads are another way for your your audience to see you when it's the best time for them. So if you You're targeting a really small town and you're doing other sorts of marketing like flyers or pop-up classes or emails, like all of that is amazing, but it's on your timeline. If you also have an ad running, then the person who has kind of been like on your website or circling, like they see your ad at 9 p.m. at night in bed and can buy in that moment because they actually have the brain space to that is what makes your marketing machine really start to move.
Okay, belief number four is like, what if I turn this on? It works super well and I can't handle the volume. This belief is some version of like, I'm not quite ready yet, or I'll wait until later, or I need to hire someone on my team to learn this and do this first. And underneath this, it's really a fear that exists whether or not you're doing paid advertising or not. We, I would say we, most people come to me and they tell me I really want to grow. And I'm like, great, are you ready for the influx of new students that you want to receive? Do you have the operational system set up in order to solve those people, in order to solve those people, in order to serve those people is what I'm trying to say. Because that would be a good problem to have. That is a next level level problem. And you you may have this problem at some point. How do I onboard people really well? How do we make sure that they know the benefits of their membership and like really get to know them and help them feel like we care about them as a person, even as we're seeing more and more and more people? Those are operational questions that can be solved, not a wall to not turn on advertising. And the other thing that I want to say here is you control the lever of ads, right? So, like you get to decide when to turn it on, when to turn it off, when you want to be spending, when you don't want to be spending. That's why I love it so much because it gives you so much control over what you want each month. And you can dial in your spend to bring in exactly the number of new students that you genuinely want to serve well and then adjust and grow at your pace. It's the most controlled version of growth available to you. It's certainly way more controlled than just relying on organic. Okay, so let's just zoom
back out. If we were to rework your relationship with how you're thinking about ads and remove some of these beliefs that could be blocking you, you might be thinking, hey, the smart business owner runs the paid ad and gets the top spot. And there is nothing wrong with that. The trust is built after the ad is just getting you visibility. You would be thinking, I am so willing to find a good cost per lead because I know I'll get a return on that lead. You would be willing to pay for it, willing to figure out how to convert more of those leads. That's a puzzle, it's a problem to solve versus thinking I don't want to pay, ads are too expensive. The next thing you'd be thinking is ads will definitely work for my niche, my market, my town. And it's a good thing that I can stand out and be one of the only studios who is running ads right now. I mean, I live in, I wouldn't say it's a city, I live in Charleston, South Carolina. And I will tell you that like the number of studios running ads well compared to the number of studios that are here is wild. It wouldn't take much for a studio to turn on ads and instantly have the top spot because there's not much going on. And then belief number four, you'd be thinking, ads give me the control. I can decide when I want new students, how many I want, and handle the volume, and I can solve any operational problem that comes up with welcoming more people into my business. That's a good problem to be solving. So if you are ready, I know we've talked about so much over the course of this month. You may have a question, you may have a thought, you may have a doubt. Like if you are considering paid advertising, if you have been considering paid advertising, I would love to talk to you. There will be a link in the show notes for you to go to the Studio CEO Ads Agency application. The application will take you less than two minutes. I'll review it. It includes you sending me your website. If I look at everything and I think, okay, we could probably help you, I will send you a message to book a call. If I look at it and think, you're genuinely just like not ready yet, I will also tell you that. So there's no harm in applying to the studio CEO ads agency, but there is harm in waiting and not getting your question answered. So scroll down to the scroll notes, fill out your application, and let's get you set up for growth. We're about to head into the busy season, the influx season for the yoga and Pilates industry. It really starts October 1st and just ramps all the way up, I would say through January, through March, into April, and then May, you'll start to see the dip down again. So this is the time to capitalize on the already increased demand and interest for what you have to offer by being the business that gets found, by being the business that is seen first and foremost. All right, my friends, it's been a fun ads month. I will talk to you soon. Bye, y'all.
