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Welcome to another episode of 7-Minute Marketing with Pam. My name is Pam Didner. I love sharing a little dose of B2B, digital, content marketing and sales enablement, seven minutes at a time.

Frequent listeners know that I practice yoga on a regular basis.

The truth is that I go to 2 different yoga studios in Portland. I do Hot Yoga in one studio and learn new and different yoga postures in another studio.

Opportunity in differences

Attending classes in two studios, I get opportunities to see how different yoga instructors conduct their classes. For Hot Yoga, we do the same 26 postures every class. It can get boring sometimes, same old postures over and over again, but that’s when the personality of a teacher comes into play.

One particular instructor, Sasha, is unique. She ran away from home when she was young, then, lived a pretty messed up life until she found Yoga. You can tell that she doesn’t follow rules. She would play music during classes, add a couple of postures here and there, and ask us to breathe in certain ways between postures. Then, she would add random observations or reflections as they occur to her. Like the other day, when we were doing twisting postures, she said that she was on the toilet yesterday and turned on one side to get the toilet paper. She was thinking, hey, I am doing a twist, then I need to turn around and do the other side. That kind of random thoughts would just blast out of her mouth at any moment. Then she’d suddenly realize that’s TMI, too much information and just laugh it off with us.

She has a solid following for her sessions. Her class is entertaining.

The teaching style number 2

The other studio teaches Iyengar Yoga. Unlike Hot Yoga, we’d go through different sequences of yoga postures every time. Nina, one of the senior instructors, has in-depth knowledge of yoga practice and postures.  She is well-trained, and she demonstrates each posture with specific instructions on how to do them right. I learn challenging poses such as a headstand, handstand or elbow stand in that studio. I wouldn’t say that her classes are entertaining, but it’s certainly educational and insightful. Because of the quality of her teaching, I become a better yogini.

The teaching styles of Sasha and Nina make me think about content creation. Not every piece of content you create needs to be entertaining or storytelling. Sometimes, you need to tell your products and offering as it is, straightforward and on-point. Sometimes, you need to create content with exciting creative and an interesting writing angle to provoke an emotional connection or create a specific experience with your target customers.

To do that, you need to truly understand your customers. Sasha understands that 26 postures are boring, she tries to add some spice to her class by sharing her personal stories or breaking the same sequence a bit. Nina knows her students want to challenge themselves and make progress with their practices, so she focuses on giving no-nonsense instruction to help her students improve. They understand their students well, interpret their needs and find their own ways to help their pupils.

Here is what I learned by watching Sasha’s and Nina’s teaching styles

  • Know what’s unique about your products and your offering. In an enterprise, this should be in your brand style guide or brand persona.
  • Understand your audiences’ needs. This is your buyers’ personas.
  • Determine how you or your products can help your audiences’ needs. Explain and demonstrate it in your own ways. In an enterprise, this is your editorial and content planning.
  • Not every piece of content you create needs to tell a story. You need a mix of different formats of content.

It’s funny how I make a connection between Sasha’s and Nina’s teaching and content marketing. Just like Douglas Adams said in his Dirk Gently’s books: Everything is connected!

Many times, I have meetings until the minute I walk into the yoga studio. I tend to feel tense all over before my yoga sessions. After 90 minutes, I feel like I shed 50 pounds of weight off my shoulders. Then, after a nice hot shower, I am completely rejuvenated and ready to start my day. I love the feel of the Portland breeze on my face when I walk out the studio.

Have you tried yoga before? Give it a shot. Maybe you’ll gain some marketing insights as well.

Please, send me your marketing questions and thoughts about unique marketing lessons, here or via Twitter @pamdidner.

Be well. Until next time.

What can Pam Didner do for you?

Being in the corporate world for 20+ years and having held various positions from accounting and supply chain management, and marketing to sales enablement, she knows how corporations work. She can make you and your team a rock star by identifying areas to shine and do better. She does that through private coaching, keynote speaking, workshop training, and hands-on consulting. Contact her or find her on LinkedIn and Twitter. A quick note: Check out her new 90-Day Revenue Reboot, if you are struggling with marketing.