Advice abounds on whether or not you should be blogging, emailing your list weekly or monthly, taking out magazine ads in yoga publications or running some smarty-pants collaborative competition on Facebook to grow your tribe. Confused? That’s understandable.

Here are five essential marketing tools that I believe all yoga and wellbeing professionals need to thrive in the 21st century.

1. A self-managed, social website

Yes, you need a website but not only that, a content management system (CMS) website so you can hop in and quickly make changes, add events and new pages without needing to call an expensive web designer and wait for them to get around to it. A social website allows web visitors to leave something of themselves behind – be it a comment on your blog, an email address or the ability to quickly and easily share your webpages through your site’s social media share icons. A social website helps your web visitors distribute your website for you.

2. A regular email newsletter

Hairdressers, restaurants, shoe repairers and your local fish-and-chippery send email newsletters. Why? Because they are targeted and measurable, inexpensive and efficient, they enable you to keep in touch with your database and grow your authority as an expert. Need more reasons?

3. Links back to your website

Your website has content but it has no means of distribution – that’s your job. You distribute your website when you link to it from Facebook, when you create yourself a listing on a website such as Hotfrog.com.au, when you guest blog on someone else’s blog and link back to your site and when you promote your blogging through Twitter or other social media.

4. Regular original content

You are more than what you do. Hopefully, you have an opinion and this opinion attracts your ideal clients. In other words, expressing your measured opinion online will attract your business leads and help convert these into new clients, while deepening your rapport, repeat business and referrals from your existing clients.

5. A freebie

Every business needs a freebie to give people a taster of your value. Ideally, this is not a free product or service, but an electronic download from your website in exchange for an email address. A freebie demonstrates your value, showcases your perspective and opinions, and is relevant, useful, interesting and perhaps topical to your ideal clients. It should be specific and demonstrate true value. After all, this is your chance to show people why they should do business with you.