How to choose a yoga and pilates studio marketing agency: test where your members really come from

ClassPass reports that Pilates reservations on its platform rose 66% from 2024 to 2025, according to its own 2025 look-back report. That counts bookings on one marketplace, across all its regions. It is not a count of people, and it says nothing about how many became a studio's own members. Still, it shows why an agency pitch to a Pilates studio can sound easy. Demand is visible, and a marketplace can turn it into full mats quickly. The harder question is whose customers those are. A seat filled through a marketplace and a seat filled by a member you won can earn different amounts and lead to different futures. Five beliefs are worth testing before you choose, and each one leaves you with a question for the agency.

Belief: marketplace visitors are new customers

ClassPass says that, worldwide, 94% of the people using it are first-time visitors to the venues they book, a figure drawn from joint ClassPass and Mindbody customer data for 2020 to 2025. It also says 80% of trialers who became paying ClassPass users returned to a studio they visited during their free trial, as of 2024. Both are the platform's claims about its own users. Neither says the returning visitor joined your membership or booked through your own page. ClassPass also says Pilates was the first class new users were most likely to book, and the most rebooked workout genre in every region, which counts rebookings on the platform, not at your front desk. A paid marketplace visit already earns revenue. Track repeat marketplace visits and later direct bookings separately to judge its longer-term value. The direct side is the subject of why retention beats acquisition.

So the first thing to put to any agency is a tracking question. Of the people who first reached my studio through a marketplace, how many now book directly, and how will you find out?

Belief: an empty seat sold to a marketplace is free money

ClassPass says that when a studio joins, the two agree a confidential rate floor, the least the studio will be paid for a qualifying reservation, usually pegged to a percentage of its own direct prices. Above that floor, its SmartRate tool moves the credit price of each class in real time, using signals that include how popular the class is, where it sits in the week and how soon it starts. Read together, those two statements mean a marketplace seat earns a different amount from a direct seat, and the amount can move. That is our reading, and the page gives no average payout to check it against. A cheap seat is not free if it displaces a member who would have paid full price. It can still be worth selling: a lower payout for a mat that would otherwise stay empty, or for a paid first visit from someone your own marketing would not have reached, is income you would not have had. Some visits pay nothing at all: under ClassPass's trial rules, an eligible user gets one free class at each business before paying in credits, and partners won't receive payment for a user's first visit through the trial programs. Your own figures settle the comparison. ClassPass partners can use payout reports and see earnings by class or appointment in the partner dashboard, and your booking system holds the direct side.

Your own intro offer is the direct alternative, and it carries its own rules. In the UK, CAP's advice of 20 January 2026 on subscription offers and free trials names two things an ad is likely to need to make clear: whether billing kicks in by default after the free period, and what the customer will owe without a cancellation. If your intro week rolls into a monthly membership, the guidance expects the ad to say so.

The question that follows is about money, not fill: what did a seat earn through each channel last month, using my payout reports, and what did the people who came free go on to spend?

Belief: Pilates is booming, so a new studio will fill

ClassPass counts reformer Pilates reservations up 71% and mat Pilates up 114% in 2025, on its own platform worldwide. Supply is changing too. Health Club Management reported on 26 August 2026 that Places Leisure, a UK public leisure operator, hopes to open several new reformer studios in the next 12 months. The first, with 12 beds at Wokingham Leisure Centre, was due to open in September, and the centre was already offering £5 taster sessions ahead of the full launch. That is one operator in one town, but it shows that a studio's local competition can change whatever the platform-wide trend says. A £5 taster nearby changes the price comparison for every studio within reach of it, and a pitch built on a worldwide growth rate ignores it.

Put it to the agency as a pricing question: which local studios already sell reformer classes near me, at what direct prices, and how would a nearby taster change what my own intro offer has to beat?

Belief: wellness language is safe in class copy

Some people arrive with health in mind. Among US adults who practised yoga in 2022, an age-adjusted 28.8% did so to treat or manage pain, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. Advertising rules limit how far your copy can answer that. In the UK, CAP's yoga advice lists a few mild claims that may be acceptable, such as helping relaxation or aiding sleep, and says neither CAP nor the ASA has seen robust evidence for the health benefits of yoga. The same page warns against ads that could put people off essential treatment for conditions that need medical supervision, and doubts that a yoga qualification would count as suitable under that rule, rule 12.2. The page covers yoga, so ask which guidance applies to your Pilates descriptions.

Before any class copy runs, find out who at the agency checks it against the CAP Code, and what they would do with a line like "good for back pain".

Belief: the agency's ad account is as good as mine

Google's help pages say that if a manager creates a new account, the manager will automatically become the owner of that account. An owner can remove users from the client account and transfer ownership. So an account the agency opens for you can be the agency's to control. Your Google Business Profile works differently: you can request ownership from the current profile owner if yours is verified under someone else. If a booking provider runs your reservations, Google's help page warns that the provider may charge for bookings made through Google and tells you to check with them.

End this part of the meeting on a list. Which accounts will sit in my name from day one, including ads, Business Profile, booking software and email list, and what do I get if we stop?

The question to close every agency meeting

Ask this last, in these words: "Once you have six months of my figures, which classes would you move off the marketplace, which would you keep on it, and what does each change leave me with after costs, including your fee?"

A useful reply works class by class from your payout reports and booking records, and can recommend keeping marketplace seats where they fill mats nothing else would. Where it compares what the studio received for matched customers under each channel, already net of intro-offer discounts, it calls that an estimate, states its assumptions and subtracts each remaining cost once: ad spend, any booking provider charges and the agency's own fee. A weak reply quotes platform-wide growth, counts full classes as the result, treats every marketplace seat as a loss, or credits the agency with bookings the marketplace made. Any of those means the agency has answered a different question from the one you asked.

If most of your bookings already come direct and a marketplace only tops up a few classes, your booking software's own email and intro-offer tools may do this work without an agency.

The Social Target describes its own studio work on its marketing for yoga and pilates studios page.

For a look at your direct and marketplace earnings side by side, tell us about your business. If a studio your size does not need an agency yet, you will hear that too.