If you are reading this, you hopefully have a handle on the basic marketing strategies for your next event or retreat. You know your audience, you have a location, date and a theme and you understand how you plan to engage with your consumers.
If you don’t have a strategy yet, read my last blog post, 5 Marketing Tips for Successful Yoga Retreats and Events.
Now….it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get the word out!
Yoga Retreat and Event Marketing Tips
Here are 10 marketing tips that I’ve employed for a successful yoga retreat or event.
1. Website/Landing Page
Create a place for people to visit for more information – a website, a landing page, a ticketing site, or Facebook event (or all of them). This is your calling card.
Create a great description that uses the language of your market. With the yoga world it’s important to hang out in the transformational space. Research the competition and the market to hear what others are saying. Get creative.
Be sure to state the benefits of your audience attending your event. What will they receive when the come to your event?
2. Partnerships
In this market, I see a lot of cross-promotions, affiliates and sponsorships. Create co-branded opportunities with these like-minded businesses.
You can also develop unique promo codes for partners that offer their consumers a discount and provides the partner with referral bonuses for their marketing efforts. These codes are easily traceable and very useful for creating successful partnerships.
Work with charities. This demographic loves to see what businesses are doing to help humanity.
Having these types of partnerships will certainly broaden your reach and garner more success for your event.
3. Advertising
Depending on your event location and retreat size, you have options for traditional print or online advertising.
There are only a few major players in the yoga space like Yoga Journal, LA Yoga, Common Ground and a few others.
There are online yoga magazines/blogs with national reach such as Yoga Journal, Elephant Journal, Huffington Post, Mind Body Green, and Yoganonymous.
There are also advertising opportunities on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that provide you with the ability to hone in on your target demographic.
There are also smaller geo-targeted blogs that are less expensive. You can get very creative with these media properties as they grow in reach and depth. They are open to collaboration and building new platforms for broader reach.
Many of these online yoga publications have free event directories that you can use for listing your events.
4. Social Media
People love photos and videos, especially in this space. Use all the rules of social media for interesting content and always link to your event page.
You might also create a specific hashtag for your event. Tweet often. You can use the advanced search function on Twitter to find relevant feeds/followers and personally invite them to your event.
Create small campaigns around early bird pricing, new partner announcements, new speakers that are booked, etc. Social media is a great way to have a running dialogue with potential attendees.
5. Email
If you don’t have a big email list, then you can utilize your partnerships for broader reach. With most online advertisers emails, social media and content/blogs will be part of your paid campaign.
Send at least one email a month for your event and as you come closer deadlines or early bird pricing send special announcements.
6. PR
Find a writer and/or a PR person that can assist you with article placement and content that feeds the theme of your event. You can seed these articles strategically on relavant blogs throughout your marketing campaign. Always link to your website in our bio and ensure your event is placed strategically within the article.
7. Promotions/Guerilla Marketing
In large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, posters and postcards are a popular way to market an event. Although I’m seeing less businesses allow them due to the amount of waste that is created for the environment.
8. Referral Teams/Brand Ambassadors
Create a group of friends/colleagues/teachers that can rally behind your event and act as brand ambassadors. Those ambassadors will be incentivized in some way to bring business to you (free tickets, discount on merchandise, free memberships, etc).
Manduka is a great example of a company that built their reach through an ambassadorship program. With now thousands of teachers carrying their yoga mats all over the world, their brand has reached far and wide.
9. Teacher/Studios
Involve yoga teachers and their respective studios. Yoga teachers are usually one of the main draws for most yoga events. They are the talent that people wish to see.
Engage the teachers as much as you can. Teachers have direct access to their students for in-class announcements. They may be able to hand things out too (although many studios are getting squeamish about allowing anything non-studio related into their business). Thus, involve the studios that support those teachers as well.
10. Delegate
Each of these areas can turn into big projects in and of themselves. Ensure that you have a team of people working on your event and that they are all communicating in regular meetings. Leverage everyone’s talents and their networks.
I hope these tips above bring your event much success! Let me know what you think about these tips and tools. If you have others that you wish to share with me, please feel free to comment on this article.