How do I get my yoga and wellness retreat in front of the right audience?
I am start doing a yoga retreat and wellness holiday in Thailand to an international market. I would like to get your advice where I can promote my business to the right target, as my market has very specialized interests.
Have a look at some of these tips:
1) Join social media groups and forums to connect with yoga and wellness audience.
2) Do guest posting on blogs that are directly or indirectly related to your niche. Make sure they are not your competitors.
3) Get yourself listed on websites that feature services like yours.
Try these out.
Why not get listed on yoga retreats booking platforms like https://www.wanderlustyogaretreats.com/. In this way, you can reach your target audience without paying a single penny unless you get the bookings.
Top 3 simple ways:
1. Find out where your target audience hangs out online: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Reddit, etc. Join their communities and get a feel for it. Then find a creative way to get your offer in from of them.
2. Leverage third party sites that will do your marketing for you. Sites like https://bookretreats.com.
3. Do a free community yoga class in your area and mention your retreat at the end.
You can also just buy/rent a database of yoga enthusiasts or holistic enthusiasts who love to travel, and do good old fashion email marketing. That's the quickest way since you can re-market to them over and over again and invite them to opt-in to your retreat calendar so they can get updates on upcoming events.
You can also increase your open rate & clickthrough rates by running a contest and offering them a chance to Win a Free ticket to your retreat. Once they opt-in, then redirect them to a thank you page that asks them to "share" your contest with their friends on facebook & twitter, as an incentive for them, they will receive extra entries in the contest for sharing. There are numerous contest softwares/softwares as a service that you can use to promote your contest.
The problem with facebook advertising and running google ads is that it can be very expensive, especially when you are just starting out and don't know what your conversion rates are. Its better if you own the data and you can continuously interact with your list until they opt-in or out, rather than paying for costly facebook advertising that may never generate you a single lead.
As an alternative to fb ads and google, there are other "cost per action" strategies that you can use that allow you to only pay per optin, when a visitor actually takes an action such as "fill out form", etc. Either way, you still need to decide who your target market is, i.e. which countries you want to focus on, and what price range you want to sell your retreats at. One way to find out how much your visitors will pay is just to simply ask them. Have them fill out a survey when opting in so they can tell you what they would be willing to spend for your retreat.
Any questions? Feel free to reach me.
Namaste.
Have you done any other wellness retreats locally showing what a incredible offering you have?
Do you have a existing "fan base" or are you starting from scratch?
Do you know and understand the legal requirements of working in Thailand?
Will you need a work permit? Do you have money for Taxes, etc?
Partner with other professionals who compliments your offering already in the Thai market.
- Add's value to your offering
- Has a large target audience
- The connection brings you credibility with the "guest partners"
- Your program brings something of value to them (they can sell their new book, dvd, link on your website).
There are already ton's of established Yoga wellness camps in Thailand- Your offering has to really offer something special, to stand above ALL of the competition.
you can look if you can offer your retreat on the website of spadreams.com
Simply just network with people who are already in the travel/leisure industry. That would mean travel agents and other kinds of vendors. You'll want to hone in on those that specialize in Thailand travel.
Also, you can find those websites that cater to Thailand travelers and ask them if they can put up a banner for your yoga retreat on their site. In addition, you can even ask them to do a mailing to their clients who are planning a trip to Thailand.
Those last things I mentioned do cost money but it's worth it to get the ball rolling and get your business in front of the right eyeballs.
You have to first identify who your target audience is. You have to know who you want to reach in order to build a brand and message. Then you can develop a strategy to reach that audience.
1. Reach out to Gyms & Personal Trainers in Countries you're interested in doing business with.
2. Well established Travel Agents are another group to consider.
3. Most likely individuals on social media will not consider retreats from someone they don't know or an unknown company overseas (Thailand) because of the logistics with Visas, borders, safety...(you might include detailed info on all these travel matters on your site to ease concern)
4. Build a website focused on yoga, wellness and Thailand as a retreat country, build a destination site then invite key social and community influencers who already have loyal members of their own tribes this way you don't have to spend significant $$$ to promote and hope to catch individual signups. They will help you get the word out as long as there's incentive in this for them - exposure, free trip, teaching etc
5. Consider creating a contest. Generate leads by sending this invite to pros in the industry. They will be showcased as winners on your page for additional exposure and the winner who also signs up their group will be entered into a drawing for 1 free trip.
The goal is to create an irresistible offer as you will not have another chance, build content around it to develop trust and develop relationship with yoga lovers. Empower, inspire and educate with it.
Facebook ads will cost you a lot of $$ starting off. You might want to focus on researching core industry websites and doing homework on how much it will cost you to promote on their sites if they offer advertising. You can also run PPCs through google adwords and hopefully you know few ways to lower your cost per click.
Before you begin, ask yourself who your audience really is by creating max 3 personas: Get down to details:
Who is she/he?
How old is she/he
Children/no children?
Where does she/he live?
Interested in? yoga and wellness (but what kind of wellness- emotional, physical, nutritional etc)
Describe her/his lifestyle, interests, likes, dislikes, values etc
Why would she/he care to go?
What benefits would she/he get out of such retreat, what other benefits can you offer in addition?
What are her/his pain points to address (stress, pain, general well being etc) <-- create content around those pain points.
You have to paint a picture of her/him in your mind and then next step would be to figure out where she/he hangs out online. What sites does she/he read, socialize on etc...
Do research on top yoga companies, consider partnerships of sorts (many options) and engage people by asking to share content they like on your site or perhaps group page you create on social networks.
There's no easy, quick way to grow relationships but the more you focus on a lifestyle and who you're selling you, the clearer your strategy will become.
Kwan, If you are considering to attract tourists then you must promote it with Travel agents, boutique travel agents etc. Firstly you must have a website- e-commerce will be ideal. then you will need to invest in B2B , B2S( Business to Social Media) and C2C marketplace to generate word of mouth and referral program.
Hi Kwan,
You are starting this off the right way.
Finding the right audience is where most businesses go wrong.
here are six questions to work out who your right audience is.
1/ What do they want ?
2/ What's getting in the way of them getting that ?
3/ Who do they love ?
4/ Who do they hate ?
5/ What do they love ?
6/ What do they hate ?
Once you have the answers to these questions nailed you can move onto the next stage..
I hope this helps Kwan.
Sa was dee kap.
Khun Mike
Be active on a variety of social media platforms and make sure you have a funnel for your potential customers. This would be something like a website where they can purchase a pass to your class or to purchase products. Don't just promote yourself and put up ads. You want to show that your an expert in your field and ad valuable content. Help people and give them suggests. Many people as questions online and by answering them they will be happy to return the favor by going to your website. I hope this is a start. Good Luck.
Hey Kwan, Yoga is Huge on Facebook. Look how many members are engaging in FB yoga groups. 1) Join the groups for free and offer your input. 2) Show your ads to those groups, using Facebook 'targeted' ads and custom audiences. Facebook makes it easy to target, specific markets and audiences. You could pay by impression or pay-per-click.
In Tailand, your ads should cost pennies, to promote.
Have fun...oh yeah, use some type of incentive to draw them to your event.
Right to the most, David.
I'd also like to add up with a few more, say having some presentations done as well if there are any pictures/videos, you can just share it too. This in addition will reach through the community faster than your regular process. Explaining your industrious ways will certainly bring over multiple views.
Good luck Kwan!
As an afterthought. You need to really get the who your audience is first. Doing this will make you competition proof.