How to Market a Yoga Retreat? (Get It Fully Booked Every Time)
I see there are many articles online talking about how to market a yoga retreat but all of them are just scratching the surface.
To effectively advertise your retreat and make it into a sustainable business that works, not only today but for the long term, you need to have systems in place that bring in customers on autopilot.
My experience comes from running a blog specifically geared towards selling yoga retreats for the french market alone, and over $100,000 of ad spend marketing different types of products via social media generating over $300,000 in gross sales using only Facebook ads.
In this article we are going to cover:
- How to build an email list using free and paid tools
- How to run Facebook and Instagram ads
- How to leverage online yoga retreat marketplaces
Let’s begin..
Building an email list for free
The money is in the email list, and if you are planning to sell a retreat and make it a sustainable enterprise, you want to be collecting emails as soon as possible.
These are some places to start getting emails from:
1. Join Facebook groups
Join groups related to your yoga & retreats and add value on a weekly basis.
A good strategy is to post general details about your retreat and have people comment their email below if they are interested in getting all of the info, or accessing early bird discounts only available to your email list subscribers.
This is a great way to gauge interest in what you are intending to offer and see if there’s traction around it before you start putting money into it (assuming you are just starting out).
2. Create a blog
Having a blog will allow you to create content that is relevant to your yoga retreat, and will let you have a ‘lead magnet’ in place to capture emails in exchange for a freebie, like an ebook, a webinar, or a free set of online yoga lessons.
You can then share these pieces of content you create in the Facebook groups you’ve joined and potential clients will visit your website to read, and perhaps download your freebie, BINGO, a new subscriber joins the list.
In addition to that, writing articles relevant to your yoga retreat focus will, in time, attract visitors organically (from google search results), and also help you grow your email list.
3. Send friend requests to people from groups related to yoga
Once they accept your request contact them, ask them how they are doing and explain that you are creating a yoga retreat, ask if they would be interested in joining your email list to receive discounts when you have everything ready.
This strategy is also good to expand your circle of influence.
Create posts using Facebook that let your new friends know you better, share stuff about your retreat, people love to have insider info about what’s happening..
4. Create a Youtube channel
This is another venue that allows you to create content to then share in Facebook groups and to your email list.
It’s another great way of driving traffic to your lead magnets and to your email list.
If you have fun making videos, and you do it consistently, this can also become an additional stream of income by putting ads on your videos after you have 1000 subscribers.
5. Connect with your yoga students in real life
If you are working at a studio or on your own, invite your students to join your mailing list, tell them about the retreats you will be planning in the future and get them excited about it.
Building an email list using ads
You can speed up the growth of your email list by using Facebook lead ads.
If you have a lead magnet to offer (free guide, ebook, webinar, online yoga lessons, etc..) you can build this list pretty inexpensively.
Remember that you sell your retreat at an average of $1000-$1500 and you have usually around 10-20 spots available.
So, spending, say $0.5-$2 per new lead and converting 1% of your leads into paying retreat clients means that every $100 you spend, you gross a sale of $1000. Not too shabby…
Plus, remember these leads will stay with you for as long as you run your retreat business, meaning that they may not be buying now, but they may be buying your next retreat date/location.
That’s a concept called customer lifetime value (CLV), which accounts for the value of a lead for the lifetime of your business.
Leads that buy now, may buy from you more than once; leads that did not buy this time, may buy into your next retreat… A glimpse of the power of building a list…
How do you build a Facebook Lead ad Campaign for a yoga retreat?
First, create a business ad account on Facebook (free) https://business.facebook.com/adsmanager/
It’s recommended to have a Facebook business page, you can create one very easily, here’s a video for you if you don’t know how to do it:
If you want to run ads from your business page follow the prompts and create a new business within Facebook’s ad manager.
It’s going to ask for your Facebook business page and your Instagram page if you have one (if not you can use your Facebook page to advertise on Insta).
Once you are on the Ads Manager:
*When selling a yoga retreat there’s the advantage of being able to sell to people from all over the world.
However, some countries have a higher purchasing power, meaning that it’s more expensive to get leads but these leads convert at a much higher rate.
Here I suggest you test (in separate Adsets):
- Worldwide, excluding: Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China
- United states, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Australia
Leave everything else as is, change Ad Set Name to: ‘Yoga worldwide’ OR ‘Yoga Big 5’ (depending on the locations you selected) to identify each Adset.
Then click ‘New Ad’ on the left-hand column.
Change Ad Name to: Ad 1, make sure your Facebook and Instagram accounts are selected properly.
If you don’t have an Insta account it will show as your Facebook page, that’s ok. Scroll down when done.
Add an image* of your freebie (guide/ebook cover or picture of you -or someone- practicing yoga) or add a video of you explaining about the freebie you have to offer (the more natural the video looks the better, use your phone and talk directly to it as you would talk to a friend).
‘Primary text’ lets you expand on what you have for them and the benefits of downloading your guide or assisting your webinar.
Long copy works best.
Tell a story about the transformation your prospects will experience after reading your guide or assisting your webinar.
Create a ‘Headline’ that describes what you offer, like:
- Free webinar to increase flexibility
- The ultimate guide to whole foods diet
- Benefits of assisting a yoga retreat
- How to choose a yoga retreat
You can create a really good looking image using canva.com (free)
Leave everything else as-is, scroll down to ‘Instant Form’
Change Form Name to: Form 1, Leave ‘Form Type’ as is, Under ‘Intro’ select ‘Use the image from your ad’, remove ‘Greeting’, scroll down when you are done.
Leave ‘Questions’ as is (you will be getting Name and Email from customers that sign up).
You have to add a privacy policy, if you have it on your website simply put your link there, if you don’t have one, create one using google docs (https://docs.google.com/) and get a link to it by clicking the ‘Share’ button at the upper right-hand corner to paste it here.
Under ‘Link Text’ simply put ‘Privacy Policy’.
Under ‘Completion’ complete all of the details.
Keep it simple and to the point, if you are giving them a guide or ebook to download, a simple message with a DOWNLOAD button is enough, if you are directing them to a webinar link, then change the call to action button and text to ‘Visit Website’.
Easily set up your Facebook pixel to track conversions if you have a website by clicking the ‘Set Up’ button.
To schedule your campaign to be launched click on the green ‘Publish’ button at the bottom right-hand corner.
THAT’S IT!
What do I do with my email list?
Ok, your email list is growing, now what do you do?
You sign up with an email provider like Convertkit.
And create an email campaign to share:
- Content you create from your blog and your youtube channel (usually a sequence)
- News regarding your upcoming yoga retreat (usually a broadcast)
- Products or services
You can create a sequence that’s automated, meaning every new subscriber will receive these emails sequentially.
Or you can create a broadcast, meaning you will be mass emailing your list (but don’t worry, convert kit allows you to highly personalize your emails making this process a breeze).
Adding your retreat to yoga marketplaces
Marketplaces are an easy way to get your retreat exposed to hundreds of potential customers at no cost to you until you make a sale.
The downside is that you need to have pictures of the place so you can’t really ‘test’ the viability of your retreat using these platforms, you need to have it already rolling.
Yoga retreat marketplace FAQs
Yoga marketplaces across the board charge 15% of the booking price, and it’s generally free to post.
Ideally 6 months in advance.
Yes, pictures are key. Have between 20-30 pictures showing your venue and your activities.
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