One of the best things you can do if you are not sure where to even start with marketing is to read our Bali Retreat Planning Blog. All of our Blog articles are either about Bali in general (which is important to know the place where you are going) or advice on planning and marketing your retreat. There is all sorts of useful information in there and we are always adding more. If there is a specific topic that you would like us to cover, let us know!

Here are a few tips to help get you started marketing your retreat…

Choose your target market – your organizing and planning of the retreat, from the place and venue you choose, to the food and activities you include, will be dictated by the people you are marketing to. You can’t be all things to all people, so decide WHO your retreat is for and market to them.

Use descriptive words – in your marketing material, so people can visualize what you are offering. Which one sounds better – ‘6 nights accommodation’ or ‘6 nights at a luxurious beach front resort’? Being descriptive also helps you zero in on your target market. If you say the retreat is for “adventurous travellers” or that it’s “luxury”, or “rustic” then potential attendees will have a fairly good idea of what style your retreat is and if it suits them.

SHOW, don’t tell – With people’s relatively low attention span, people respond to vibrant images that evoke emotion much more than they do to textual descriptions, regardless of how well they are written. You need to grab their attention long enough for them to want to read on. Did you know on average a person spends 3.5 seconds looking at a webpage to see if they find what they are looking for before they click and move on? The only way you are going to make them stop for more than those 3.5 seconds is if you grab their attention with a photo. Imagine you are scrolling through your newsfeed – what’s going to make you stop and take a closer look?

Start marketing your retreat before you’ve finished planning it – it may sound like you are putting the horse before the cart, but it will grab the attention of potential attendees early, so they have time to plan themselves and think about attending – don’t forget people have family, work and other obligations they have to work around to take the time off to go on a retreat. You can start with marketing what you do know, and as you plan more of your trip, you’ll be able to fill in the blanks and provide more detail. One thing we have to emphasize not to do that we see all too often done by inexperienced group leaders, is to NOT advertise a price before you know how much it’s going to cost you. You can’t set a price and hope to organize your retreat to fit into a budget you randomly set, because it is not going to be the retreat experience you wanted to create…. and right from the beginning you’ve shot yourself in the foot.

Take advantage of social media – engage with your followers and for every push of your retreat you do, post 3 or 4 things that are useful to them. It’s all about the give and take! Don’t forget to respond when people ask questions and get even more involved in communities online. It’s free to join yoga groups on Facebook, you just need to invest your time. Ask questions about what people are looking for in a retreat, respond with helpful suggestions when other people want to know something and be active in different groups. Then when it’s relevant, you can bring up your retreat!
By the way – feel free to join our Bali Retreat Planning Facebook group!

Build an email list & add a Newsletter with subscription to your website – unlike social media, things you email are guaranteed to reach everyone you are targeting.

Use online platforms to promote your retreat – as well as there being of course paid sites, there are also lots of free ones that list retreats.

Have an understanding of Search Engine Optimization – this the how people searching the Internet for a retreat will find you. The more you understand how websites are selected by Internet browsers when someone runs a search, the more you can optimize your website and posts and the more people you will reach.