Marketing for health and wellness retreats – where should you start?

Over the years, we’ve held many health and wellness retreats at Sine Cera Rainforest Retreat – from yoga and meditation weekend retreats for thirty people, to multiple weeks of trauma rehabilitation for one hundred people.  

Sine Cera’s beauty and serenity has been a significant factor in the success of a wide range of health and wellness practitioner-led events since it was established in 1987.  It has hosted retreats focused on yoga, martial arts, tai chi, meditation, health, personal development, carer support, crafts, gaming and youth to adult initiation programs.

 
Attracting the right attendees to your event is critically important.  With so many ways to market your event, how do you know what are the right strategies for you, and what are the best ways to implement them?  

We are therefore providing some guidance below based on our experience of marketing events and retreats. We hope this gives you a good grounding and some useful ideas on how to successfully market your health and wellness retreat.

Some of the best practices for marketing health retreats include:

1. Clearly define your target audience: Identify who the retreat is meant for and tailor your marketing efforts to reach that specific group of people. Ask yourself: who will be most interested in attending this health retreat. It could be individuals looking to improve their physical and mental well-being, or people interested in learning more about a specific health topic.

   Be very clear on this because most advertising can be targeted using geographic, demographic and many other factors, so being razor focused on defining your target audience is critical to success.   

   

2. Use a variety of marketing channels: Use a combination of online and offline marketing channels to reach as wide an audience as possible e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, other social media platforms, email marketing, and print advertisements.  Make sure you promote your retreat consistently to all your online owned audience channels. Prioritise your website home page and other key pages, and send a dedicated email to your email database.  Also, remember to post numerous status updates for your social media followers, previous customers, and leads you have generated.
   
   

   It also helps to have an ongoing focus on lead acquisition from these channels with an always-on approach to lead generation.  Use paid advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google to reach a wider audience. Also, use targeted advertising to reach potential attendees based on demographics, interests, and behaviours.

   

3. Highlight the benefits: Clearly communicate the benefits of attending the retreat. It could be improved health and wellness, stress reduction, or increased energy levels.
   Testimonials or reviews from previous guests and retreats work well for this.

   Describe how it will make them feel? What areas can it unblock? What would the experience be like for the first-time participant?  Communicate these emotional aspects by using visuals, testimonials, and other engaging content to showcase the benefits of attending your retreat.

   

4. Create a sense of exclusivity: Make the retreat appear exclusive and available for a limited-time-only. This can increase interest and attendance.  You might also limit the number of attendees to create a more intimate and exclusive atmosphere.

   Use exclusive language and branding such as “invitation only” or “VIP retreat”. By implementing these strategies, attendees will feel like they are part of a privileged group and will be more likely to attend the retreat. 

   Offer early bird discounts and other incentives to encourage early registration.

   

5. Provide detailed information: Make sure you provide detailed information about the retreat, including the schedule, accommodation, and cost, so that potential attendees can make informed decisions.   Provide content from an overview and highlights level to a fully detailed itinerary that allows your audience to learn all about your retreat offering.  Respond quickly and follow up by phone and email with any enquiries that require further information.

   Create a dedicated campaign or landing page for your retreat that includes all the relevant information potential attendees will need, such as the schedule, location, teachers and speakers. Use this page as the central hub for all your digital marketing efforts.

   Make sure your landing page is also easy to navigate and includes a clear call-to-action (CTA) that encourages visitors to register or learn more. Use forms and lead magnets (e.g a free booklet) to capture contact information from potential attendees.

   

6. Build a relationship with attendees: Follow up with attendees after the retreat to maintain a relationship and to encourage them to attend future events.  Consider after-event activities from online meeting catch-ups to additional valuable content you can share with your attendees or within group chats, video meetings or attendee forums.
   
   
7. Get great testimonials: Ask attendees for testimonials that you can use to promote your next retreat.   Try to capture them in the moment during the retreat with guest feedback forms and other open-prompted methods of generating useful feedback.    Your guests’ experience and feedback can also help to improve future events.   Also, encourage guests to share photos and their experiences with you.
   
   

   

8. Partner with Influencers or other related businesses: Partner with influencers or other related businesses to expand your reach and credibility.    Based on your target audience, understand who the key influencers are in that niche and approach them to help share your message, attend your retreat, and amplify the reach of your marketing efforts.  Partner with influencers, health and wellness experts, and other organisations in your industry to promote your retreat and reach a wider audience.
   

    

9. Track everything: Use tracking links to track the performance of your digital marketing efforts and understand which channels and campaigns are driving the most registrations.    Whether you are using Google Analytics, or even link shorteners such as bit.ly, everything can be tracked to help optimise your efforts.
   
   
10. Automate: We have seen increased use of automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as chatbots and messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, and Slack to interact with potential attendees, answer questions, and provide more information about your retreat.   In fact, some parts of this article were written by CHATGPT because we have been testing and looking at various uses for Artificial Intelligence systems within Dharma Care. 
    
    We believe it has some useful applications to save time in developing content.

    This article is our first attempt at using the CHATGPT system and is one of our first experiments in using AI tools in our charity.

We are keen to continue this conversation with you, so let us know what you think and what works best for you in marketing your health and wellness retreat.

In addition to the above guidelines, if you are thinking of holding a retreat at Sine Cera Rainforest Retreat, we can implement the following promotion activities for you at no charge.

Sine Cera – Events Promotion and Marketing

By booking your event at Sine Cera we can help put your retreat in front of more of the right people.  We understand how hard it can be to market and promote your event whilst you are focused on running it. Let us help take your event marketing to the next level.

Event Promotion – Free Package

By hosting your event at Sine Cera we can offer you all of the following marketing and promotion benefits.  These are essentially focused on your content reaching more people and generating leads – all at no cost to you.

• An Event Listing on Sine Cera website.  1,000-1500 unique visitors per month including $5k+ in paid search spend on google every month.   https://www.sinecera.org.au/events/

• Sine Cera Facebook Page co-host of your Event – connecting the retreat with our venue page.   Sine Cera Facebook page has 4,000+ followers.  https://www.facebook.com/sineceraretreat/events/
• Facebook event invitations – personal invites to a limit of 500 people across Northern NSW / Gold Coast.
• Social Media post to promote your event across Facebook, Instagram and Linked In. Let us help you tap into our owned audience of 6,500+ followers.
• Featured in a monthly Dharma Care / Sine Cera email newsletter sent to over 1,000 people including Sine Cera retreat organisers and guests.

Our marketing spend is focused on targeting people living in a 4-hour drive radius to Sine Cera so it is likely to align well with your own retreat’s target audience.