This week’s Help This Hound question is from Laura Davis of Santa Cruz, CA:
“I’m a seven-time HarperCollins author who now teaches writing in my home area of Santa Cruz, CA. And increasingly in retreat settings.
“This past June, I created my first international trip: a two-week writing retreat, featuring daily yoga and adventures in Bali. I filled the first trip (16 participants) and loved it and am planning to go back next June. I have a website, a participatory blog that sends out free writing prompts each week, an email mailing list of about 4,000 names. I’ve done the obvious—creating postcards, a web page designated for this event (http://www.lauradavis.net/cometobali), listed in my newsletter and in targeted emails, and have digital ads on my website and on the blog.
“What I’m looking for help with is how to reach beyond my existing network to find people: who travel regularly and like to travel with a purpose, those who like writing and yoga (both offered on the trip), and who can afford the $4,200-$4,500 pricetag (airfare included) for an eco-friendly trip. The trip is a bit of hybrid—it includes writing, yoga, adventure and cultural adventures so it’s not a pure writing retreat.
“My typical students are women ages 35-65 who are in transition, wanting to know themselves better, or looking for a change in their lives.”
The Publicity Hound says:
I can think of so many ways to promote this one, Laura, and I’ll add my own ideas after other Publicity Hounds start the list and offer theirs. Other readers who have publicity dilemmas can submit their Help This Hound question to me at JStewart (at) PublicityHound (dot) com and type Help This Hound in the subject line.
Sounds like the men don’t want to go on your tour to Bali but they want to go on history tours like this one below. I keep getting the print brochure for this one in the mail every year and will probably go as a result of getting that print brochure. Mostly only men go on these. This one is with Valor Tours. The idea of his and hers tours might make a good travel article magazine. My wife and I visit family often and always together but she isn’t interested in the things I’m interested in seeing so we at times take separate trips. She is going down the Rhine on a cruise this Christmas with a woman friend of ours while I tend to the dog. In addition to Valor tours there is History America and several good companies in the UK offering history and WW 2 and WW 1 tours. Finally, the demographic you are looking for with women is the main demographic of Pinterest.
You’re so right about Pinterest being the perfect place for Laura to start pinning her gorgeous photos of Bali. Not only are women the primary users of the site, but travel and vacation destinations are among the top four topics of photos that are pinned. The other three are clothing and fashion, home decor and crafts.
Well, Joan and David, I’ve signed on to Pinterest and have created an account, but now that I have, I no idea what to do with it–so I guess maybe it’s time I get someone to teach me. I do have tons of gorgeous pictures of Bali–that’s for sure!
Laura, I hosted a webinar several months ago that walks you step by step through the process of how to use Pinterest. The video replay and the handy checklist I compiled on things to make sure you do every time you are on Pinterest can be ordered at http://publicityhound.com/publicity-products/marketing-tapes/pinterest.htm
Since that webinar, I’ve created a board called “50 Tips for Free Publicity” on Pinterest. Each image is one publicity tip. Each publicity tips leads back to a fresh post at my blog where I go into more depth on that topic. From some of the posts, I include links to my products and services. People who are following me are repinning the tips, and this puts them in front of THEIR audience. Check out my Pinterest board at http://pinterest.com/publicityhound/50-tips-for-free-publicity/
I also have used Pinterest to pull traffic to old blog posts. I blogged about how I did this at https://publicityhound.com/blog/how-i-use-pinterest-to-link-to-old-blog-posts/
Good luck with Pinterest and with reaching all those women who will want to join you in Bali.
Thanks, Joan. I’ll check out the product and your board. As with all PR efforts, it’s always a question of time. As a small business owner, I already feel like I’m spending most of my week marketing, talking to potential students, managing the students I have, planning classes, administration. It’s hard to figure out the time to learn another new system, but I can see that as a one-person entrepreneur, I have to keep expanding and communication systems evolve. But it’s hard!
It’s hard if you don’t know what you’re doing. Been there, done that! Start small and don’t try to tackle Pinterest all at once. Take it in baby steps.
Laura, it seems to me that “Goodreads” website, which caters to your target audience, would be a great place to start. These people are avid readers, writers, and have a high percent of women in your age and income demographics. I also notice a high percent of hopeless romantics, who I’m sure would enjoy Bali.
Linkedin also has many different type of book groups that you could explore for your exact target audience. I’ve always felt that Linkedin is a more grown-up, serious, business site — filled with business owners and high management people that could afford your venue. Other sites are bigger, more social, but they seem more silly and cater to a high volume unemployed kids.
Rico, your recommendation for Goodreads is right on target. A similar niche site, though much smaller, is RTBookReviews.com, specifically for people who like romance books.
LinkedIn book groups are great, too. And I’ll bet she’ll find yoga groups galore, both on Goodreads and LinkedIn. Yes, Laura, yoga isn’t the main attraction of your tour, but anyone who already does yoga will be more included to take a look at the main attractions.
It might be a bit simplistic, but reaching out to travel pubs and Web sites and personal growth Web sites seems like a natural fit. Perhaps you could even work with one of your past attendees and have her write a review of your course that you seed in places other than your Web site. You could also consider sponsoring a contest for women bloggers/writers. Have them promote your trip by writing why they would benefit from it and then giveaway the land portion of the trip or a percentage off the total price? It sounds like a fabulous experience.
If Laura could offer an affiliate program, in which she pays a commission to anyone who sends her a paying customer, this would be another “boost.” I don’t know how much that would eat into the bottom line, but I can tell you that when you give people an incentive to promote you, many of them do.
Laura — have you shared the details of your program with traditional travel media (print, broadcast)? In most all newspapers that I read, each continues a travel column, if not a section. Your kind of package is great information for that type of space. There are also dedicated channels and programming for travel. The best part about generating news on those mediums is that you can share links via blog and other social media.
Gail, let me take this one step further. Laura can do what the big travel and tourism bureaus do. Invite a freelance writer to come along on the trip, gratis. That person would then, hopefully, write about it for a variety of publications. Vetting the journalists is a fine art, but if you can swing it financially, this might be a good way to build the buzz.
I’ve had a very busy day and just got back to check your responses now–I actually don’t even know what GoodReads is, but I’ll check it out. Lori, I could potentially have a contest like your are describing and just eliminate my profit on one person’s total price–it would be a substantial discount, but not free. One of the issues is that there are two teachers (me, writing, my partner, yoga) involved in this trip and two tour leaders splitting the profits, and it’s a small number of travelers, so there’s not a high profit margin to work with. But I find the contest idea intriguing. I’m not sure how I would go about establishing such a contest–I don’t know the world of travel bloggers and am not sure where to begin. Inviting someone to come gratis would eliminate any profit I would make on the whole trip for the year and I’m not willing to go that far. Gail, I haven’t shared the trip with traditional travel media–again, this whole world is brand new to me and I’m not yet connected to that network at all. I have been thinking of advertising in Journeywoman, but that one website/newsletter would pretty much wipe out my whole advertising budget so I want to be sure that’s a good bet for me. Anyone have any knowledge or experience with them?
Goodreads is the world’s largest book review and recommendation site, with more than 10 million members, many of them who belong to at least one of the thousands of special interest groups. You can find it at http://www.Goodreads.com. You’ll want to join the conversation about books at this site and not only promote what you’re doing. If you think this would be too time-consuming, put this idea on the back burner and do something that’s less time-consuming.
Laura, I think many authors tend to avoid real grassroots marketing, perhaps with the exception of their own sites, blogs, newsletters, etc. I’d like to see you reach out to others who produce newsletters like Penny Sansevieri, John Kremer, Dan Poynter, our own Joan, and me. All of us keep our readers in mind when deciding what to include in our letters.
We don’t publish our own stuff exclusively (-: . Some of us have regular interactive features. Laura, you also didn’t mention ads–which I don’t think are generally that effective. Still, the right magazine for the right retreat or conference can be very effective. I sponsored a conference in Rome last year (www.howtodoitfrugally.com/Roman_retreat.com). My co-sponsor (a fellow UCLA writing instructor) and I got good results indeed from the classified section in Poets & Writers. One must plan a long time in advance to run ads in slick magazines like this.
Carolyn, I love your idea of reaching out to ezine editors. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Laura, the best source for ezines is http://new-list.com/. They have one entire category for Writing/Publishing & Speaking and another for Travel & Leisure.
September is National Yoga Month and there’s a list of participating yoga studios nationwide, I’m sure, at their main webpage (here’s the Facebook page which has over 11,000 likes http://www.facebook.com/YogaMonth).
I’m a firm believer in Facebook ads ~ although that may not be in the budget. Can be wildly effective for targeting esp. if one doesn’t have a list.
Also, what about reaching out to the larger online publishers in that genre – Sounds True, Hayhouse, Elephant Journal, etc. With such a nice byline perhaps you can post an article or be interviewed by one of their staff columnists.
Peace and profits,
Tia D.
I just placed an pay per click in GoodReads. That was quite an education. I bought a month’s worth of potential clicks. Carolyn, I did advertise once in P&W for another annual writing retreat I do and I got zero response from that. And it was the most expensive ad I ever placed. When there’s a glut of writing opportunities available, I haven’t had great results. So Joan and others, do have any other guidance for starting a contest as you suggested. Would giving $700 off a trip like this be enough incentive to get people to want to get involved? Or is that too small potatoes?
I’d love your specific advice on how I might reach out to ezine authors/editors. How to phrase my offer so there’s something in it for them. And if I were to have a contest, I suppose I would be the judge…but what would I be judging?
Here’s what I’d do. I’d first write a short article or blog post along the lines of “8 changes to make when the words just won’t come” (i.e. deal with writer’s block). One of the tips will be to change your scenery–go on vacation. Another will be to work with a coach. Another will be to try a style of writing that’s completely different than your own. Whatever. Then offer the tips, or a link to the blog post, to the ezine editors. You probably already know about the major ezines. Try to offer them to editors who are not in direct competition with each other.
You can write another article on “7 ways yoga makes writers more creative.” Same thing. Offer that to yoga newsletter editors. At the end of the article, write one or two short sentences telling people what you do and link to the website.
Laura, let us now if the pay-per-click ads are effective. I don’t have an idea for a contest, but I do think $700 off is a pretty nice carrot to offer.
Thanks, Tia, I’ll give that a try.
Just wanted to thank everyone again for their ideas which I will slowly digest and implement. Fortunately, my retreat is already half sold and there are five more people who say they are enrolling (I never count on it until the deposit is down), which would mean that there would only be three open spots left–and that seems to be pretty much through my initial burst of publicity to my own list and word of mouth. I do have the Goodreads ad running and am putting up an author profile there. That was a great suggestion. I’m sure I will utilize all these ideas for the next retreat–and the one after that. Thank you all!
Laura, I’m so my glad my Hounds were able to help. Have fun on the retreat!
Wanted to wish you all a big thank you again. My retreat is sold out now–and it’s nine months away. I’m thrilled and thinking maybe it’s time to schedule another!
Bravo, Laura! By all means, Laura, come back here and take another look at all the great ideas we’ve given you. Have fun on your retreat.