The Toronto Yoga Conference & SHOW 2018
4 DAYS. OVER 300 VENDORS. Over 80 of the World’s Leading Teachers. OVER 200,000 YOGIS.
Canada’s largest Yoga event happens annually in downtown Toronto. The Yoga Conference and Show is an event with a showroom and series of classes in the Toronto Conference Centre. Building on the success of 2017, 2018 was shaping up to be a big year.
6 Months. 2 Marketing people. Selling out 80 Teacher’s Classes To OVER 200,000 YOGIS.
The challenge here was there’s a lot of people to reach, and only two marketing people (four full-time people) total to organize and execute the event.
Strategy: Use the Yoga Community’s Love for Yoga to our advantage.
The Yoga Conference classes were the revenue-maker - the goal was to sell as many conference classes possible by using The Toronto Yoga Show (the vendor and free class area) as a marketing vehicle.
1) CROSSed-LEGs AND CROSS-MARKETed WITH LOCAL STUDIOS
We sent personal invites to every yoga studio we could find in the GTA and beyond. It’s helpful that the Yoga Conference has been fostering these relationships for decades.
We distributed free copies of The Yoga Show magazine to all the studios including information about the upcoming classes with world-renowned yogis.
We also shared and engaged with studios who tagged us or mentioned us on social media. And were sure to highlight studios on our own feeds, for that yen sense of reciprocity.
2) GATHER the tens of thousands Following on social media.
The Yoga Conference had over 10,000 followers on Facebook and 3,000 on Instagram. But their last post was 3 months ago. With 6 months to the conference, it was time to build hype with weekly posts including: faculty spotlights and interviews, social media contests and giveaways for vendor prizes and free Conference classes.
Created blogs and content suggesting yoga conference classes for specific needs of our audience, for example yoga for moms, yoga for athletes, etc.
We also started an influencer program, reaching out to local yogis with big followings and giving them a VIP treatment at the festival. Resulting in hundreds of thousands of impressions to yoga audiences.
3) MANIFEST A HIGHER Social Media Ad Spend
Created ads to get more attendees to the Yoga Conference Facebook event page, accumulating over 100,000 “going” responses (but over 200,000 were interested!).
We also ran a campaign to give free tickets to the Yoga Show portion of the event (usually $10). We had over 30,000 email signups which allowed us to advertise the Yoga Conference classes directly to email.
Both of these methods allowed for re-targeting efforts for social media ads geared toward specific Conference Classes.
4) NAMASTE. IT’S SHOW TIME! LIVE EVENT COVERAGE
We circled the event hundreds of times posting exciting hapennings to Instagram stories and Twitter as they were happening.
Receiving and giving gratitude back and forth to the #torontoyoga and #tys2018 hashtags. Making daily photo dumps from a pro photographer to increase the FOMO.
Being sure to continuously update folks on conference classes that we’re selling out or close to selling out.
Finding a few brief moments of rest (preferably at one of the massage vendors booths).
5) OH THE PARTNERSHIPS You’LL MAKE!
Teaming up with the yoga mat vendors for the old mat, new life program. People who donated their own mat to school programs in-need received discounts on new mats. The post on Facebook garnered over 100,000 organic impressions. We collected over 1000 mats. A sustainability win!
We partnered with Lole Canada for cross-promotion on platforms, increasing our organic reach by tens of thousands.
We communicated with over 300 vendors via a newsletter coordinating cross-promotions and allowing them to participate in vendor giveaways and spotlights on our social media channels.
6) OHM MY MEDIA!
Our event and press releases garnered attention from the local news at City TV, CBC, as well as a few independent TV networks.
Articles were featured in The Toronto Star, as well as local and regional papers across Toronto and the GTA.
Our influencer program attracted a few independent influencers and bloggers who wrote stories and articles about our show.
As We Entered Savasana, some reflections:
The Yoga Conference and Show was a crash-course lesson in leveraging community partners to expand reach. In 6-months we garnered over one-million social media impressions earned, owned and everything in-between.
With over 250,000 attendees at the festival, it was bigger than last year. We sold out about 80% of conference classes seeing an increase in revenue from the previous year, and a much healthier cost per conversion (between $20-$30 dollars for packages between $100-$800).
For this wellness-focused event, we did our best to keep stress levels down and prioritize the high-impact and low-energy tactics. There were a million other options but there’s benefit in making a plan and doing your best to stick to it. Just breathe.