Spreading the Word is the UK’s first ever practical guide to marketing for retreat centres. The full colour 32-page ‘toolkit’, written by former APR Vice Chair Ben Wilson, offers practical advice for retreat centres of all sizes and budgets, seeking to share good practice on how to spread the word about retreats and quiet days in a rapidly changing world.
Alongside tips on a full range of marketing techniques, the toolkit sets out steps that houses can take to ensure their website appears high up in web search engines, such as Google, and offers advice on designing or reviewing how houses represent themselves online. It highlights how social media can be used to promote retreat house programmes, and explains how best to frame stories about new developments in a way that might attract the attention of local newspapers and radio stations.
The guide encourages wardens and their teams to ‘think like a newcomer’, reminding those of us with an affiliation with the retreat movement that many people – even regular churchgoers – have little or no experience or understanding of what going on retreat involves, and will have a whole host of questions about the process. The toolkit explains how all those of us involved in promoting retreats need to take steps to answer common queries upfront, and address misconceptions in our outward marketing.
APR President, the Rt Revd John Stroyan, writes in his introduction: “If it ever was, it is certainly no longer feasible for most retreat houses to simply exist, and wait for people to find you. Some form of outreach is necessary – in an ever noisier world – to ensure you are ‘on the radar’… It is the quality of invitation, welcome and retreat experience offered by retreat houses themselves that will ultimately sustain the current network of such centres into the future.”
Spreading the Word is available to download for free here, and is also available for purchase for just £8.00 (inc P&P), by emailing the APR Administrator on promoting.retreats@gmail.com
