SeminarSavvy.com

One popular (and cheap) approach to filling seminar seats is to involve affiliates.

(Affiliates are people who will promote your event in exchange for commission on every sale they generate. Ideally, they will have their own opt-in lists of subscribers who hang on their every word.)

When you have affiliates who are highly influential and have the power to bring a lot of registrations, it’s worth your time to set up a customized landing page for their traffic.

Rather than sending their visitors to your general landing page, create a page that incorporates the super-affiliate’s name, phone and even a video or audio message. If your affiliate is going to be a guest speaker at your event, you can also highlight the specific things they’ll be discussing.

A customized landing page becomes exceptionally powerful if your super-affiliate will be a guest speaker on a preview teleseminar (where prospects can sample your content and decide if they want to sign up for your paid event).

That’s because your super-affiliate will probably (and should) send a promotion teasing his/her list about the content of the preview call. If readers are interested, they’ll click the link and expect to see more information about that particular call and how to get signed up.

If you take them directly to a salesletter for your paid event, to a landing page that discusses ALL of the preview calls you’re hosting (and your super-affiliate’s email doesn’t mention that his/her call is one of a series), or to an opt-in page doesn’t mention preview calls at all … you risk confusing your affiliate’s visitors.

Confused visitors leave without opting in … and without registering for seminars. Your affiliates won’t earn the return on investment they’re making to promote your seminar … and in the future, they’ll be less likely to want to promote your events.

 RECOMMENDED RESOURCE:

The Affiliate Inferno training program offered by Russell Brunson and Stu McLaren is top-notch for learning how to build a successful affiliate program. Russell and Stu have different approaches to building affiliate programs — take your pick about which approach best suits your event and your personal style.

A few years ago, a seminar marketer was picking my brain about how to fill more of his seminar seats.

When we started talking about his competition, he mentioned as an aside that his biggest competitor had published a book that had been on the best-seller list for several weeks.

“Do you think that’s helped him?” he asked.

Well … heck, yes!

Publishing a book gives you 3 distinct advantages over non-authors:

1. Name recognition. The better known your book is, the more name recognition you have. This, in turn, makes you a bigger attraction as a speaker.

2. Credibility. Even if you self-publish, people are impressed when you can hand them a real, printed book.

3. Leverage. If people are interested in what they’re learning in your book, they’ll often be interested in continuing their studies with you. So make sure to promote your seminars in your book.

* Mention your seminars in the book content (“During one recent seminar, an attendee came up and asked me ….”)

* Include a generic mention of your seminars in your bio and/or on the page listing details about your resources (“For details about the author’s seminars, books and home-study programs, visit ….”).

* And if you really have your act together, include a special offer to entice readers to attend your seminar, such as a coupon for discounted tuition.