SeminarSavvy.com

As a seminar promoter, your primary goals are getting prospects to pay attention to your promotions and to sign up for your seminars. To succeed, you have to overcome two obstacles.

#1 Lack of awareness.

Consumers are bombarded with advertising messages each day, from the time they get up until the moment they close their eyes at night. It’s physically impossible to pay attention to every message you’re exposed to. Out of necessity — if not to preserve your sanity — you have to ignore most of the messages you hear and see.

This is true even when you have a relationship with the person or company sending the message. At most, prospects give messages a three-second glance before hitting the delete key or tossing it in the trash.

As a result, there are huge portions of your list that only vaguely aware that you’re offering a seminar. Because they’ve been ignoring your messages, they simply aren’t aware of what you’re promoting or of what a tremendous value it is.

#2 Lack of trust

Attending an event is a big commitment. When promoting your seminars, not only are you asking prospects to spend their money, you’re asking them to invest their time with you. This is by far the toughest sale.

If prospects are unsure about your qualifications, unfamiliar with your work, or don’t fully understand how your seminar will help them, they won’t see your seminar as a smart investment of their time.

One way to overcome these two obstacles is by strengthening your seminar marketing materials and plan.

From a content perspective, you can make sure that your copy fully describes what attendees will learn, how they’ll benefit, and what problems you’ll help them solve.

From a planning perspective, you can contact prospects more often and with a wider variety of marketing tools to break through the clutter.

But there’s an easier way to build trust and awareness: Publish a newsletter or e-zine.

Newsletter marketing offers 3 key benefits:

1. You can demonstrate your expertise. For greatest effect, your newsletter should include helpful information, not just promotions. The more valuable the information, the more likely it is that prospects will hold onto your newsletter and refer to it when they are actively seeking the solution you offer.
2. You can fly below your prospects’ marketing “radar” when promoting your events and products. Because the thrust of your newsletter is education, prospects are more likely to open and read it. When you slip in mentions of your event, readers won’t be as resistant to your message. In fact, providing valuable articles can whet prospects’ thirst for more information … making them more receptive to whatever marketing message you put after your article.
3. You become a welcome guest. Providing quality content builds trust with your audience. When they get used to receive interesting, valuable information from you, they’ll be more likely to welcome and open your other messages, including promotions for your events.

Another reason you should publish newsletters? It’s a great way to force yourself to regularly create content for a blog or articles to distribute via online directories. Repackage your content for these alternate forms of distribution, and you’ll raise your visibility and SEO rankings, as well.

If you’ve been tempted to buy an email list that offers unlimited use for a one-time price … or if you view networking functions as a great way to collect email addresses for your email marketing efforts, I have a little story to share.

Every Monday night, I receive a garish email adorned with a chameleon. The message is simply a listing of the services provided by the graphic design firm that sends it in hopes that I might have work for them.

I didn’t ask to receive this information.

I’ve never even heard of the company.

So why do I receive these messages? It boils down to one of three reasons:

1. I signed up for a list somewhere and agreed (or forgot to disagree) that the list owners could share my email address with vendors they think would be a good match for my business. I’m now part of what is, technically speaking, an opt-in list … and they’ve chosen to rent my information to this design firm.
2. My email address has been harvested and packaged into a “compiled” list. As the name suggests, this type of list is a compilation of publicly available data.
3. The enterprising owners of this design firm visited my site, obtained my email address (either on the site or by signing up for my newsletter), and added me to their prospecting list.

How I ended up on their list doesn’t really matter, because the end result is the same: I’m getting email I don’t want and didn’t ask for. It’s creating a negative impression of their company. And if they don’t respond to my repeated requests to remove my email address from their list, I would be justified in reporting them as spammers.

Why should you care? Well, if you are using any of the methods listed above to promote your events, you are what I call an “Accidental Spammer.” And your well-intentioned efforts could be endangering your reputation and generating ill will among your prospects.

Method #1: If you rent an opt-in list, you may technically have permission to mail to the subscribers. But they gave permission to the list owner — not you. Unless you’re allowed to mention the list owner (“Dear Inc. Reader …”), it’s understandable why they might think you are a spammer.

Method #2: These types of lists are a bargain (17 million email addresses for only $29!). But again, you’re contacting someone without their permission. If you insist on using a compiled list, use direct mail instead. People aren’t as ferocious in guarding their mailboxes as they are in protecting their in boxes.

Method #3: If you want to go online to research potential customers, go ahead. But use a private email or their “Contact Us” form to make contact and your initial offer.

Also don’t assume that people you meet during networking and business functions want to be added to your email distribution list. Feel free to follow up with them using a private email. But give them the choice to decide whether to join your opt-in list or not.

So what should you do if you want to use email lists other than your own to promote your seminars? Sign the list owners up as affiliates, and have them send emails on your behalf.

That way, you’ll get the benefit of being exposed to a wider audience, without the risk of being reported as a spammer. Plus, you’ll benefit from the implied — and often direct — endorsement the lists owners make when sending an email promoting your event.