SeminarSavvy.com

Past attendees are a valuable, yet often-overlooked, source of leads for your seminars. Not only can past attendees endorse your seminar, they also are likely to know other people like themselves — people who should be attending your event.

Yet, some promoters don’t market to past attendees. After all, they’ve already attended … so why would they want to pay to attend again?

Other promoters will include past attendees in their marketing. They send their seminar promotions, such as a brochure or email, and hope that past participants think to forward the information to anyone who might be interested.

But you can do more. To leverage your customer relationships to produce greater results, incorporate one or more of these ideas into your marketing mix:

1. Incorporate a specific request into your seminar brochure, letter or other materials. Ask recipients to share the promotion with friends, relatives or colleagues who might be interested in attending.
2. Send past attendees a separate promotion (e.g., a cover sheet with your seminar brochure or an email blast) to solicit their help. Acknowledge that they attended your event in the past, and tell them that you’d appreciate their help in spreading the word about your upcoming seminar.
3. To make it easy for past attendees to identify people who might be interested in your event, describe your target audience to them. The more specific you are, the better you’ll be able to help jog their memory. In addition to using demographics and other descriptors (e.g., job title, education, location, age, gender, etc.), think about what your prospects want to accomplish. For example, rather than “seminar promoters,” I could describe my ideal prospects as “public speakers who are ready to host their own events,” “seminar coordinators at associations,” or “consultants who want to use seminars to generate qualified leads.”
4. It also may be helpful to include a list of complaints, frustrations or challenges that your audience is dealing with. These serve as “red flags” to help past attendees identify people who are struggling with a problem that your event will help to solve. Some of the complaints I hear include registration numbers that are falling because of the economy and not knowing where to start when marketing a seminar.

If you deliver an excellent seminar that is full of value, past attendees often will be willing to spread the word merely because of their satisfaction. They’ve benefited from your training, which makes them comfortable recommending your seminar to the people closest to them. However, you might want to sweeten the pot by offering a commission for every registration they help to generate.

Regardless of whether you offer a financial reward, be sure to make it easy to spread the word abut your seminar. Provide the marketing materials you want past attendees to use, and give them clear instructions about when and how you want them to publicize your event.

Affiliate marketing — asking other experts and organizations to promote your seminars, workshops, teleseminars and webinars in exchange for a commission — is a tool every event marketer should use to fill seats.

But many seminar promoters get frustrated by the rejection they face from affiliates. Prospective affiliates don’t respond to their phone calls and emails soliciting help on a campaign. Other affiliates agree to participate, but then don’t follow through and send out promotions.

If you’ve run into these frustrating situations, take a step back and consider the following:

* Did you explain your marketing campaign in terms of “WIIFM”? Prospective affiliates need to understand more than how your event will help their subscribers and clients. They need to understand how they personally will benefit from promoting your event.

In other words, show them the money — spell out exactly how quickly their affiliate commissions can add up to big bucks. If you have data about how well your promotional materials are converting for yourself and for other affiliates, definitely share these numbers. (But make clear that you’re not guaranteeing the same response for their list.)

* Explain affiliate marketing in terms they understand. Many people do not understand what an affiliate is … so why would they agree to become one? Explain what an affiliate is — essentially, a commissioned salesperson. More importantly, thoroughly explain what you expect them to do and how you easy you’ll make it to participate.

* Put yourself in your affiliates’ shoes. Most experts are busy. Really, really busy. Their lack of response is probably not a sign of disinterest or dislike — more likely, they simply haven’t had the time to respond. Polite and repeated follow-up is the key to winning affiliate participation.

* Understand what you’re really asking. Many experts are uncomfortable enough promoting their own products and services to their subscribers. If you want them to overcome their reluctance and send multiple emails about your events, you need to make it very much worth their effort and perceived risk.

* Repackage your offer. For some experts, promoting events or products for a small commission isn’t worth the effort. Others can’t or won’t accept a commission. For them, offer to extend a discount to their subscribers that’s equal to what you’re willing to pay as a commission.

Using affiliates to spread the word about your event is an easy and low-cost way to fill more seats. Use these tips to encourage greater participation and build stronger relationships with your affiliates.

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.

Using other people to help promote your seminars is a powerful marketing tool — especially when you are first starting out and don’t have your own mailing list.

But relying on affiliates (other people who promote your events to their lists for a commission on each sale they generate) has a big downside: many, if not most, of your partners won’t follow through and promote your seminar as promised.

The problem isn’t that they don’t believe in your seminar … or that they are “bad” people. A lack of action is usually due to your affiliates being so busy running their own businesses that they forget about or run out of time to send your promotions.

Three things you can do to help your affiliates promote your seminars:

1. Provide a timeline. Spell out when you want  affiliates to take action … and what action to take.

2. Provide the materials. The more work you do for your affiliates, the less they have to do … and the easier it becomes for them to execute. So give them the promotional materials you want them to send to their lists.

3. Follow up. Your affiliates are busy. Help keep your seminar front and center by sending reminders about upcoming actions you want them to take.