SeminarSavvy.com

“What’s the best way for me to promote my seminars?”

This question easily makes the top five list of challenges I hear from newer seminar promoters, as well as those who aren’t satisfied with how their events are performing.

Their uncertainty is understandable. Because when you’re doing your own marketing, growing a business and delivering the content, you want to make sure that every dime and every minute you invest into your promotions will pay off.

The frustrating thing, of course, is that you can’t guarantee that everything you do will be a winner. Some promotions fizzle. It’s the nature of the game.

When you’re promoting seminars, workshops and other training events, there are some things you should do when marketing. For example, having a web page — if not an entire web site — devoted to your event is typically a good idea. That way, you have a marketing tool available around the clock to help prospects make the decision to attend your seminar.

Going hand in hand with the web site is email marketing (to your own opt-in list of course).

Beyond that, my rule is “if you feel inspired to try it, try it!”

If you think that knocking on doors and introducing yourself to local businesses will help, give it a shot. If you want to hang flyers on bulletin boards, it’s worth a try. If listing your seminars with a event listing service strikes your fancy, sign up to get your information into their database.

Then supplement your creativity with a bit of practical planning:

1. Be sure to customize your marketing approach to best leverage the opportunity. If you’re going to talk to business owners, stress how the organization will benefit by investing in training rather than talking only about how the attendee will benefit.
2. Track the source of every registration. That way, you won’t have to guess which marketing tools are working for you. You’ll know without a doubt whether it pays to pound the pavement while passing out flyers.
3. Use multi-channel marketing. The more ways you reach out to your audience, the more likely you are to reach a greater number of them. Plus, you’ll be less affected if one tool stops working.
4. Watch ROI. You may find that all of your marketing tools are generating registrations. But filling seats is not enough. Ultimately, you need to make money from your registrations, or your business will sink.

For some seminar producers, this means that the tuition generated must outweigh the cost of generating the registrations. Other seminar providers can lose money on the seminar itself because they will make money selling products and services at the event. But ultimately, they must make money.

When working with a finite budget, watch the return on investment generated by each marketing channel. If you find that one approach costs too much in time or money, drop it and redirect your resources to another channel that is producing a better return.

What’s the most unusual approach you’ve tried when promoting seminars and workshops? Share your thoughts below.

A content-rich presentation is the core of a successful seminar. But to ensure that your attendees have a pleasant — if not knock-their-socks-off — experience, it’s important to ensure that your event runs smoothly.

But if you are the only one working your event — a common scenario for new seminar promoters and professionals who use free seminars to generate leads — chances are good that attendees will have a less-than-stellar experience. If you’re welcoming participants, handing out registration materials, and trying to get your presentation loaded, while also fielding questions about where the bathrooms are and what time you want lunch served, someone or some need is being ignored.

When you wear the hats of presenter, registrar, event planner and technician, it can lend a frenetic feel to your seminar environment. Participants may get the impression that you’re disorganized or feel that they can’t bother you with questions or to say hi. The worst-case scenario is that you’re so busy attending to event planning needs that you are unable to perform at your best when it comes time to deliver your presentation.

If your budget allows, hiring an event planner to coordinate the production of your seminar is a wise investment. Event planners can handle details such as negotiating contracts, coordinating the layout of your meeting room, ordering food and beverages, reserving equipment, and overseeing the registration area.

Don’t have funds to outsource all of your event planning? At the very least, find assistants to help out the day of your seminar. For example, get a few people to check in participants. Use others to help ensure that your meeting room is set up properly and run errands for you if needed. You may even want an assistant on hand to serve as an A/V technician.

You can, of course, hire people to assist you. Family and friends are logical choices when your business is new. Another option is to seek volunteers from among your attendees.

To solicit participant volunteers, offer a work scholarship, where you let some participants in for a discounted fee if they agree to volunteer their time and talents to staff your event. Depending on the type of work that you do during your seminars and the relationship you have with your fans, a work scholarship can grow into more than a mere business transaction. It be positioned — and perceived — as an opportunity for a rare behind-the-scenes look at how an event runs … to develop a closer relationship with you … and to be in service to your students.

If you need a certain number of assitants to staff your seminar, promote the opportunity in your marketing materials. Good places includes a call-out in a seminar brochure, a P.S. on your sales letter, on your registration form (“Yes, I’d like to be considered for the work scholarship”) and even in a list of frequently asked questions.

Even if you do not need volunteers, keep the idea of a work scholarship in mind. Then, if you get a request from a cash-strapped prospective attendee who wants to get in for a discounted price, you’ll have a ready-made deal to offer.

To ensure that your volunteer workforce helps, rather than hinders, the flow of your event, require participants to show up early. Communicate from the start about what they are expected to do and when they are expected to work.

Finally, be sure to clearly explain what you want each volunteer to do, as well as what they should do and who to consult with if any emergencies, questions or surprises arise. Most volunteers will work hard for you out of gratitude for the discounted tuition you’ve extended them — and their enthusiasm can be channeled to deliver an extraordinary experience for other participants.

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.

Breaking news — I just got word that Dr. Ralph Elliott, Executive Director of the Effective Seminar Marketing Institute, is offering my readers a $10 discount on his upcoming 1-hour webinar with Brad Kleinman, Chief eMarketing Officer of WorkSmart eMarketing.

To claim your $10 discount on “Fill Your Annual Conferences with
Effective Microsite Marketing,” here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to http://worksmart-emarketing.com/fillyourconference/
2. Go to the registration page.
3. Type “Hamby” into the discount code box.
4. Click “Update Cart” and finish checking out.

Enjoy!

Waiting for registrations to arrive is one of the toughest challenges to face as a seminar promoter. While enduring this nail biter, you might find yourself pondering whether it’s time to pull the plug and cancel your event.

The danger in cancelling is that you might make the call too early, thereby missing out on the rewards of all of your promotional efforts. You also risk damaging your relationship with the people who have already signed up — especially if they have purchased airfare or incurred other expenses to
travel to your event.

Here are some things to consider while making your decision:

• How far away is your event? The closer your seminar gets, the more registrations should arrive. When plotted on a graph, most registration curves swoop upward dramatically in the last week before an event.
  Unless you’ve tracked registration patterns for your seminar before, you’ll have a hard time predicting
  whether the lack of response you’re seeing is normal or not.
• Where will most prospects come from? If you’re marketing locally, you can expect people to wait until the last minute to register because they can do so without having to pay through the nose for airfare or without risking not being able to secure a hotel room.
• When do you have to guarantee your food and beverage counts? If you have zero registrations, you’re 14 days away from your event and you have to tell the
  hotel today how many lunches you want, it’s more tempting and understandable to want to cancel. But if you have registrations and you’re just not happy with the numbers yet, it’s harder to justify.
• How well did you market your event? If you were scrambling to pull your marketing together at the last minute and you skipped most of the promotions you were planning, the lack of results is probably more due to poor marketing than prospects waiting until the last minute.
• What’s your break-even point? How many registrations do you need to break even on the expenses you’ll incur by running the event? (Do not count the money you spent on marketing — that’s already gone. Consider only how much it will cost to put on the event vs. cancelling.) If the number is low, keep waiting — it’s worth the extra time to see if you can still round up the registrations.
• What’s the cost of cancelling? Consider any penalties you might incur with the hotel. And consider the cost to your reputation — especially with those people who have already signed up and made plans to travel to your event.
• What’s the cost of running with your current registration numbers? Could you tolerate the amount of profit (or size of loss)? Could you focus instead on the ability to deliver on your promise of a great event for the few people who have registered? Could you reframe the event as great practice for delivering your content since it’s not going to be the big money-maker you hoped?

If you decide you must cancel, be sure to allow adequate time to notify registrants. For example, pull the plug on local seminars a day or two before so you aren’t scrambling to reach them the night before your planned event.

It seems like just last week that copywriting genius David Garfinkel told me about this new-fangled thing he had discovered called blogging. But I am shocked to realize that it was almost 3 years ago … and after a brief flirtation with a free TypePad blog, here I am just now finally getting around to getting a “real” blog going.

I’ve been dragging my feet because I’ve been worried about the time demands of posting. But I’ve decided that it’s better to get started and learn along the way rather than waiting until things are “perfect” before I start posting. Should be an interesting ride …

Until next time,

Jenny

SeminarMarketingPro.com

HowToMarketSeminars.com