SeminarSavvy.com

For many professionals, a huge benefit of attending seminars is the networking they’re able to do with other participants.

If you want to leverage your audience’s desire to connect with other professionals to generate sales, however, you can’t assume that your audience will think of this benefit on their own. Make sure that your promotional materials play up this unique aspect of attending a live event.

Here are 3 ideas to get you started:

1. List networking as a special benefit of attending your event. Tell readers how many and what type of networking opportunities you’ll be coordinating (for example, extra long lunch hours).

2. Send out an advance registration list a couple of times before your seminar. Show prospects which individuals have already signed up and/or which companies are sending employees to your event.

If you receive a registration from a well-known attendee or industry expert, send out a special promotional email focusing solely on that individual. The opportunity to meet this individual might sweeten the pot enough to get some previously undecided prospects to register right away.

3. Include testimonials from past attendees who raved about the networking opportunties and quality of attendee. If you can get them to include specific results in their testimonial (“I struck a deal that put $50,000 in my pocket during the first morning’s coffee break”) … even better.

It’s an easy trap to fall into. You’re swamped. Your seminar is months away. So you think, “I’ll figure out how to market the darn thing later … when I have time.”

Except you never have time. Then all of a sudden, your seminar is mere weeks away … and you haven’t done a thing to promote it.

Whether you’re promoting a weeklong conference or an hourlong teleseminar, it’s critical to hash out a marketing calendar soon after you book your event. Start by figuring out which audiences you want to contact, when you want to contact them, and how you’ll get in touch.

Then add additional deadlines to your calendar for various stages of production on all of your marketing pieces. For example, set deadlines for having the draft and final versions of your copy done, for having your web site launched, your direct mail pieces designed, your mailing lists rented, and so on.

Without these deadlines spelled out in advance, it becomes easy to get too busy to properly market your seminar. Before you know it, you’ll be skipping promotions because you don’t have time to get the pieces pulled together.

I was talking to a client of mine this morning about ways she could promote her new service. The conversation turned to Google AdWords, and she shared the results of her first month’s adventure in the pay-per-click world: 800+ new subscribers and 1 sale.

Now 800 new subscribers may be paltry results for you. In her industry, it’s pretty doggone good.

But she wasn’t overly thrilled about her results because the bottom line results were poor. One sale wasn’t even coming close to covering her PPC charges, never mind her other marketing expenses.

She felt better after I pointed out how well she was doing. Getting 800+ subscribers meant that she had generated at least that many clicks … and probably many more because not every person who clicks on your ad will opt-in to your list (in fact, most won’t).

The problem isn’t that Google AdWords isn’t working. It IS generating clicks and opt-ins.

The problem is that the process she’s using to market to her new subscribers isn’t converting them into paying customers. Although it’s technically possible that the subscribers coming from Google AdWords campaigns are I-won’t-ever-buy-from-you-no-matter-what-you-say tire kickers, it’s much more likely that the follow-up marketing is weak.

My client is far from alone in doubting her selection of marketing tools. It’s very easy to say “that doesn’t work for me” when a marketing campaign fails. (And it seems that the more money you sink into your failed venture, the faster you jump to this conclusion.)

Before you write off entire marketing channels, stop to track and analyze your results at every step in the process. For example, my client can test and track:

• How each campaign, ad group and keyword within AdWords performs (the click-thru rate). Within AdWords, she can experiment with keyword selection, ad group organization, bid prices, and ad copy to boost results.
• How many visitors to her landing page opt-in to her mailing list. She can change her offer, information requested for the opt-in, headline and body copy, and even button copy.
• How many subscribers convert to customers with each follow-up message. Here, she can experiment with the message copy, the way she contacts subscribers (e.g., via email vs. direct mail), the offers she makes in the follow-up messages, the number of follow-ups, and the timing of her follow-ups, just to name a few elements.

Analyzing results at each step of the process can provide valuable clues about where your marketing breakdowns are. And that can help you avoid making the deadly mistake of prematurely abandoning a marketing channel that can be transformed into a blockbuster with a few strategic changes.