SeminarSavvy.com

If you are a coach, consultant or expert who provides some type of service, an easy way to add value to your seminar is offering free consultations as part of your registration package or as a bonus to attendees. (And yes, it’s a great way to increase the perceived value of your offer when promoting information products, as well.)

You also can offer free critiques, audits, strategy sessions, etc. The goal, from a business perspective, is to open the door to a one-on-one conversation with your seminar attendees after your event. The theory is that seminar attendees will better understand what it is that you do, how you can help them, and why you’re the best man or woman for the job. In short, seminar attendees make highly qualified prospects. All you have to do is make the sale.

There’s just one little problem.

Most attendees do not ever take advantage of your gift.

Sometimes the problem is sheer laziness — it seems like too much hassle and work to make a phone call or fax in their bonus certificate.

Sometimes it’s busyness — a free consultation with you is not urgent, so it never makes it to the top of the to-do list.

Sometimes it’s even shyness of sorts — customers are too embarrassed to show you how poorly they are doing in your area of expertise. Rather than getting your help, they avoid your offer so they don’t have to face the reality of how much they have to learn and improve.

Then there’s the reason that I’ve naively overlooked in my own business: they think that you are going to spend the consultation time trying to sell your products or services. One of level, this seems logical, right? You offer free consultations so that you get the opportunity to sell. Therefore, it makes sense that customers will know that’s why you offered the gift.

Here’s where your attitude and intention make a big difference: Are you offering the free consultation only to sell? Or do you truly plan to deliver something of value, and then mention your products and services as a way to continue their education and growth?

I fall into the latter category, hence my blind spot to the objection that a customer pointed out to me yesterday.

As part of my home-study course, I offer a free critique to the seminar marketing materials you create by going through my course. My intent has always been to offer a bit of personal assistance in fine-tuning my customers’ seminar marketing copy.

Yesterday, at the end of a great critique, the seminar promoter made a confession: he hadn’t wanted to cash in his certificate because he suspected it would be a big pitch fest. He finally signed up, thinking that at the very least, he might get some ideas for selling services.

Instead, he received 3 pages of notes and suggestions for strengthening his marketing copy.

The lessons I learned, which I offer to you:

• Offer from a place of giving. Delivering value in a consultation is what will close the sale, not pressuring someone into buying. I’m pretty confident that if my customer needs help in the future with his seminar marketing, I’ll get a call.
• But don’t assume that your prospects and customers know that you’re not out just to make the sale. My customer even shared his ideas for how I should address this particular objection in my marketing materials.
• Remind customers that they can cash in their certificates. The reminder I sent is what finally promopted my customer to dig out his certificate and sign up for the critique.

To effectively use free consultations as a bonus to increase seminar value and registrations, think about all of the reasons prospects might be wary about accepting your offer of free help. And don’t forget to look at own experience — why haven’t you taken advantage of every offer for free help you’ve received? The more objections you address, the more people will accept your offer … and the more relationships you can develop.

When trying to identify a winning topic, most marketers and product-development experts will tell you to find a hungry crowd, discover what that crowd wants … and then deliver it.

Following this school of thought, you could pick any audience, find out what those folks want, then deliver a seminar, teleseminar or webinar to provide the information they are seeking.

But this approach overlooks a huge component in formula for success: YOU!

To understand why your passion is key to the success of your event, consider the fact that words make up a mere 7 percent of communication. The rest of the meaning is derived from nonverbal communication, such as body language and tone of voice. If you are not passionate about your training topic, your disinterest will shine through during your delivery.

Your lack of enthusiasm also spills over into your marketing materials. After 15 years in the marketing field, both leading projects and writing copy, I’ve seen firsthand how lack of interest leads to ho-hum marketing copy. To generate registrations, your copy must snap and pop, so that it grabs and holds your prospects’ attention. Likewise, if you’re using video or audio tools to promote your events, your lack of enthusiasm shines through, subtly communicating to prospects that your event is dull, not that great, and definitely not worth the investment of time and money.

Another reason to ensure you are passionate about the topic you choose: if you are successful, you will be delivering your training for a long time. Passion will sustain you over the long haul; a topic that bores you from the get-go will be torturous to deliver before long.

For the greatest success — at least, if you’re delivering the training yourself — do not search only for a hungry crowd. Instead, look for a hungry crowd with which you share a passion. Then develop the training programs they need and want. If the hungry crowd you already work with is craving a topic for which you have little interest for familiarity, find another speaker or trainer who has the experience and passion to deliver a knock-out presentation.

For example, my passion is promoting seminars. Although I’m often asked for advice in promoting trade shows, that’s not my passion or expertise. So I pass on serving that hungry crowd, knowing that there are other experts who are far better suited to take care of that niche. On the other hand, some members of my existing hungry crowd also need training on event management. Again, this is not my expertise. But because the topic is something my *existing* audience wants, event management training is something my company could provide if I brought in a trainer better suited to teach the course.

One note on the “find the hungry crowd” concept: You’ll often hear that you need to find a large crowd to justify the time you’ll spend developing a seminar, teleseminar or webinar. If people aren’t searching on your keywords, for example, there may not be a big enough audience to produce the revenue you want.

However, the size of your universe isn’t the most important factor to predicting the success of your event — the hunger of your crowd is. It’s far better to market to a smaller, tightly targeted crowd that’s starving for your training than a gigantic mass that’s merely looking for a snack.

This is, really, the definition of a niche — a small target group that has special requirements. The more tightly you can match your message to what they want, the greater success you’ll have filling your events.

Satisfaction guarantees are essential to convincing uncertain prospects to register for your event. It’s how you ease their fears about making a mistake in signing up for your seminar.

There are several types of guarantees you can offer. Which do you feel most comfortable with?

1. Lifetime guarantee: if participants become dissatisfied with their attendance at the seminar at any point, either at the event or even months later when they’re using the information, you’ll give them a total refund of their registration fee. Add even more power to your guarantee by also giving them a gift or cash bonus to compensate them for their trouble.

2. Total satisfaction or 100% money back with a time limit, say 30 to 90 days. You might require that attendees prove that they honestly tried implementing the information taught in the seminar. Attendees get to keep their seminar materials.
3. Total satisfaction or 100% money back, no questions asked. Prospects must speak up and ask for their money back by the end of the event. You may want to let them keep their materials, but you could require that they turn them in.

4. Partial attendance with a total-satisfaction guarantee. Participants can attend part of the event (e.g., the first morning or the first day). Then, if they’re not satisfied, they can turn their materials in at the registration table for a full refund.

5. Total satisfaction or you offer a partial refund. You withhold either a percentage or a specific dollar amount to cover your meeting room costs. You can use this with any of the guarantees above, though it’s more common with #3 and #4.

The stronger your guarantee, the better. It shows that you are 100 percent confident about the quality of your content and seminar. The more “weasel clauses” you put in — such as making people prove they’ve used the materials — the more it appears that you have something to hide and are not sincere about your offer. The most successful seminar marketers offer total satisfaction guarantees.

There is a chance that strengthening your guarantee will increase the number of refund requests that you get. If that happens, go back and analyze your numbers. What you’ll probably find is that although more people requested refunds, the stronger guarantee also helped you secure significantly more registrations. Even after you honor all refund requests, you’ll still have a larger net profit with the stronger guarantee.

Also recognize that the longer your guarantee is (e.g., a 30-day guarantee vs. a guarantee that expires the minute your seminar ends), the less likely it is to be invoked. If you tell attendees that they have to let you know by lunchtime whether they want their money back, they’ll feel pressured to make a decision about requesting a refund. If they have just the tiniest shred of dissatisfaction, the chances that they’ll ask for their money back will skyrocket. Extending your guarantee to 30, 60, 90 or even 365 days after the event takes the time pressure off of them. It also shows that you have their best interests at heart, because you want to give them a chance to put their skills to the test before they make the “final” buying decision.

Convincing busy, budget-conscious people to invest their time and money to attend your seminar can be a challenge. That is why you should sit up and pay attention when a prospective attendee indicates even the tiniest bit of interest in your event. Seminar leads are golden.

Yet many seminar promoters treat their leads casually. They will field phone calls and emails from prospects who have questions, yet they will not keep records about who has called in. They will deliver free preview seminars, but assume that prospects who leave without registering aren’t interested. They let the sale go, assuming that prospects will call back on their own if they are really interested in participating.

If this sounds like you, it is time to change. Anyone who has summoned enough energy to get in touch with you to ask questions about your event if far more qualified as a prospect than the average person on your list. These individuals have indicated some level of interest in your material. Therefore, they deserve more attention when it is time to market your seminar or workshop.

Here are 5 tips to increase seminar registrations by improving your follow-up:

1. Capture as much contact information about the prospect as possible. This includes first and last name, phone number, email address, company and mailing address. The more information you gather, the more flexibility you will have when choosing how to follow up. At a minimum, get a first name and phone number or first name and email. This will allow you at least make a follow-up courtesy call or send a reminder email.
2. Do something with the information! In other words, create a list of people who are interested in the event, so that you may easily identify and follow up with them.

   Note: I don’t recommend adding email addresses to your broadcast list without explicit permission. If you want to contact prospects via email, do privately from your desktop. Feel free to offer them the opportunity to opt-in to your list. For example, you could tell them about a free preview teleseminar you are hosting to promote your next seminar, and provide the link where they could get full details about your event.

3. Pick up the phone. Taking the time to call someone can quickly strengthen your relationship, simply because so few companies use the telephone to reach their clients. But let me be clear: you do not need to engage in “telemarketing.” You don’t need to have a script. You don’t need to be pushy. You don’t need to badger prospects. You don’t need to make impersonal, automated calls. Instead, make courtesy calls. Follow up to see if the prospects who contacted you with questions need any additional information or if they want to reserve a seat. It’s short, sweet and can make a powerful difference.
4. Hook them online. Incorporate a mechanism on your website to gather names and email addresses of people who are tentatively interested in your event and want to learn more. When promoting live events, the best tool to use for this purpose is a free teleseminar or webinar, which can be delivered live or prerecorded and made available on demand.
5. Automate your follow up. Once people have opted in to your list, follow up via email. Send a series of messages via autoresponder, so that they continue to receive marketing “touches” about your event, but you don’t have to do the work yourself. Set it up and let technology take care of the rest.

Warm leads offer a significant opportunity for improvement for most seminar promoters. If they are interested enough to reach out to learn more about your event, they are closer to buying from you than the average person on your list. Invest the extra time, money and resources to follow up regularly with this motivated group, and watch your registrations and revenue climb.

Experienced seminar promoters know that the number of registrations that come in each day generally increases as the seminar draws closer. While you might receive only one registration per day four weeks before your seminar, you could see 20 registrations per day the last week before your event.

The reason for this trend, by and large, is prospects’ procrastination. Like you, your prospective seminar attendees are busy. They might be interested in attending your event, but if there is no compelling reason to sign up in the moment, they will put your promotions aside (or print a copy of your web page) for later review. After all, they have fires to put out right now, and your seminar does not take place for weeks.

Here are three ways to overcome your prospects’ natural tendency to put off making a decision about whether to attend your seminar:

1. Use deadlines. The starting date of your seminar is a prime example of the motivational power provided by deadlines. As the seminar gets closer, registrations increase because prospects are finally getting around to reviewing your promotions and making a decision. And they finally sit down to review your materials because they know they have to. If they do not, they will miss your event, plain and simple.

   A common, proven way to use deadlines is to offer a tuition discount for early bird registrants. If you do not want to offer a discount, try offering one or more additional bonuses instead. For example, give early registrants a copy of your latest book or access to a monthly coaching group that you run.

2. Increase the frequency of your communication around deadlines. Don’t set a deadline and then forget to remind prospects about them. Remember, your prospects are busy. They probably are not writing notes in their calendars to jog their memory, so it is up to you to prod them into action.

   Increasing the frequency and quantity of your promotions right before a deadline raises awareness that something urgent is happening. As much as we like to think that our prospects eagerly read every word of every promotion, the reality is that most of our promotions end up unread in the trash. Sending a few more messages before a deadline increases the chances that prospects will read your messages (“Hmmm, why does Jenny keep emailing me. Maybe I should read this email….”). Each reminder also becomes an opportunity to give a prospect the final nudge he or she needs to take action.

3. Make courtesy calls. I learned early in my seminar marketing career that some prospects are so busy that they will never get around to reviewing promotional materials. Courtesy calls can be an effective way to support these clients, who otherwise might miss important deadlines or perhaps miss your event altogether. If you are lucky enough to get your prospects on the phone, be prepared to take the registration.

Improving your marketing copy and making irresistible offers will increase the number of prospects who will sign up for your seminar right away. But a certain portion of your audience will always procrastinate. Use these three ideas to gently move them toward making the decision to register for your seminar.

When promoting live seminars, as well as virtual events such as teleseminars and webinars, it’s critical to continue promoting your event right up until you start delivering content. Seminar producers who track their sales typically see a dramatic increase in their registrations in the days leading up to an event. For teleseminars and webinars, the big increase is seen in the final few days before the event. If offering a live event that lasts a full day or more, the increase usually happens in the last two weeks.

But to enjoy the big increase and maximize your registrations, you have to stay in front of your prospects. Many promoters give up too soon, pulling the plug on their events three, four and sometimes more weeks out. They do so out of the fear of being stuck with food and beverage costs, as well as paying for unused sleeping rooms, for an event that won’t happen. In fact, they may be canceling their event right around the time that many prospects are getting around to evaluating whether to attend.

Email is an excellent and affordable way to keep prospects updated about your event. But some promoters are wary about using this tool too often, for fear of irritating their prospects. If you’re concerned that you are emailing your list too often, consider these tips:

1. Segment your list so that you emailing only the people who are likely to attend your seminar. If your seminar is designed for residential contractors, for example, don’t mail your promotions to the commercial contractors on your list.
2. Customize your message so that it is clear why you are mailing to your targeted list — and why they should be interested in reading your promotion. Not only will recipients be more receptive to your message (there’s nothing like opening an email that has nothing to do with your interests to feel like you are being spammed), they’ll also be more likely to read and respond to your promotions.
3. Incorporate helpful information. Try incorporating a few tips into your promotional messages. Then segue to your sales pitch by explaining that the information you shared is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you’ll cover at your upcoming event. You’ll prove that you have valuable content. Plus you’ll feel better about contacting your prospects again.
4. Shift from sales to courtesy reminders near the end. Some people are uncomfortable doing heavy-handed sales pitches. Sending out a courtesy reminder (“Hi, it’s Jenny, writing with a courtesy reminder about my teleseminar tomorrow night …”) keeps your event in front of your prospects, but in a helpful, less pushy way.
5. Find your style. Although it IS critical to promote yourself and your seminars, there are different ways of doing so. Some promoters come across like carnival barkers trying to get crowds to see the world-famous three-headed dog. Others feel queasy at the thought of being so pushy.

The best approach is one that makes you feel slightly uncomfortable, as well as a little more confident, bolder and promotional than you normally feel. You need to have a bit of swagger and sass when marketing. But at the same time, you need to feel comfortable with how you are promoting. If you’re not, your discomfort will be communicated on some level. Unfortunately, your uncertainty will come across as not believing in your event vs. not believing in your marketing approach.

A recent trip to the grocery store reminded me of a valuable Internet marketing tip I learned years ago.

When I was headed out the door with my cartful of groceries, the greeter — an elderly man who always welcomes me with a big smile and friendly “hello” — flagged me down. His job that day was to hand out fliers directing customers to the store’s web site to take a customer satisfaction survey.

I like George. So I went to the site to share my rave reviews about the store’s customer service.

Unforunately, the flier directed me to the superstore’s home page, which featured dozens of links and buttons. Even after some persistent digging around, I couldn’t find the survey. So I left without sharing my input.

Contrast this experience with the survey offered by a local pizza franchise — their coupon takes you directly to the survey form. And when you’re done, you get a discount coupon as a thank you.

I firmly believe that you can learn a lot about marketing simply by paying attention to what annoys you, as well as what wows you. From these two experiences come the following lessons:

1. Direct visitors to exactly the page you want them to visit. Depending on how your site is organized, dropping visitors off at your home page in hopes that they’ll find their way to your seminar page can be like kicking someone out of your car miles from nowhere with a hearty “Good luck!” They might be persistent enough to find a trail; they could easily get lost in the forest. If seminar registrations are your goal, take visitors by the hand and lead them to exactly the page you want them to go.

2. If the URL of the page you want prospects to visit is long and convoluted, set up an abbreviated URL that redirects to the target page. For example, a client of mine runs advertising to promote its personal development seminars. Rather than including their web page’s full address http://www.foundations1.com/personal-success/cornerstone/ which would be too long and clunky for a print ad, their webmaster provides shortened URLs that point to this page (foundations1.com/publicationname) Tip: This strategy allows you the ability to track web traffic. In this case, setting up a unique URL for each publication allows us to see how many visitors come to the site from each ad placed.

3. Continue the conversation. When prospects are motivated by a promotion to visit your web site, it can be jarring to land on a web page that doesn’t relate to what was presented in the original promotion. Some will be confused and leave. Others may find their way to the seminar page, but by the time they do, they’ve lost their interest in what you were saying.

Continuing the conversation can be as simple as making sure that your landing page promotes the same thing that was offered in the original promotion. In other cases, you may want to go deeper. For example, if one ad plays up your seminar’s ability to boost revenue, make sure that copy on your landing page also plays up this benefit. Ads that highlight a different benefit should point to a different landing page with matching copy.

If you’re working with a finite budget, you want to make sure that every dollar counts. By using these three tips to create a more seamless customer experience, you’ll eliminate the unncessary loss of web site visitors, as well as increase your chances of seminar success.

When promoting a local seminar, newspapers seem like a logical choice for reaching your target audience. After all, newspaper readers are local. And they are interested enough in learning new information that they’re willing to pay for and read a paper, right?

But as many new seminar promoters quickly learn, promoting seminars via newspaper advertising isn’t as easy as running an ad and filling the room.

For starters, your ad has a lot of competition — and not just other ads. Every story on the page as your ad, as well as every story in the paper, is competing for attention. In such a busy environment, it’s easy for your ad to be overlooked.

Here are a few pointers to help you get the most bang for your buck when promoting seminars via advertising in newspapers, magazines and other periodicals:

• Ask about demographics. If the readership doesn’t match your ideal prospect profile, don’t buy into the advertising representative’s hype. Take a pass instead — there are plenty of places you can spend your advertising dollars.
• Drill down into demographic data. The publication’s readership may be diverse, and your seminar may only appeal to a certain portion of the readership. So ask the advertising rep for specifics. For example, newspapers may be delivered across dozens of communities, and your audience may be more likely to live in one community vs. another. Don’t be afraid to ask about having your ad run in only certain editions of the paper or magazine.
• Investigate all advertising options. When you think of advertising in a newspaper or magazine, your mind probably went straight to a display ad. But many publications offer numerous ways to advertise. Classified advertising is an option, of course. Others include flyer insertions, coupon bags, front-page sticky notes, and belly bands (an advertisement that is wrapped around the publication). What gives you the best chance of standing out?
• Remember, frequency is key. You will not fill your seminar by running one ad one time in one publication. You may not even get a single phone call! Repetition is key to advertising success. Most studies agree that customers need to see your promotions at least 7 to 9 times before acting.
• Test ad sizes. If you’ve ever shopped for ad space, you know that it get pricey in a hurry. When first starting, invest in a small ad that’s run frequently vs. a large ad that’s run only a time or two. As your ad produces results and you generate revenue, reinvest some of the proceeds onto bigger ads.
• Go for leads, not sales. Convincing a stranger to register for your seminar based on an ad will be difficult. Instead of trying to make a sale in a tiny space, direct readers to your web site or phone number to get details about your event. Better yet, promote a free resource or gift related to your seminar topic. Promote your seminar when you follow-up with people who request the free resource.

Advertising can gobble up your marketing budget in a hurry. Use these tips to help maximize the number of leads you receive, while minimizing your marketing risk.

“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.

You’ve seen the ads — “9 million mailing addresses for just $24.99.” You’re tempted to buy … because surely somewhere among those millions of prospects, there must be a hundred people or so who would be interested in your seminar.

Alas, the results don’t prove your theory true.   

Quality, not quantity, is what counts when you’re building your seminar business. Yes, it is important to grow your list, because at some level, seminar promotion becomes a game of numbers. Once you’ve achieved a fairly predictable level of response with your promotions, growing your business becomes a matter of getting in front of more people.

Until you reach a certain level of success, though, it’s highly critical to be choosy about who you’re reaching. If you market to a poor quality list, you risk getting horrid results. Although an established business can absorb the financial loss of the occasional bad promotion, it’s much more difficult for a newer business to recover from the loss.

In addition to improving the chances of generating a profit, choosing a highly qualified mailing list also helps future promotions. A better list will provide more — and more accurate — data about what works when promoting your event.

For example, imagine that you want to test a direct mail invitation vs. a postcard when promoting your free lead-generation event. If you market to a huge list of people who have given zero indication that they might be qualified to attend your event, you can expect that virtually no one will respond. As a result, you won’t get any meaningful data that will help you determine which marketing tool is most effective.

On the other hand, if you promote your seminar to a list of highly qualified prospects — people whose demographic profile or affiliations match those of your ideal prospect — you should generate enough data to make a sound decision about how to promote your seminars moving forward.

When evaluating mailing lists to rent or buy, look at factors such as:
* Age
* Education
* Job title
* Industry or profession
* Income
* Geographic location
* Past purchases
* Memberships
* Subscriptions

Once you do find a list or two that looks interesting, you might be tempted to rent the whole thing. Instead, rent a small list. Test your mailing. If the list produces enough registrations to cover your cost and generate a profit, rent more names from the same list.

If you’ve never rented a list before, be aware that most list owners require that a minimum number of names be rented (e.g., 5,000 names). Some marketers consider 5,000 names to be a small list; for others, it’s mind-boggling big.

If you fall into the latter camp, ask the list manager or broker if you can rent half the list two times to make up the minimum order size (e.g., rent 2,500 names to make up a 5,000-name list minimum). That way, you’ll have the names needed to do a second mailing (Want to run a test? See for yourself how effective it is to send more than one promotion. Send half of your list one promotion only, and send the second half two promotions.)

You also can ask permission to rent two smaller test lists (e.g., 2,500 names from List A and 2,500 names from List B) to make up the minimum. Some owners will say yes. Others will say no. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

To fill your seminars, it’s essential to keep expanding your reach. Make sure you’re investing your marketing dollars into qualified lists to position yourself to receive a positive return on your investment.