How To Market A SeminarWritten by Matt Bacak
Have you ever left a seminar thinking: “I could have done a better job than that!” Before you start signing up attendees, take a few minutes to think about what you are getting into. Putting on a seminar involves planning, time, and money. Understanding ins and outs of industry will go a long way in helping you hold a successful seminar. That’s where I come in. Over past 4 years, I have put on over 4,000 seminars, and a handful of national conventions. I will help you plan event, and make sure that someone shows up!The first thing that you need to consider is your purpose for holding seminar. Are you trying to make money on ticket sales? Or money after class? Are you just trying to get people in door? Your goal of seminar will play a huge role in marketing method that you choose. Don’t be afraid to think outside of box here. Many companies will try to make most money possible on all fronts. This greedy train of thought will leave your seminar lacking some very important elements. Choose one and stick with it. Many seminar gurus know that real money in seminar business is in after class sales. This could be follow-up work from your instructor, a subsequent training seminar, an add-on product, etc. You want everyone to leave with something in their hand. Now that you have your goal set, its time to put butts in chairs! Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that a successful seminar has to cost a lot of money. If your overall goal is to get after class sales, or fill up a room consider some of these options: Give it away! It’s a radical idea, but one that I have grown to know and love. By offering class for free, you eliminate many of barriers to sale. Price is not an issue, and they will expect less from you. That doesn’t mean that you should skimp on content, but their expectations will be considerably lower. If you have resources and time, consider making a pre-seminar call to touch base with everyone that is signed up. This will encourage students to show up on time, and help built a relationship for future sales. Submit a press release. Create a simple press release (1 page or less) highlighting your company and your seminar. Don’t forget to include your registration phone number. Submit that release to your local paper, and wait for phone to ring. If paper decides to pick it up- you get free publicity! Cross-marketing opportunities. Depending on seminar, you may be able to find cross marketing opportunities. For instance, if you were doing a financial based seminar teaching students how to file their taxes, you could pair up with a local tax preparation office or accountant. They could pick up half of marketing tab, or advertise to their existing client base. The possibilities are endless. I have had some great results by pairing with local chamber of commerce or bank chains. They will offer their seminar space for free, and help with free advertising.
| | Stop Buying Email ListsWritten by Michelle Lehoux
The saying “Quality, not Quantity” is applicable even to world of email marketing. So many organizations are purchasing large databases of email addresses, with hopes to achieve high open rates and sales. The truth is that you are more likely to achieve your campaign goals if you send an email out to 100 targeted individuals than you would to 10,000 randomly purchased email addresses.There is a common misconception when it comes to quantity of emails in your email list. A lot of business owners think that key to running successful email campaigns is to send their emails out to thousands and thousands of email addresses and this is commonly achieved through purchase of large databases. This way of thinking about email marketing is wrong and will only result in discouragement and campaign failure. When you purchase email lists from companies, you can never be too sure how they acquired these email addresses in first place. Often, large databases of email addresses have been collected in ways that are misleading to users providing their email addresses. This means that individuals to whom you are sending your email are not sincerely interested in what you have to say. You also risk being labeled a “spammer”, because spam is essentially what you’d be sending- unwanted email.
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