Seminar Marketing
TRANSCRIPT:
Avish: Next stop is seminar marketing. And I know one of the big stress points for anyone putting a seminar is getting butts in the seat. So I’d like to talk with you about how do you maximize a number of enrollees now.
Fred: Okay, sounds good. That’s important.
Avish: So I know there are lots of different ways. Let’s start out with email marketing both your own email and joint venture email marketing.
Fred: Yeah, one of the things this presumes something we’ve talked about previously which is that you built a database of people that have an interest in this particular topic. And so one of the things you gonna do for your seminar or event is to set up a site and again I would head everybody over to fredinfobootcamp.com. That’s Fred, F-R-E-D, Info, I-N-F-O, bootcamp, B-O-O-T-C-A-M-P.com, all in one word to see what a great seminar site looks like.
And I say it great not because it’s mine, but I say great because I have a date there to prove it, which is the average visitor value there, the number of people who eventually sign up as a result of going to that site. And I would tell everybody listening to this program, just basically copy what I’ve done there in terms of how you’re laying it out. So take a look at that and use it as your template. So email marketing means you’re gonna get people. And a lot of people the way they make a mistake on promoting a seminar is they try and give out too much information in the email itself. The only thing you should be doing is emailing your list with a couple of quick little bullet points and then a link to that great site that looks similar to fredinfoboothcamp to be able to get, because you wanna get the email in the people’s hands. And the more stuff you put on the email the less act they are to click on the link. Because all you really want them to do in that email that you send is to click on a link that takes them to the seminar promotion site, which is similar to fredinfobootcamp and let the site sell them. Don’t try and sell them in the email. The only thing that you want to sell in the email that you send out to people is to click on a link and that link should be to a site that you know is very, very good at closing people to attend an event.
Avish: Okay, so that’s emailing to your own list. What do you mean by email joint venture marketing?
Fred: Well that means… let’s say for example that you Avish have a large group of people in your list who would have an interest in my topic. I go to you and I say “Hey, Avish, here’s the deal, I’m doing this seminar that’s coming up. I’d like to have you on board as a JV Partner, joint venture partner and I’d like you to email to your list.” I set you up as an affiliate and I give you, let’s say, 50 percent of the registration dollars which by the way is great because I make a lot of my money on the back-end so I don’t really care about giving you 50 percent of the registration dollars. In some cases, if you were as sufficiently big fish in your pond, I might even give you more than 50 percent. Because frankly, I don’t really care about registration dollars so much. I want to put a lot of butts in seats.
So that’s the way that I would do it. I would come to you and then you would then email something to your list which would again be what similar to what I did. A very short thing that directs people just to go to the website and let the website do the closing.
Avish: Okay, got it. So that’s email marketing, that’s two forms of email marketing. Are there other online forms of marketing your seminar that people should consider using?
Fred: Well there are, you know again, we talked a little bit about it when we talk about generating traffic to a site. You know you may wanna do some Facebook targeted advertising with certain keywords. You may wanna do some pay-per-click advertising. But again that’s sort of outside the scope of this particular presentation. In addition, that you know you also wanna be doing and making sure that some of your authority sites or your authority site has some great SEO rankings. So that people when they come in that door we’ll then get you know, there will be a quick link or link there for be able to click on to go to your seminar site.
For example, at my site fredgleeck.com one of the things when people first visit that is there’s a pop up that comes up that talks to them about “Hey do you wanna learn how to do this?” You click on it and you go the fredinfobootcamp site, which is again selling a seminar or event. And people may want to copy and do something similar with that.
Avish: Okay, good. So what about offline marketing, and now we kind of a great digital age. But are there still good valid offline methods to market your seminars?
Fred: There are, but it would require you to test them. But again we used to do, most seminars used to be marketed through a few different things offline. Number one, was you’d see people running you know infomercials or TV commercials spots getting people to show up for a free seminar or event. Now, sometimes they would just do the short 30 or 60 seconds spots. And sometimes they would have full length infomercials which are 28 minutes and 30 seconds long trying to get people to show up or sign up for a free event, etc.
There was also a fair amount in the old days of big promoters using television, haven’t seen that recently. And those I still see for real estate events where you see big promoters putting television spot ads on which are 30 or 60 seconds spots, trying to drive people to a free seminar that’s coming to your area. Usually you know from either during the day, at the lunch hour or after hours from 6 to 7:30 kind of a thing, 90 minutes seminars.
In addition to that, people also use radio spots. So radio spots, TV, newspaper advertising — all of these are good but not something, I repeat not something that I would recommend to people that are just starting out. These ideas of offline marketing are some of which are very expensive. Unless you were you know have a great established reputation and have deep pockets to spend all this kind of stuff. I’d be very, very careful.
Avish: Okay, so those are three forms of advertising which maybe you got deep pockets or you’re established you should use, but new people shouldn’t. What about direct mail like physical mail, I’ve actually heard that that’s kind of coming back now because people get so much email.
Fred: Well, it is. I mean, you see a lot of people now promote. If you have a good — the main thing here on direct mail is obviously the quality of your direct mail piece and we can talk about that in a second. But also the quality of the list that you’re sending it to. So if you’re sending it to the right list, you’re halfway there.
Then the question becomes what are you sending them? And it could either be a postcard which just directs people to go to a website which can be successful and is worth definitely trying and testing. And the other is a more you know one of those full brochure pieces that is usually an 11 by 17 piece folded down a few times so it looks like a standards sort of mail. And what happens there is you vigorously write copy and promote the event that you’re doing and you put it into a longer piece and you send it and mail it to your list.
So, again two options there on direct mail and one is a postcard and one is a longer seminar piece. So those are both means that you can do if you have a you know direct mail lists with name, address, city, state, zip, to send to.
Avish: Okay, what is, similar to email what is joint venture direct mail?
Fred: Well joint venture direct mail would be let’s say for example Avish, that you have a list of 20,000 people that would be very interested in my topic. What I would do is, I would say to you, “Hey Avish, I’d like to send out these pieces of direct mail.” And all you have to do is provide me with the names of the people to send it to. We will code that direct mail piece so that we would know they were coming from you because we will give them some added special bonus that only you have. And therefore everybody who signed up, usually in case like that I would foot the bill for the mailer. All you would be providing is the names of the people. And we would merge those two at some kind of a print house. And then we would code it so that anybody who signed up, you would get X amount of dollars in credit for the registrations that occur. So you would be providing the names and the list, and I would be footing the cost of the printing and the mailing of the brochure and I would be giving you 50 percent of whatever revenue resulted.
Avish: Okay, great. Now one other thing I know that makes a lot of the marketing go but people forget about is testimonials.
Fred: Yeah, and again, yeah.
Avish: So can you talk a little bit about that and why that’s important?
Fred: Well again, rather than talking about that I’d almost prefer to just send people to the Fred Info Boot Camp site to show them and they’re basically you wanna make sure and look at those testimonials around that site. The thing that makes it effective is there’s lots of them a, be either short and see most of them are very specific in terms of the results that people achieved. So I would you know make them short, very specific, and concentrate it on results achieved by those people attending the events. So, what it means is that for somebody listening to this program you may wanna do your first X number of seminars you know for low cost or even for free. In order to generate a lot of these testimonies that would be very helpful putting it on to your site that promotes your events.
Avish: So you’re suggesting that if someone’s new at this or hasn’t done a seminar yet that they wanna just get out there, just to get the testimonials so their actual paid ones can be successful?
Fred: Yeah, that would be very helpful.
Avish: Okay, so for any other final words on how to market your seminars to maximize enrollees?
Fred: You know I think we covered most of them. But I think that the key is, that you have to think about having a great seminar site that markets and promotes your seminar. And again I’d refer them to the fredinfobootcamp.com site. Then, it’s all about driving traffic to that site using the various means. And we’ve talked about both online and offline and if you can do that you’re going to be successful just, just follow the template that I’ve created for everybody.
Avish: Great, thanks Fred!
Fred: You got it.
