In the case of microphones, recording equipment, video cameras, it almost better to buy equipment if you think you’ll use it 4 or 5 times. Now with Ebay, you can always RESELL it when you’re done with it!

I’m not saying you should run out and buy all kinds of expensive equipment right away, but if you are going to be in this business for a while, you’ll want to OWN certain things.

I own my own amplifiers, mics, audio and video recorders as well as speakers. Since I do a lot of seminars, this makes sense for me.

I highly recommend that you buy your equipment from a reputable company that has a good return policy – JUST IN CASE!!

For years, I have been using the folks at BHPhoto.com.

They are extremely knowledgeable and will give you plenty of advise and information by phone. Just give them a call.

Don’t buy until you’re sure you’ll be doing enough events to justify it, but when you’re sure you will, BUY IMMEDIATELY. You will SAVE money!!!

The majority of those in the financial field sell products and services that have very high lifetime value to the financial advisor. In coaching my Canadian client, he tells me that the average value of one of his clients was somewhere “North” of $5,000.

Here are the numbers that make this method of marketing make sense.

In this particular case (and like many in this field), the seminars that are done are free. The PROBLEM with doing a free seminar is that every attendee who is there KNOWS that the seminar promoter has got to try and sell them something at the end.

The first question you have to ask yourself is: What are you going to try and close the attendees on when they are there? In the case of most folks, you want to close them on setting an appointment to come in and discuss their particular situation.

When you do your financial seminars, what is YOUR goal? What are you trying to get people to do when you are done with the seminar?

Most of the seminars like this go on for anywhere between 60 and 90 minutes. You must know what your goal is in order to know how to structure your seminars. Although you certainly want to deliver good content in this short seminar, you are also doing a sales job. This must be paramount in your thinking. It is why you are doing your events.

I suggest that before you launch a heavy seminar schedule and spend a lot of money to promote your events that you THINK about what you want to happen at the event itself. Also, although it sounds self serving, I highly recommend that you talk to someone like me to make sure you consider ALL the important details you need to think about before launching your seminar.

This will help make sure that your seminar has the greatest chance for success.

Would I say something different if my name was number 1? I don’t THINK so. I’d like to think that I would still understand that one’s ability as a seminar marketing consultant is different from getting you to the top position in the search engines.

I’ve done a lot of consulting work for people who put on and promote seminars. I’ve also done a lot of seminars myself. This is what is a lot different between me and a lot of other seminar marketing consultants. I actually do them. I continue to do them. Make sure and ask anyone you’re considering working with if they actually do their own seminars and events. Do THEY put their own money on the line? If not, PLEASE be skeptical. There is nothing like putting your own money on the line.

That’s not to say that just because I do my own seminars that I’m the most qualified to help YOU with creating, marketing and promoting your seminars, but is certainly a major piece of the puzzle. I enjoy helping others to create and market their events almost as much as I do promoting my own.

If you choose to work with a consultant (which I HIGHLY recommend that you do), you need to make your assessment based on talent and experience. Ask the consultants you are considering working with how they measure success. This is the most important thing to find out from them. What is their criteria? How will they judge their success? Your success?

To me, it’s all about results. That means that you have to measure. What do you measure? You need to measure how many people show up to your event. You need to measure how many dollars you spent versus how many dollars you made. In short you need to measure everything that you can.

I have two signs up in my garage. One of them says: “Measurement Eliminates Argument”. This is true with every aspect of my business. Whether it’s selling info products or helping others market their seminars.

I hope you do the same!

One of the areas that will be revised is the way in which seminar marketers should use email to market their events. I now use very little direct mail in the marketing of any of my own, or my clients events. This is because of my obsession with making sure that I maintain my perfect record of having never lost money on a seminar or event. To do that, I have to keep my expenses to a bare minimum and rely only on those methods I am 1000% sure work.

Over the past 4 or 5 years, I’ve been marketing my seminars exclusively using online means. I’ve also recommended to others that they do the same.

At least twice a month I get an email from someone who wants my help in doing one of their seminars. They are anxious to get going and are willing to spend a lot of money to make the events happen. I’m almost always the voice of reason who asks them to step back and take a deep breath. Every single person who contacts me is under the delusion that they can profitably promote a seminar with a small or non existent inhouse email list. This is nuts!

IF you want to be doing seminars and workshops in a field, the single most important thing you can do is build a high quality list of email names. This will allow you to promote to these folks for free. This reduces your break even point to almost ZERO.

If you were to combine your in house email marketing with some quality joint ventures and some content packed teleseminars or webinars, you’ll be well on your way to creating a profitable event.

The areas of my seminar book that will be most updated are in this area. Reliance on direct mail is iffy. I’ve seen some people get decent results, but others have wasted a lot of money. My suggestion is to concentrate on your online methods of getting people to attend your events. This way your break even point is extremely low.

The new version of the seminar marketing book will cover these and other new topics that you, as a seminar marketer, should consider carefully when doing your events.

Are seminars the best way to promote yourself and your business in this field. The answer is IT DEPENDS! If your goal is to get people to give you money at the seminar itself, good luck. It ain’t gonna happen! People are more skeptical today that ever before. Instead, I would suggest to you that lead generation is the way to go. Don’t try and sell anyone when you get them in your seminar seats, try and get them to PHYSICALLY opt-in.

A number of years back, I got an invitation to dinner from an “energy savings” company. The claim on the very well worded postcard was they wanted to have me come to dinner at the “lovely” Olive Garden down the street. They would pay for dinner and they just wanted me to watch a demonstration. Being a sucker for a free dinner, I went. The free meal helped me decide, but MORE important to me was they said to NOT bring a checkbook. They would NOT be taking ANY money at the dinner.

WOW!

No hard sell. I was in!

I went to the dinner, watched the demo and I was impressed. What did they close me for? An appointment. They came to my house a couple of days later, gave me an estimate and left with a deposit check of $500. They ended up installing this space age material that was supposed to lower my electric bills in both the summer and winter.

Did it work? NO. Did I do it on more than one of my houses? Yes. Why? Because I wanted it to work!

Your less as a financial type? Don’t try and close people at the events or seminars that you do. Use those events to get people to commit to appointments where you can close them face to face, one on one.

But whatever you do, don’t do your seminar at an Olive Garden. I still haven’t eaten there since I wrote the last check for the second house!

The first thing to remember is you are in a MARGIN business when you do high priced seminars. You’re not trying to get 100 people at your event (although that would be NICE), you’re trying to get a small number of people to make the decision to attend your event.

Start with a good looking website. Take a look at my site, www.FredInfoBootcamp.com. It looks good and has some of the essential elements of any site that is attempting to get you to spend big bucks to attend an event. At this site (and pull it up now while you’re reading this) you’ll see a couple of elements that are crucially important. First, you’ll want to have as many video testimonials as possible. The more the better! Make sure that you ask the right questions to help make this work.

High priced seminars may also mean that you have to get on the phone to “close” people who are interested in attending. What I do is to offer people 90 minutes of consulting time. I do this with a site called www.ConsultWithFred.com. Notice that I do NOT offer people consulting for FREE. Instead, I am happy to consult with someone for 90 minutes for $500 and give them everything I know to help them.

After they do the consulting session, I then let them know (and even in advance of the call if they ask) that they can apply the $500 of consulting towards the price of the Fred Info Bootcamp. I suggest you follow my lead exactly as I do it. I think that you too should have a site that allows for YOU to consult with folks. Get paid to give people some consulting time. The give them credit for those dollars at the high priced seminar you are doing.

This will weed out those who are real from those who aren’t. High priced seminars can bring in a bunch of money and some very good clients for consulting and coaching work.

I recommend that you do them regardless of the field you’re in. Now get started!!

Today, my entire methodology of promoting revolves around my own in-house list. I’ve even stopped attempting to ask others to promote my seminar to THEIR lists. Why? Because it never seems to work out. They don’t want to follow my timeframes and seem to be less than cooperative when it comes to promoting something other than their own “stuff.”

My list is everything to my seminar promotion effort. Without the list, I have no one to promote my events to.

Do you have a list? If so, you need to cultivate it properly. I just had a chance to watch the movie “Being There” with Peter Sellers for the third or fourth time the other night. In the movie, sellers is a gardner. When he is “discovered” by a slew of media folks and politicians, he turns Washington on it’s ear.

He uses examples from gardening when talking about EVERYTHING. Soon the entire DC establishment thinks he is brilliant. In fact, he’s a simpleton.

But, everything that he says in that film about attending to your garden is true about your list. It needs to be cultivated, watered, watched and nurtured. Treat your list like the valuable asset it is and you’ll be able to promote your seminars to that list for a long time.