Seminar Marketing | Marketing Seminars and Promoting Your Own Events » event promotion

Direct Mail in Seminar Marketing

Scott Elder — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:01:24 +0000

Direct mail can be a very useful marketing method when you do a seminar.

There are two primary things I suggest you do.

One is a longer, more detailed promotional brochure. You will want to do it on an 11X17 coated paper. Given the relatively inexpensive prices of printing these days, you should probably opt for “4 color” printing. This just means that you print in FULL COLOR.

You’ll want to concentrate first on your headline. This will be the most important element of the brochure. Make sure you make it a SELF mailer. Putting the piece in an envelope will only depress your response rates.

On this piece, also make sure to include:

Lots of bullet points detailing what people will learn
Plenty of testimonials, preferably audio and/or video
A bio that will make people want to hear YOU
Pricing that is tiered based on how soon people respond
Bonuses that make sense to anyone who visits
A website address for those who need more info
Where and when the event will be held

If you opt to do a postcard, here are some of the things you need to know:

Use a postcard that is over-sized to make sure it gets seen
Your headline becomes critical to success
Don’t PACK it with copy, make it “airy” and easy to read
Your primary goal is to drive people to a site

When using either or both of these direct mail methods, the most critical item is your list. The best list is one that you compile yourself. This will make it MUCH more likely to get people sign up.

I never recommend that people use compiled or purchased lists to promote a seminar. They usually don’t pull enough response to justify their purchase.

Copywriting for Your Seminar Business

Scott Elder — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:01:22 +0000

Great copy for your event is critical for success. The problem is that few people can do a great job writing the copy themselves.

I suggest you pick up a copy of Bob Bly’s The Copywriter’s Handbook. Bob is a “client” of mine and actually dedicated the most recent edition of that book to me. Thanks Bob!

You should always TRY and write the copy yourself You may find you are very good at it. If you’re like me you’ll find that you are NOT particularly good.

No worries.

You can have a professional copywriter write the copy for your seminar or event. IF you have a LOAD of cash!

Hiring GOOD copywriters to write an entire site will NOT come cheap.

If you’re on a limited budget, I suggest you write the copy yourself and then have someone like Sabrina Brick TWEAK the copy that you write.

This will save you a lot of money AND allow you to promote your event with some very well written copy.

You can find Sabrina at:

http://www.SuperFastTweak.com

(Make sure to tell her where you found her!)

OFFLINE Advertising of Your Seminar Event

Scott Elder — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:01:15 +0000

You’re doing a seminar. Great. Does it make sense to spend any of your money advertising your event OFFLINE?

You’ll hear from a variety of advertising reps that the answer is YES. When they approach you to advertise the event, they will tell you HOW GREAT their particular ad vehicle is.

My response is always: I AGREE! I’m sure you’re great. I’ll then add: For US to make the MOST money I think it would be UNFAIR for me to merely pay you a fee for the ad. I think we should split the money 50-50.

So let’s have you run the ad as OFTEN AS YOU WANT and just split the money. That will make you even MORE than my PAYING for ad space.

Anyone who takes you up on that deal, go for it.

If not, do NOT spend money with any of the people who approach you. Remember that most ad reps get paid by the amount of dollars in advertising they book. Their compensation does NOT depend on YOUR results!

My goal is to make it so that like me, you NEVER lose money on an event.

If you follow my advice, I only HOPE to get you as close to that goal as I possibly can.

When people come to me and say they are doing a seminar in 3 months and want my help to market it, the first question I ask is: “how big a targeted email list do you have?”

If they say NONE, I always suggest they take the money they were planning to spend on advertising and donate it to their favorite charity.

The money would be MUCH BETTER spent!

Event Promotion Tip: After the Seminar

Scott Elder — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 05:12:49 +0000

Don’t leave straight after your event.
Stay around and hold court. Answer questions and give folks more great revelations. If they like what you have got to say, it’s likely they’re going to buy more product. Speakers who straight away cut out at the end of their events are misguided. Considering Success by the Numbers Each promotional methodology you use costs something. The most straightforward way to work out the successfulness of your attempts is to use the greenbacks out vs greenbacks in technique. Every promoting technique you use to pump your event will have a different rate of return. Here is how to work out effectiveness. Forget costs for this system. Simply take the quantity of greenbacks generated by registrations and compare that to the quantity of money paid for the promotion or advertising. Let’s imagine you spend $1,000 and make $2,000. That sure is a twenty-one ROI, which is average. Below this proportion would be poor. If a specific marketing strategy pulled 3:1, then it might fall into the good class. Any methodology of promotion that pulled 4:1 or better is a home run! If you had 2 promotions that pulled the very same number of folks, you would glaringly go after those folk with the promotional approach that cost the smaller amount.
You need to use each promotional implies pulls more than it costs. In a number of cases, where you know you can sell a load of products or consulting work, you could be willing to use those methods that don’t break even. If you know thru experience that your average attendee’s lifetime value is $750, you should be ready to pay that amount ( or some substantial chunk of it ) to get somebody to attend your event. But we also know that different folk make a response to different way of promotion. Some folk will never reply to a solicitation made through Television .
Others never make a response to direct mail.

You frequently will get a different group of folk from different types of promotion. This simplified approach works well unless you sell products at your convention. ( And if you do not, you have sort of missed the entire point of this book, haven’t you? ) Unless you include product sales in your calculations, there is not any way to show how well you are doing. I suggest you employ a measurement of Bucks / Person / Minute, as I explained in a prior article.