Your Database

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TRANSCRIPT:
Avish: Alright, let’s talk about the need for a database. How important is it that people create and build a database when they are in the seminar business?

Fred: Well, let me give you one example to illustrate the point. I had somebody contact me in the last few years or so and tell me that they were very interested in doing a seminar on a specific topic. And I said to them, “Well, let me ask you this.” I said, “When do you want to do it?” And I think they contacted me in like February and they wanted to do the seminar within the next 90 days. My first question was, “How big a list do you have to promote it to?” They said, “Well we don’t have a list yet.” So what you are doing is a prescription for a disaster, because your chances of success are virtually nil unless you have a database.

So, a database of names is absolutely crucial to your success doing any seminar. Now occasionally, that may not be the case, if you have a seminar wherein you have 10 joint venture partners, and all of them have databases. But, in most cases, database is crucial.

Avish: Well, what about the difference between my own in-house lists or what if I can just go out and buy a list online?

Fred: If you go out and buy a list online, you haven’t developed any rapport with that particular list. And again, your chances of getting them to show up for an event are very much reduced, because you haven’t built a relationship with them about that topic.

Avish: Okay. So you are saying, if I really want to be successful long term in the seminar business, I need to start out building a list so I have a list of people to market to?

Fred: Yes, it’s absolutely crucial. And this is the problem most people think they can get into the seminar business, and jump in tomorrow and be successful, in the next 3 or 4 months. And what you really have to be thinking about is, “Who is my target market? How can I build a group of people who have a list?”

And not to overuse Bill DeWees as an example here, one of things that we are finding here is that he’s just getting started. And we decided to put this seminar together on an audio book recording, on how to do them. And he had about 220 people signed up for his list, and he was excited and when we started to promote the seminar he says, “This would be great.” And we were limiting the size of the number of people who could come to the seminar at 20, and I said, “Bill, now remember, I want to curb your enthusiasm here,” not to use a trite term.

Avish: Uh-huh.

Fred: Curb your enthusiasm, because you only have 225 people on the list. And that’s not a big group of people to try and get 20 people into a seminar, especially since you are doing it in Chicago and it would involve travel because his names were from all over the place. And he said, “Oh no, that won’t be a problem,” filling his event. Unfortunately, it was quite challenging, to get people to show up because, really, no matter how good you are, you need to have a certain size of list in order to make it work, and so people who think that they can get started in the seminar business just tomorrow and with a small list get people to show up in an event is delusional. It’s not just going to happen. So again your database is crucial to your long term success.

Avish: Okay, if that’s true, which obviously it is, and I believe it is, how do we build that list? How do we fill our funnel, as you like to say?

Fred: Well, the thing that you have to do is to make sure that you have a website that specifically targets a group of people that you will be going after later on to do seminars for. And that website, whether it be strictly what we call a squeeze page, which is just we try to have people give their email address in exchange for some information, or more of an authority site, like I have at seminarmarketingexpert.com, which was recently hacked by the way. I wasn’t running it but it had gotten into. But you can go there and see in the seminarmarketingexpert.com I have a lot of resources for people.

And what I am doing is that, I am doing 2 things — I am trying to get people to give me their email address in exchange for some information. In this case I was giving them 52-part course, a 52-week course on how to get to the seminar business. But more importantly, I am establishing my expertise in the topic or field so that when people go there, they see what I have, and see that I am knowledgeable. And then that makes them want to give me their e-mail address, which is again crucial to success.

Avish: Okay. So we need to set up a website design for that? Now don’t know maybe out of the scope of what we are talking about here, but how do you build a webpage that let’s you do that sort of thing?

Fred: Well, I would point people to, and I think the best for you to do it, is to build an authority site page, similar to seminarmarketingexpert.com. And if anybody wants to take a look, that’s where I would direct them to, which is I would build a site like that. I think that the era of just building a squeeze page, and getting people to give you their name and email address, wouldn’t be as effective as building an authority site, which also has an offer to give people or to get people to give you their email address.

So, I would like to just take a look at seminarmarketingexpert.com, and use it as a template on how they should do it, get people involved. And also, and again, this is going back to our sites speakingexpert.com or Bill DeWee’s site, which is voice-over-training.org. Both of those sites, yours and Bill’s have an offer that includes some free material and we use a video. Both of you guys use a video in order to get people to sign up and give you their email address. So take a look at those 3 sites as examples, of how to do it.

Avish: Okay and you have resources people to go build those sites. Because obviously, some people are going to be computer illiterate, if someone wants to build a site like seminarexpert.com how should they go about doing that?

Fred: Well, you should probably talk to my good friend David Hamilton, you can go to webmarketingmagician, all one word, webmarketingmagician.com or you can look into his site authoritysite101.com, authoritysite101, and he would be the ideal person to help anyone who is not really computer savvy, to build these kinds of sites.

Avish: Okay super. So let’s say that someone builds a site like that either on their own, or using web marketing magician’s help, how do you get people to that site? Do you pay to get people there? What’s the process there?

Fred: Well there are obviously a number of ways to do this, and I have a whole program on generating traffic that I did with Bob Bligh, but really then, it’s all about traffic generation, which is way outside the scope of this particular seminar. But I would say to people in general, you generate traffic through one or four means. You’ve got to build traffic by using offline, free kinds of things, like free offline, would be something like press releases, for your particular matter of seminar. Free online would mean you try to get the best SEO results from your site. Then there’s paid offline, which uses advertising in trade publications. Then you got paid online which you get paying for clicks, either on Facebook or Google, those kinds of things. So you have got different kinds of means of generating traffic, but then again, those are four of the simplest ones talking about them at a very sort of overview in cursory fashion.

Avish: Okay, and one more question about the database. What is a better or worse tool to use to store your database? Some people just have a spreadsheet, or a list of index cards. What’s the best way?

Fred: That is a good question. I will encourage everyone to be using web marketing magic. In web marketing magic, the reason why they encourage it is that it’s a great tool to build your mailing list. But also, if people who are listening to this program get web marketing magic, it’s the program that everyone that I have in my sort of extended group of friends and colleagues, that they use and that all of the training materials that we have, may of which are free, use web marketing magic as an example. I would encourage everybody who’ s listening to this program, to get web marketing magic, to get the professional version which I think costs about 100 bucks a month which is worth it. It has everything you need, to do exactly that.

Avish: Alright, so to wrap this section up, we’ll go back to the person who doesn’t have database, wants to do a seminar, and they are standing in front of you. What are the first couple of things you would tell them to do?

Fred: Number 1, to think about putting together a great freebie, that people would be intrigued and wiling to get their email address to receive. To set up a great website that is very good and capturing those names and information. To be patient and understand that it going to take a while to build a database to be able to promote a seminar like that. And to make sure that they set up a good website either on their own, or use David Hamilton, the web marketing magician. And then to start to promote it using the various types of traffic types that are out there in order to get people on to the site and signing up to build your database.

Avish: Alright, great stuff Fred.

Fred: Super.