Social Media Marketing and Successful Seminar Selling – Part 2

My previous blog on Philip Calvert’s session to business leaders at a past MD2MD meeting focused on human behaviour and how it would impact on the way we market and present at a seminar.

In order to maximize the potential to fill an event with delegates, planning and marketing should commence 5 months before the seminar.

So where do we start?

Objectives – Have clear, defined objectives of what you want to achieve.

• Why are you putting on the event?
• What do you want to achieve form it?
• What do you want the delegates to do as a result of coming to the seminar?  Buy a product? Provide a testimonial?

Subject Matter – What subject matter are you going to use?  Ask the audience/potential delegates or use a survey tool like www.SurveyMonkey.com.

Target audience – who would you like to attend and how many?

Locations – Hotels and meeting rooms are common venues, but by choosing somewhere a bit different your event may appeal to more people.

Once you have decided on the above, what are you going to offer your delegates?  Everyone loves to receive something; food, discount vouchers, a free book, free membership to a networking group or a discount on future events.

Interestingly, you are likely to get more people attend an event if you charge, than if you offer it for free or at a very low cost.  What encourages even more people is if you charge and make it more appealing by offering, for example, discounts for:

• Members of a group (business link, federation of small businesses, your industry body)
• Existing clients
• If connected to you on LinkedIn
• You can also offer incentives which will highlight the value they will receive;
• A free book
• A lovely lunch
• Free membership to your networking group
• Discount vouchers
• Immediate booking discount
• Something of value to take away

Try to pick 3 discounts or incentives and, when including it in your marketing material, put what it is worth.   If the total comes to more than the ticket price – even better!