Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog

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There are many ways to market your seminar, it largely depends on they type of event you’re planning to run, who your audience is and how they tend to take in their information. For example, if you’re targeting people within the IT sector, it is a fair bet that they have access to the Internet and emails. If you’re targeting building site foremen, then email might not be the best way to communicate with them.

1. Leave plenty of time to market your event, usually 6-8 weeks is about right. You might want to extend this to 12-16 weeks if you’re targeting larger numbers of delegates.

2. Decide on what media you are going to use to tell people about your seminar. You should create a marketing schedule that will outline when your communication and advertising is planned for.

3. If you’re buying data in especially for your seminar, we recommend that you warm your list up first. If your target delegates have never heard from you before, they might not connect your company with their market or as a company they might be interested in. Warm your list up by submitting to it and offering a white paper or something that begins to add to your credibility like a case study.

4. Find out where your target market is likely to be. Is it worth sponsoring a web site that you know attracts the profile of delegate you want to market to. Are there joint venture opportunities to market to other lists in return for them speaking at your event or similar contra? Is there a governing body or a busy forum that you could use to filter information about your event? Whatever you choose, do not rely on just one method.

5. Make it easy for your delegates to book their place on the seminar. This is a crucial factor so spend some time on this. If you’re sending them an email, make sure that they can respond to the email to register their interest, many companies use a noreply email alias when marketing to their email list, this is frustrating for your potential delegates if they respond to your marketing with a question.

6. Use best practice for your seminar landing page. Provide an overview of your seminar, details of the agenda, details of who should attend and why and the option to register via the page. Don’t forget to include details of the location, a map and full address (for those using satnav) details. If you’re in London, details of the nearest tube station.

7. Consider placing a .ICS file on your event landing page. This is the standard way to install calendar information on your web page. This will allow your delegates to download a calendar entry that will populate their chosen calendar programme, such as Outlook. This is a nice way of pre booking your event in their diary and increase the chances that they do not double book.

8. Use an autoresponder to confirm their seminar place is booked, ensure that you include all of the information as it relates to the event and contact details in case they have questions or queries. Make sure the basics like a link to the address details is provided.

9. Iin our opinion this next stage is critical to the success of your seminar; staying in touch with the delegates who have registered. We would suggest that from cold list to seminar attendee you will need to touch your contact a minimum of 5 times, obviously this changes depending on the circumstances. Below is our touch process when using email marketing for seminars:

l Warm up the list, initial offering of case study or similar.
l Additional touch designed to show your expertise in a specific market.
l Market the seminar
l Autoresponder thanking those that register
l A follow up email with a slight change to the agenda (optional)
l Phone call to establish what the delegate is looking to learn
l Final call to check dietary requirements and attendance plans.

The above list is useful because it provides you with a number of different interactions with your delegate. At the same time you are constantly qualifying them, did they respond to your initial offer, did they register for the seminar, did they show an interest when you spoke to them, were you able to arrange some one-on-one time with them? All of this is great and will allow you to have a better picture of your delegate and plan your event well.

The worst case scenario here is that you have had a number of opportunities to find out the potential number of attendees. If through your calls or emails you realise that you have more people coming than than space in the room, you have an opportunity to do something about it.