Working with a group of people, seeing them change as the day(s) progress is just great. You get direct feedback. You are able to tailor your message depending upon the facial expressions of your audience. But there is a darker side….
Don’t get me wrong. I love workshops. It is so much easier than being online or on the telephone providing you get the people to attend the event.
It can be much easier for people to attend a tele-seminar, a group session online, or have a discussion over a couple days on a forum than arrange to go to a live event. And that is the irony!
The impact of a live event is greater for both presenter and audience. Yet, these can be one of the hardest events to pull off and make a profit.
The most cost effective way to promote an event is to approach your warmest contacts. For these people already know you. They are more likely to allocate a larger chunk of time to come.
You can also ask them to refer your event to others so there is a mix of warm contacts with new contacts. This is great for the new contacts to be immersed in what you offer and how you offer it.
If you have lots of resources, you can advertise your event to new contacts. The offer will have to be absolutely compelling for people who don’t know you to spend a considerable amount of time to attend.
Consider the Christopher Howard events, these are free. They are for several days. But, he didn’t start out with workshop events. He built his reputation first. He built his raft of programmes before embarking upon these multi-day seminars. There is considerable email follow-up. He also works with others promoting his events to their lists. This is reality.
So, the ingredients for getting bums on seats are:
- build your reputation for what you are wanting to lead a workshop on
- have follow on products and services so your customers can get more of what you offer
- marketing to a warm list of contacts
- working with others where the market to their warm list of contacts
Sure, you can run a workshop without all of these, but it becomes more of a struggle. And, do you really want to struggle?
No comments:
Post a Comment