Your seminar is planned and you have a training room booked, now you just have to fill the seats and get people to attend. When you are setting out to create your first training session, your task is to get an audience and gather interest in what you are promoting or training.
How are you going to fill your seminar or training session? Here are some tips to help you succeed in getting people to attend.
Promote on announcement and Meetup sites! There are plenty of event announcement websites and most of them are free. Social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus have places to post and promote your event. Besides social media event places, there are sites such as Meetup where you can crowd-source and promote your seminar to people who share the common interest of your training session.
Mention it in your newsletter! If you have a newsletter that you share with your customers, clients and prospects, you need to use that channel to promote and recruit participants to attend your seminar or training session. The people you share your newsletter with are people who already know who you are and have given you their trust to converse with them, you need to let them know that they are your preferred audience.
Promote on Social Media! You have dedicated a great deal to building your social media followers, they follow you for a reason and should be an ideal audience for your seminar or training session. Those that follow you, follow you for a reason. Your blog and social media audience can be a great source of participants, because they already trust you with sharing information with them that they can use.
Direct email to current and prospective customers! You should have several email lists that you use for your newsletter, you current customers and your prospects who have shared their info with you. If you are using an online service like MailChimp or ConstantContact, you have a direct line to your customers and prospects that are active subscribers to your messages.
Call everyone on your prospect list and invite them personally! Don’t just count on mail and email that you sent them. Take the time to call to each person you have a phone number for, give a brief description of the seminar or training session, and personally invite them to attend. You will be amazed how many of your business contacts will Thank you for calling and agree to attend your session.
Ask customers, clients and colleagues to make referrals. Just emailing an announcement to potential referral sources is not the same as asking for their help to get more attendees. When you call these people who you want to attend your session, be sure to ask them to suggest two or three other people who they believe could also benefit from you seminar. They may have suggestions for you, but you should also ask them if they will also contact those people themselves to endorse your training session or seminar.
Consider partnering with an association or group that has common goals, they may not be in the same industry, they may just be a local association such as a BIA. These other parties have their lists and contacts that they may be willing to share with you, knowing you will share with them when they are hosting an event, seminar or training session for a mutual subject.
One way to get the word out is also to solicit friends and family to reach out to their business associates, to let them know how your session might benefit them. When you extend your networks, you never know who in your network might be an ideal participant for your seminar. Another way you can utilize friends and family to help you fill your seminar or training session is to have them attend, your other attendees will see a full room and recommend your session for future events.