Promoting the Seminar
Testimonials:The “Mother’s Milk” of Seminar Promotion
By far the most effective means of selling your seminar are testimonials from previous seminar attendees. The best time to capture these testimonials is at the event itself. This is when people are the most “lathered up” about your event and most inclined to give you a glowing report.
You’ll want to get them in written form, which is best accomplished through the use of an evaluation form where you ask people to sign the form after they jot down some words of praise. When you hand out your evaluations , instruct people to give you specificcomments. A general, watered-down testimonial is virtually useless.
You may even want to coach them a bit on what you’re looking for by giving an example. I always tell people: “If you think your profits will double as a result of using the hotline, please put that down.”
When you speak to people after your event and they tell you great things that have happened as a result of your event, quickly ask them if you can write up what they said and fax it over to them for their signature. Again, the key is to strike while the iron is hot. If they have great things to say, get them in writing.
I also recommend that you keep the video camera rolling towards the end of your event and get people to give you video testimonials. You’ll be able to use them in a variety of ways to help you promote future events. You can send out videos or stream them from your Web site. You can also choose to use only the audio portion of the testimonial.
Public Relations
Publicity can be a very effective way to promote your event. This is particularly true if you do it yourself. Paying a PR person can be expensive and often times won’t pull enough responses to justify the costs.
There are three pieces to the publicity puzzle as it relates to your seminars. First, you want to get the coverage. Second, you want to do the best job you can once you’re in front of the media. Lastly, you want to sell a lot of seminar seats with this opportunity.
To generate publicity, you’ll need a hook. This is what causes the media to want to cover your event. You’ll also want to formulate your message. This is what you say once you’re in front of the media.
An important thing to remember is that there are tons of people who are trying to get in front of the media to help promote their seminar or event. The media gets bombarded with requests for coverage from seminar promoters. This means that you must have something newsworthy or unusual to get their attention.
In many cases, you’ll be doing the publicity yourself. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Many people do their own publicity and promotion. If you understand the process, you can be very successful. Who can be a better advocate for your seminar or event than you?
Media Coaching Can Help
Before you start getting in front of the media, it’s a good idea to understand how the process works. This will allow you to optimize your opportunities. I’d recommend that you go to a seminar by Joel Roberts to find out exactly how to maximize your chances for success.
Using Outside Publicity Experts
There are many people who present themselves as publicity experts who will be happy to take your money in exchange for claiming to help you promote your event. Be suspicious.
If a publicity person is confident he or she can get you publicity, I suggest you compensate them differently than they might prefer. Offer to give them a piece of all of the registrations that come in from their efforts. Let’s say the seminar is priced at $300. Let’s also assume that the marginal cost for each attendee is $25. This means that every registration is worth $275 (net) to you.
Offer your publicity person a minimum of a 50-50 split on the registration dollars for every person that their efforts generate. (This assumes that you can track the responses.)
I would even consider giving them more. If necessary, I’ll give a PR person $200 for each person their efforts can generate. I’ll still make $75 on the front end and have the opportunity to sell them products and other services while I build a larger database.
Most PR people will balk at this deal. Fine. Only use people who are willing to bite at this arrangement. If they are really good, they’ll actually make a lot more money.
Persistence Pays
The key to getting media coverage is to be persistent. Don't expect to make one call and have them asking you to sit down for an interview and a photo shoot. As with all things where you're relying on someone else to do something that's higher on your list than it is on theirs, persistence is the key here. Without being a pest, regular and polite call-backs are in order. If you've left several messages and none are being returned, a final message that simply says, "I assume you're not interested and I don't want to keep pestering you, so I'm not going to call again. But if you are interested and just busy right now, please do call me as soon as you can and let's talk about how we can help each other" is definitely appropriate.
If you’re easily discouraged when people seem to ignore you, you’ll find the PR route tough sledding. Editors are not only busy people, they are suspicious as well. Press releases tend not to get the kind of attention that the people who send them think they deserve. But if you are gently persistent in your follow-up, you can often get a reporter or editor on the phone to talk to you about your story. It’s more often that conversation, rather than the release itself, that will lead to coverage.
So don’t give up and don’t get discouraged!
Don’t Be Hurt When They Don’t Cover You
When, despite your patience and persistence, you don’t get coverage by the media, don’t be discouraged and don’t take it personally. These folks are just doing their jobs. Your goal is to make your event so enticing that they are compelled to give you coverage.
Sometimes you just don’t have a newsworthy event. It’s not likely any major metropolitan daily newspaper or TV outlet or radio show is going to cover your seminar unless it has a hook and is something they haven’t seen before (or at least recently). No hook, no coverage, even on a slow news day.
The Hook
The hook is what causes the media to stop what they’re doing and take notice of your event. If there has just been an earthquake in San Francisco and you’re doing a seminar on how to earthquake-proof your house, you’ve got a relatively easy sell.
In most cases, things won’t be this easy.
You can also take a specific portion of your seminar and try to create a hook. In order for your hook to be effective you’ll want to try and tie it to some current event or trend in the field.
TV Publicity (Empty)
We live in a time that is dominated by television. It’s only natural that you would be eager to get yourself some good TV publicity. Don’t bother. As good as seeing your face on TV may be for your ego, stations rarely let you put up an 800 number or a Web site URL. This makes TV appearances just about worthless for product promotion unless you’re already known and people can find you easily. I recommend that you not pursue TV unless you know someone.
Radio
To learn how to get your event covered on radio, I suggest you learn from the master of the radio interview, Alex Carroll. He has done more interviews for one book than virtually anyone on the planet.
Go to his site, www.radiopublicity.com, to learn more about him and some of the materials that he has to offer. His information is backed by real-life experience as the interviewee in well over 1,000 radio interviews.
Print
The master of print publicity is another friend of mine, Paul Hartunian. Paul has generated the equivalent of well over $6 million in space advertising in magazines and newspapers. I suggest you obtain his materials before you start promoting your own events.
Give me a call and we’ll get you a set of his materials.
Online
There are a number of sources for you to generate on-line publicity.
Some of these depend on your topic. If you’re giving a seminar of interest to the building trades industry, for example, you should use your favorite search engine (my technical colleague Dan Shafer, who’s a real guru in this field, currently recommends www.google.com) and look up building trades sites. Some, particularly associations and eZines devoted to your space, will be happy to list your seminar free.
You can also post notices about your seminars and workshops on the email lists, listservs, and discussion boards you belong to and contribute to regularly. Be careful here; spam is not appreciated and can have a severe negative side effect. But if you’re a regular member of and contributor to some online communities in your space, and if you’re careful about how you promote your seminar (avoiding blatant, obvious promotions but perhaps including a line about your upcoming seminar in your personal sig line, for example), you can often get peoples’ attention here.
By far the most effective means of selling your seminar are testimonials from previous seminar attendees. The best time to capture these testimonials is at the event itself. This is when people are the most “lathered up” about your event and most inclined to give you a glowing report.
You’ll want to get them in written form, which is best accomplished through the use of an evaluation form where you ask people to sign the form after they jot down some words of praise. When you hand out your evaluations , instruct people to give you specificcomments. A general, watered-down testimonial is virtually useless.
You may even want to coach them a bit on what you’re looking for by giving an example. I always tell people: “If you think your profits will double as a result of using the hotline, please put that down.”
When you speak to people after your event and they tell you great things that have happened as a result of your event, quickly ask them if you can write up what they said and fax it over to them for their signature. Again, the key is to strike while the iron is hot. If they have great things to say, get them in writing.
I also recommend that you keep the video camera rolling towards the end of your event and get people to give you video testimonials. You’ll be able to use them in a variety of ways to help you promote future events. You can send out videos or stream them from your Web site. You can also choose to use only the audio portion of the testimonial.
Public Relations
Publicity can be a very effective way to promote your event. This is particularly true if you do it yourself. Paying a PR person can be expensive and often times won’t pull enough responses to justify the costs.
There are three pieces to the publicity puzzle as it relates to your seminars. First, you want to get the coverage. Second, you want to do the best job you can once you’re in front of the media. Lastly, you want to sell a lot of seminar seats with this opportunity.
To generate publicity, you’ll need a hook. This is what causes the media to want to cover your event. You’ll also want to formulate your message. This is what you say once you’re in front of the media.
An important thing to remember is that there are tons of people who are trying to get in front of the media to help promote their seminar or event. The media gets bombarded with requests for coverage from seminar promoters. This means that you must have something newsworthy or unusual to get their attention.
In many cases, you’ll be doing the publicity yourself. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Many people do their own publicity and promotion. If you understand the process, you can be very successful. Who can be a better advocate for your seminar or event than you?
Media Coaching Can Help
Before you start getting in front of the media, it’s a good idea to understand how the process works. This will allow you to optimize your opportunities. I’d recommend that you go to a seminar by Joel Roberts to find out exactly how to maximize your chances for success.
Using Outside Publicity Experts
There are many people who present themselves as publicity experts who will be happy to take your money in exchange for claiming to help you promote your event. Be suspicious.
If a publicity person is confident he or she can get you publicity, I suggest you compensate them differently than they might prefer. Offer to give them a piece of all of the registrations that come in from their efforts. Let’s say the seminar is priced at $300. Let’s also assume that the marginal cost for each attendee is $25. This means that every registration is worth $275 (net) to you.
Offer your publicity person a minimum of a 50-50 split on the registration dollars for every person that their efforts generate. (This assumes that you can track the responses.)
I would even consider giving them more. If necessary, I’ll give a PR person $200 for each person their efforts can generate. I’ll still make $75 on the front end and have the opportunity to sell them products and other services while I build a larger database.
Most PR people will balk at this deal. Fine. Only use people who are willing to bite at this arrangement. If they are really good, they’ll actually make a lot more money.
Persistence Pays
The key to getting media coverage is to be persistent. Don't expect to make one call and have them asking you to sit down for an interview and a photo shoot. As with all things where you're relying on someone else to do something that's higher on your list than it is on theirs, persistence is the key here. Without being a pest, regular and polite call-backs are in order. If you've left several messages and none are being returned, a final message that simply says, "I assume you're not interested and I don't want to keep pestering you, so I'm not going to call again. But if you are interested and just busy right now, please do call me as soon as you can and let's talk about how we can help each other" is definitely appropriate.
If you’re easily discouraged when people seem to ignore you, you’ll find the PR route tough sledding. Editors are not only busy people, they are suspicious as well. Press releases tend not to get the kind of attention that the people who send them think they deserve. But if you are gently persistent in your follow-up, you can often get a reporter or editor on the phone to talk to you about your story. It’s more often that conversation, rather than the release itself, that will lead to coverage.
So don’t give up and don’t get discouraged!
Don’t Be Hurt When They Don’t Cover You
When, despite your patience and persistence, you don’t get coverage by the media, don’t be discouraged and don’t take it personally. These folks are just doing their jobs. Your goal is to make your event so enticing that they are compelled to give you coverage.
Sometimes you just don’t have a newsworthy event. It’s not likely any major metropolitan daily newspaper or TV outlet or radio show is going to cover your seminar unless it has a hook and is something they haven’t seen before (or at least recently). No hook, no coverage, even on a slow news day.
The Hook
The hook is what causes the media to stop what they’re doing and take notice of your event. If there has just been an earthquake in San Francisco and you’re doing a seminar on how to earthquake-proof your house, you’ve got a relatively easy sell.
In most cases, things won’t be this easy.
You can also take a specific portion of your seminar and try to create a hook. In order for your hook to be effective you’ll want to try and tie it to some current event or trend in the field.
TV Publicity (Empty)
We live in a time that is dominated by television. It’s only natural that you would be eager to get yourself some good TV publicity. Don’t bother. As good as seeing your face on TV may be for your ego, stations rarely let you put up an 800 number or a Web site URL. This makes TV appearances just about worthless for product promotion unless you’re already known and people can find you easily. I recommend that you not pursue TV unless you know someone.
Radio
To learn how to get your event covered on radio, I suggest you learn from the master of the radio interview, Alex Carroll. He has done more interviews for one book than virtually anyone on the planet.
Go to his site, www.radiopublicity.com, to learn more about him and some of the materials that he has to offer. His information is backed by real-life experience as the interviewee in well over 1,000 radio interviews.
The master of print publicity is another friend of mine, Paul Hartunian. Paul has generated the equivalent of well over $6 million in space advertising in magazines and newspapers. I suggest you obtain his materials before you start promoting your own events.
Give me a call and we’ll get you a set of his materials.
Online
There are a number of sources for you to generate on-line publicity.
Some of these depend on your topic. If you’re giving a seminar of interest to the building trades industry, for example, you should use your favorite search engine (my technical colleague Dan Shafer, who’s a real guru in this field, currently recommends www.google.com) and look up building trades sites. Some, particularly associations and eZines devoted to your space, will be happy to list your seminar free.
You can also post notices about your seminars and workshops on the email lists, listservs, and discussion boards you belong to and contribute to regularly. Be careful here; spam is not appreciated and can have a severe negative side effect. But if you’re a regular member of and contributor to some online communities in your space, and if you’re careful about how you promote your seminar (avoiding blatant, obvious promotions but perhaps including a line about your upcoming seminar in your personal sig line, for example), you can often get peoples’ attention here.