Part 2 of the content from my recent lead generation workshop
Seminars are a great way to educate your prospect about your product, can be a great offer/action for your direct mail program, and are definitely productive venues for meeting prospects. They tend to work better for products and services that can be complex – B2B and B2C – like computer products and financial services, or products/services that can be demonstrated effectively and/or taught in groups – gardening, wood working, cooking.
Typically, the goal of the seminar is to move the prospect along the sales cycle, and closer to trial or purchase.
I’m not going to go into the logistics of setting up a seminar. There are a lot of options, from setting up your own live seminar series, to webcasts, to offering your content to associations and the like. Run ii yourself, you have more control. Participate in someone else’s, you have less control, but less overall responsibility for logistics and audience as well.
What I really want to focus on is the content of the seminar.
People will not attend a seminar that is a thinly disguised product demonstration with little added value. If they are going to take the time to attend your seminar, whether IRL or virtually, the session has got to address a REAL problem they have and put your product in the context as part of the solution.
An example. My business is marketing consulting. When I give seminars or speeches, it is imperative that I give the audience value it can use, whether or not they ever engage a marketing consultant. If all I did was talk about the problems, and then said, to solve this, you need my product… I’d have an unhappy audience and I wouldn’t be asked back.
It is perfectly fine to talk about what you do… as long as the workshop has independent value as well. So, when you start down the seminar route, look for the independent value to your audience FIRST, and then add your product or service to the program.
Susan, I couldn’t agree more. I have found the same applies for webcasts. I ensure that a signficant portion of our webinars present value-add material and highlight practical strategies that our attendees can use immediately, independent of our solution.
We use these webinars to nurture our target audience – and have found that regular attendees eventually turn into fastmoving, educated and interested leads.
Hi Susan – you are right on the money regarding seminars and content. Giving seminars that have solid content to educate clients is the number one way I grew my private counselling practice. It also helps to build relationships with people and it never hurts that you are seen as a trusted resource.