Seminar Planning and Marketing: Seven Tips to Increase Attendance

By Mike Schultz and John Doerr

"I just delivered one of the best seminar presentations of my life," said the professional. "Too bad only 6 people showed up."

All too often we hear this very avoidable lament. Firms decide to build and market seminars. That's good. The people who must deliver the seminar in those firms spend days making sure they do a great job. That's good, too. Unfortunately, in too many organizations the efforts for planning and building seminar attendance often miss the mark. Too many dollars and too many hours are wasted on attendance building tactics that just do not work.

So what happens? You give up on seminars. Please, don't. One of the most effective ways to build a professional service practice is to produce and deliver short (one-half day or less) seminars, speeches and events. Indeed, you will not find too many people disagreeing that speaking is a great marketing technique.

The right reaction to our poor professional, who had only 6 at his seminar, is not to give up the seminar, but give up the marketing tactics she used. If you do plan on taking the time and spending the money to produce, prepare, and deliver a presentation or mini-seminar, here are seven seminar marketing and planning tips that will help you fill your room:

1. Marketing Timing: Usually, professionals market their seminars much too early. A CPA firm we know recently had high business development hopes from a series of six short seminars. They sent very well-written letters to inform clients and prospects of the series. The 'invitations' reached the client base about 12 weeks before the first mini-seminar, 14 weeks before the second mini-seminar, 16 before the third, etc. Attendance was decidedly underwhelming.
   
   Their mistake was in planning the mail lead time. They were surprised when we told them that announcements for generating attendance for 2 hour seminars is best done about three or four weeks in advance, not 12 or 16 or 20. Rule of thumb: the shorter the seminar the shorter the event announcement lead time.
   
2. List Targeting: In direct mail the three greatest indicators of success are lists, lists, and lists. Before you send out one piece of mail, make sure you have a reasonable expectation that the people on the list will be interested in your topic. A great seminar title, mailing package, and value proposition will generate zero attendance if you mail it to a list that is not interested in your topic.
   
3. Seminar Marketing Response Expectations: Easy math: number of names times response rate equals attendance. 2,000 names times 2% response equals 40 attendees. "And why shouldn't we get a 2% response," inexperienced seminar marketers often say to themselves in the planning process. "I've seen the research on direct marketing: 2% response is average for direct mail."
   
   Indeed, according to the Direct Marketing Association 2003 response rate study, direct marketing responses are somewhere in the 2% range on average. Consider, however, that most professional seminar marketers don't measure response in percents; they measure it in response per thousand because, by and large, they only get fractions of a percent to attend. So if you're in seminar marketing, forget about wondering, "What percent of our mailing will come to our event," and start thinking about how many per thousand might attend.
   
   Some highly successful events marketed by professionals don't even get a 1 per thousand response. Mailings for mini-seminars tend to do better than this, but not always by much.
   
   What's the point of the story? If you have your direct marketing response expectations set too high, you are in for both disappointment and low attendance. So make sure you have enough good names to mail to, and mail enough pieces to actually fill your room.
   
4. Marketing Piece: Suffice it to say that sometimes a postcard is perfectly fine for generating attendance for your seminars. Other times email is all you need. It might be that invitations will work better for your event. Sometimes you need an invitation, a letter, a business return envelope, a whitepaper, and convenient registration on your website.
   
   This could be (and is) the subject of whole books. Just be aware that you should research what kind of marketing piece might work in your situation, for your audience, and test different pieces on different events. Think about your audience, what their day looks like, and then send them the piece that will get through the noise and clutter.
   
5. Registration Fee: Many professionals assume their 'marketing seminars' should be free. Here are a few reasons to consider charging a registration fee:
   a) Paid events will often generate more actual attendance than free events.
   b) Paid events tend to have significantly fewer no-shows than free events.
   c) The attendees you generate are usually more interested in the event than those attending a "free" breakfast, lunch, or "networking" event.
   d) People come expecting value instead of a sales pitch. If you then deliver value, you'll establish the expectation and knowledge that time with you is worth the money.
   
   Also note that, depending on your service, free seminars can work as well as paid ones, especially for business-to-consumer professional services. Our final advice on the subject: know your audience, make good business assumptions, and test both paid and free.
   
6. Seminar Title: Your seminar title needs to clearly state what value you will deliver at the event. You will also want it to be as short as possible (but as long as needed), and appealing to the reader. Using the words "How To" in a seminar title has proven time and time again to increase attendance. The title "Learn about new investment opportunities" (a real title we recently saw), would be much more effective if it were called, "How you can take advantage of new investment opportunities."
   
   A very simple approach for seminar titling: Make a list of a dozen or so different ways you could title the event. Ask for feedback from colleagues, clients, and potential clients. If you run the event multiple times, test different titles and see if one title generates more attendance than the other.
   
7. Seminar Marketing Partners: Marketing partners are an often overlooked source for boosting seminar attendance. You can, for example, partner with two other firms and pool your resources and mailing lists to increase response and then deliver together. Besides having extra names to market to, your event will have a multi-faceted presenter list which can often increase attendance in and of itself.
   
   You can also co-market the event with a trade association, get the event notice listed in your partner's e-newsletters, work with a college or university to sponsor the event, or any number of other partner strategies. For example, a network security service firm we know partnered with the FBI to run their seminar on the new security issues facing firms. The event pulled better than anything they had ever done before.

As a final thought, one of the most overlooked ways to increase seminar registration is by delivering great events—providing information or tools that will be of significant value for the attendees. If you "deliver one of the best seminars of your life" every time, your events, much like your practices, will grow in reputation and attendance.

Who knows, someday soon you might even be able to answer the phone and let your potential attendees know, "Sorry, this seminar is full, but I will register you for the next one."