PeakStrategy

You’ve got a great idea for a seminar! You’ve planned a good program and researched the market. You determined how the seminar will help increase business in your consulting practice.  You’re well-qualified to teach, or have obtained the services of someone who is. Now, what’s going to assure you that you can get people there? What’s going to make them want to come? One thing we learned over the years is:

Success in the seminar business is much more a function of marketing and promotion than the result of program design, development, and instructional competency.

Granted, long-term success requires a quality program, good materials, and effective instruction, but it takes marketing and promotional know-how to get it off the ground and keep it flying.

So what steps can you take to ensure the success of your seminar? First, consider the following variables which contribute to the overall success of a seminar:

1. The topic itself.  Is there a large enough, readily identifiable population with a sustained interest in the topic you’ve chosen? Explore the viability of an idea before you commit resources to its development. Successful seminar marketers begin their quest for a viable, profitable seminar, not just with an interest or needed subject, but with an identifiable and reachable audience or market. They find a group (market) which is easy to reach at a reasonable cost and then decide what seminar or workshop would be of sufficient interest to the market identified to produce a profitable venture.  Ideally, the target should be audiences similar to consulting clients you have now, unless you are looking to enter a new market.

2. Geographic and regional variations. Will your seminar do better in some regions of the country than in others, and will it have the greatest appeal to people in rural areas, suburbs, or cities within a given region? In your seminar limited to the interests of a specific group, location, or time frame? For instance, if you’re going to conduct a seminar on starting a new business in Los Angeles, be sure you can take that same seminar to Denver and New York without the need for unreasonable expense to research the specific laws for each area.

3. Price sensitivity. Will your fee be regarded as too high in some places and not high enough to instill credibility in others? To maximize profitability in a program open to the public, the price should be set at the highest level people are willing to pay to attend. Through testing or experience, a promoter tries to determine what, if any price sensitivity exists for a particular program, and then sets the price just under the amount that would result in a decision not to attend. The only problem with this theory, true though it may be, is the difficulty of translating it into a single monetary amount, since the valuation will differ with the individual and fluctuate with the unpredictability of the volume-price relationship. If the price is raised, fewer people may attend, but the profitability may well be higher. If the price in lowered, enrollment may increase, but direct costs will also rise, due to the increased number of participants.   If you do have open spaces you may want to consider giving your existing consulting clients a discount on the seminar.

4. Location. To what degree will the location and facility in which you hold your sessions affect the way the public perceives the program? The image you want your program to convey should be substantiated by the meeting site. First-class hotels are important to many programs, and you should never skimp on such details as location, quality of materials and advertising or refreshments if it will hinder the marketing success of the program or subsequent marketing objectives you may have established. While the development and conduct of seminars for profit in their own right may be your objective, you should also consider the prospect of marketing a tool that you might have developed or your consulting services. The objective of a seminar as a break even (or even loss loader) proposition as a means to establish the marketing of some subsequent product, service or even additional seminars is not uncommon.

5. Time of day, week and month. Should you schedule your session in the evenings so that people can attend after work or during the day so that they must miss work to attend? Should you schedule on weekdays or weekends?  What are the slow periods for your existing consulting client base?

Seminar-presenters have found that when the consumer is paying the bill himself, the best months of the year in which to give the seminar, listed in priority order are: January, September, October, March, April, June, November, February, May, July, December, and August.

The best days of the week, in priority order are Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Thursday and Monday. When the programs are paid for by someone else, the best months of the year, again listed in priority order are: March, October, April, September, November, January, February, June, May, July, August, December, while the best days of the week are Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday and Sunday.

Also be sure to consider the potential negative impact of vacation periods (the month of August and last two weeks in December are particularly hazardous), national holidays, religious holidays, June for wedding receptions, Spring Break for colleges and high school vacations, tax-time in April, major national or local events, rush-hour traffic patterns and availability of public transportation, bus and rail transportation, potential labor strife or strikes, conventions causing a lack of hotel rooms, events of major significance to your potential participants, and the convenience of the time and day.

6. Length of Program. A few hours, or a few days; how does it affect the way your program is received and the fee you can charge? Programs designed for professionals and business executives should be compact. This is far more important than the fee for such participants. A busy individual may lose hundreds or thousands of dollars a day by being unable to practice his or her profession.

There is a hospitality requirement on the part of the presenter that grows as the program gets longer. Providing suitable beverages and snacks, and making sure that there are ample hotel, restaurant, entertainment and transportation facilities nearby greatly complicates the management of a program when it extends beyond a single day.

All of these elemental variables, and others, can and should be tested by varying them from session, one at a time, and comparing the results. This fine-tuning process should continue throughout the life of a program if it is to stay vital, but it is particularly important in the early stages when you program’s future survival could well depend on a rapid response to changing conditions. An open-minded attitude toward change should extend to all aspects of a program, not just the program agenda and marketing.