Host a Seminar or Networking Event and Watch Your Customers Drool Over Themselves to Attend
By Allen Taylor
A great way to create a buzz for your business, its products and services, is to sponsor a seminar or networking event.
This is a lot easier to do than you can imagine. Just find a central location to the geographic area you expect people to come from or some place accessible to all corners of your area. Somewhere in that square mile or two there should be a hotel or other building that rents rooms.
When renting a location for your seminar, be sure to get a place that will hold more people than what you expect to attend. In other words, if you expect 80 people to attend your seminar, try to find a place that can seat at least 100. Fire halls, schools, hotels, convention centers, and other public places prominent in your area are good places.
If your seminar is free - and most of them should be - then be sure you don't get too expensive. You can rent a place at a very reasonable price in most locations. You can even partner with another firm and cut your costs for facilities in half.
Next, spread the word. Tell everyone you know about your event: Where it will be, when it will be, what you expect to deliver, hold nothing back. Come up with every angle for getting people there. Why would they come to your event? If you can offer something free for people who attend then that might entice enough people to make your time worthwhile. But remember the real reason you are there: You are promoting your business.
People will come for two reasons: Free food and free information. Offer both and you are sure to have a good group of prospects.
Here are some ways to promote your seminar or networking event: Send press releases to all the major media in your area, print some flyers and distribute them to area businesses (you can even ask the place you are having the event to help you distribute them), send post cards and invitations through a direct mail campaign and purchase small ads in your local papers.
No matter what kind of business you are in, you have information people want to know. If you are a mechanic you can give a free seminar for women on how to bleed your own breaks. A book store manager can offer a free book discussion group. If you live in a town with a lot of businesses you can start a networking club and invite fellow business owners to a once a week breakfast. The possibilities are endless.
Think of what you have in common with others in your area and focus on that. Is it location? Type of business? Same customers? Whatever it is, use it as your focal point for getting started, then build from there.
Allen Taylor is an award-winning journalist, freelance writer and copywriter. He specializes in world-class marketing for small businesses.