Archive for the ‘Marketing Live Events’ Category

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Writing Marketing Copy? Know your customer first!

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

how to write website copyHad a great business mentoring session with a client last week who wanted to focus on getting an action plan together to help her write her website copy.  The design and template was done, but it couldn’t go live until the copy had been written.

However, one hour later we had not only time planned the copy writing but also spent the best part of the session focusing on who exactly she wanted to attract to her website.

Her target audience of “women” was just too broad and she soon realised that to enable her to write powerful and engaging copy that stopped online surfers in their tracks and got them to leave their name and email address to opt-in to her newsletter, she needed to be absolutely clear on who it was she wanted to engage with.Whether it is the home page of your website, a flyer for your next event or a postcard to handout at networking events, you have to spend time writing out the profile of the person you want to be attracting before you write the copy.

It will save you months of wasted marketing!

Posted in Marketing Design & Copy, Marketing Live Events, Marketing Small Business | No Comments »

Promote Less and Charge More

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

charge rates for workshopsOne of the easiest ways of making your business more profitable is to stop offering lots of choice and put your prices up.

Offer “affordable” and “low-cost” solutions to your clients and it is easy to get caught in the trap of constant promotions.  You can see this happening on the High Street at the moment.  Big retailers are offering pre-christmas sales and slashing their prices.  But the low margins mean that they have to get large numbers of customers through their doors to hit their sales targets.

When you run your own business, this is a strategy that rarely works.  It’s hard to attract the high numbers of clients you need to make the profits you want.

Here is a simple example using workshops to show you what I mean.

Half-day workshop tickets sell at £45
Delegate rate & room hire cost you £10 per person
Gross Profit per person £35

To make a total gross profit (and remember you still need to take in to account all the cost of promoting the event, work book printing, admin support, etc) of £500, you need a minimum of 15 tickets sold. 

Full-day workshop tickets sell at £195
Delegate rate & room hire cost you £40 per person
Gross Profit per person £155

To make the same £500 gross profit, you only need to sell 4 tickets.  If you sold 15 tickets, you would make a gross profit of £2325.

You would have to run at least 4 half day workshops to make the same gross profit as running one full day workshop.

Which workshop programme do you think will take less of your time to make £2,000?

(Please note, these calculations are highly simplified.  Do make sure you work out your net profit carefully when running events and don’t get caught out by focusing on your gross profit per person!)

Posted in Marketing Live Events, Marketing Small Business, Running Teleseminars | 1 Comment »

Marketing by Temptation: a lesson in wants and needs

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

marketing by temptationI popped in to our local branch of Waitrose earlier this week for a couple of pints of milk and few veggies. Now the thing about food shopping in the likes of Waitrose and M&S, is that is very easy to get caught up and turn your 5 item list in to a over-loaded shopping trolley.

I came out with a couple of frozen pizzas (to top up my last-minute-supper freezer draw), bag of chicken breasts (they were on special offer so I saved £2.31), a selection of frozen herbs (3 for £4 – how I can refuse?), a punnet of strawberries (over-priced and out-of-season but remembered my 9 year old mentioning she wanted strawberries on the way to school) to name but a few things that I wanted – but I didn’t really “need”.

My quick shop turned in to a £69.54 shopping trip which was precisely £50 more than I had intended to spend!

Why did I spend so much more than I intended? 

The £50 was the difference between buying what I “wanted” and buying what I “needed”.

And this is the trap that many coaches, consultants and service based professionals fall in to.  The trap of trying to sell something that they feel their clients need – and not what they want.

Yes, some people “need” help with their time management.  But do they “want” to spend their money (and their time!) on a half day workshop or 3 month long training programme to improve it?

Some people “need” to organise their house and de-clutter their cupboards, but do they “want” to cough up a few hundred pounds for someone to come in and do it for them?

And yes, there are people who “need” to lose weight, feel more confident, find a perfect partner and know how to manage their staff better – but if they don’t “want” to pay for a solution then it’s doesn’t matter how much your service is “needed”, you’ll won’t find enough clients unless your solution is something they “want”.

So next time you are struggling to fill your workshop or find enough clients to work with on a 1-2-1, ask yourself is the service or product you are offering be tempting enough for clients to “want” you?

Are you challenged by the needs and wants of your clients? Add your thoughts or ideas in the comments box below

Posted in Marketing Live Events, Marketing Small Business, Prices & Charge Rates | 1 Comment »

How a nail technician training room got me started marketing workshops

Monday, April 13th, 2009

When marketing live events and workshops, the biggest cost and hit to your profit line is often the venue.

It can be tough when you have made the decision to start offering group sessions, only to fall at the first hurdle – the conference day delegate rate!

The traditional conference hotel or business centre can easily charge £10 a head just for coffee and a few danishes, never mind the £70 for a finger buffet lunch and afternoon tea!

What to do?  Think outside the box and consider where all the free (or lower cost) venues could be.

Who do you know who could offer a meeting room at local offices?  You could offer to publicise the event with a “thanks for our sponsors” link.

What about finding places that have rooms available at their non-busy times?  Weekdays for wedding venues, Saturday mornings for conference hotels, mid-mornings at the local sports centre. Private rooms at restaurants and function rooms at pubs outside of eating times

My first “Work/Life Balance” workshops were run in a hairdressing salon where they offered me their nail technician training room in exchange for me showing my workshop delegates round the salon at the end of the session.  I got a free venue and all I had to do was to bring a handful of women in to their salon on their quieter days.

OK, not the glam or the glitz of a usual training room, but it gave me the opportunity to deliver my first open workshops with a very low financial risk.  So if venue costs are stopping you, where can you start?

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Posted in Marketing Live Events | No Comments »

Buy a dedicated domain for your individual products

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

For those of you who have just the one website promoting your business online and yet have several programmes, products or specific workshops on offer, having a dedicated domain for each programme, product or workshop can make your marketing messages work more effectively (as well as helping your search engine optimisation).

It is a great short cut to having lots of mini-sites created, as well as keeping your online visitor within your one site.

Let me give you an example.  You may be promoting a particular workshop called Creative Minds.  You have the page on your website listing the dates, times, agenda, testimonials, etc but that page url may be something like this:  www.YourBizName.co.uk/workshops/creativeminds.html

Quite a link if you are using this page to send people to in your marketing.  Too long a link in an email as it could easily be broken in the received version.  Too long a link to look good on a printed leaflet.  And far too long for people to remember if you are telling them.

Register www.CreativeMinds.co.uk – something short and snappy which people can type easily – and set up your web host to re-direct the traffic to the dedicated page on your website (it’s called domain mapping).

Hey presto, you have an effective marketing message.

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Posted in How to do Teleseminars, Marketing Live Events, Website & SEO Tips | No Comments »

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