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?

Other articles you may be interested in:

1. The 5 Marketing Rules for Small Business Owners in 2009
2. 7 Steps to Attracting New Clients to Your Business

Tags: Marketing

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Marketing Live Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.