How To Reduce Seminar No Shows


by Jenny Hamby - Date: 2007-03-07 - Word Count: 361 Share This!

Tired of Seminar Attendees Registering For Your Event ... and Then Not Showing Up? Here's Why They Skip Your Seminar ... and 4 Ways to Get Them to Your Event

By Jenny Hamby, the Seminar Marketing Pro™
Certified Guerrilla Marketer and Direct-Response Copywriter


You've gathered your registrations, reserved a meeting room, maybe even sprung for coffee, tea and snacks ... only to be disappointed when less than half of your seminar attendees show up for your event. And two questions race through your mind:
1. What went wrong?
2. More importantly, how do I get people to show up?

To gain some perspective on the first question, put yourself in your prospect's shoes.

You've been putting out fires all day at the office. At 5 minutes to 5 p.m., the boss drops off a report that's due by tomorrow afternoon. Then your spouse calls to see if you'll make a quick stop at the grocery store, which reminds you that your anniversary is the next day.

By this point, you've either forgotten the seminar altogether ... or the idea of skipping in favor of vegging on the sofa all evening grows mighty appealing.

No-shows tend to be the biggest problem with free seminars, simply because registrants have little invested beyond the few minutes it took to sign up. Here are 4 ways to boost your attendance:

1. Remind participants that they've signed up. Call them the day, or even a few hours, before your seminar.
2. Reinforce the benefits of attending. Reiterate what they'll learn ... and how this information will help them achieve their goals.

3. Bribe them. Offer a free gift upon arrival.

4. Charge a little. If people know that they'll lose money by not attending, they'll be less likely to skip. Instead of offering a free workshop, consider charging $10 to hold a seat and refunding the fee at the door.

Jenny Hamby is a Certified Guerrilla Marketer and direct-response copywriter who helps speakers, coaches and consultants fill seminar seats and make more money from their own seminars and workshops. Her on- and offline direct marketing campaigns have netted response rates as high as 84 percent -- on budgets as small as $125. For more free seminar marketing secrets, visit http://www.SeminarPromotionTips.com.

Related Tags: seminar promotion, seminar marketing, promoting seminars, marketing seminars, jenny hamby, seminar marketing tips, how to market seminars, how to promote seminars, seminar attendees, seminar no-shows, seminar registration, seminar cancellations

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: