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Photo: Creative Commons/Susan Lesch
Last week I went to a free seminar sponsored by a pair of local companies. I went warily. At such events you can usually expect a sales pitch at some point. Sometimes that's all you get. I came away satisfied, however. This pair had found a good balance between providing something of value and driving sales leads.
Free seminars can be great marketing tools if done well. You get a captive audience and a chance to build credibility by demonstrating expertise. It can also be a chance to build relationships without the pressure of driving sales.
A successful seminar, however, requires balance. You want to make sure your audience knows who you are, what you can do, and how you can help them, but you do not want to make them feel like the main reason you got them there was to sell them something. You have to give them something they will find valuable enough to put up with the inevitable sales pitch.
You also do not want to compensate too far the othe direction and give them good, solid and free information without making some kind of pitch to make sure they know what you have to offer them. Audiences at free seminars may be wary, but they also realize you need to get something for your effort. They expect a sales pitch. They just do not want an overbearing or over-long one.
The content you provide them also requires careful balance. Give them too little information and they may not fully appreciate the problem or potential you want to help them with. They may not understand why they even came. But give them too much information and you could inadvertantly train them to do it themselves. The right balance is when you can help them understand the problem or opportunity and see what a good solution would look like, but make a solid case for your company being able to do it for them better than they can.
The goal of any good seminar is to leave the audience feeling like they learned something worthwhile, appreciate the problem or potential you discussed, and trusting that your company will be a good partner should they decide to pursue it further. And, of course, you need to make sure your contact information leaves with them, whether it be on your business cards or on customized schwag. If you've done your job well, they will need to be able to contact you someday
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