Promoting your business with events and workshops

Lesson Details:

Video Transcription: Now let's talk about how to use events and workshops to promote your business and events actually can be the main business because they generate revenue directly this video is brought to you by Appy Pie’s Academy.  but they can be a fantastic way to promote whatever your business is of course it is it's not a fit for all businesses but for many businesses so especially if you can put on workshops or educational events they can bring leads but they can also generate revenue by charging for attendance and asking for donations and maybe even eventually long-term getting sponsors and of course you'll be building business relationships and people will want to build them with you because you are at the center of that event and the event is going to position you as a thought leader and gonna give you more credibility and a bigger audience and of course the main thing you're after is is going to get direct leads for what your main business is for example if I wanted to get more clients for my business coaching I would put on an event an entrepreneurship event serious and of course a lot of the people in the audience they might be interested in getting my coaching my business coaching because I might help them with their intrapreneurship journey something like that so your event idea would have to have on potential audience that would also be potential great leads for your business now let's talk about the types of events that you can put on of course there are the instructional workshops and specific training for some skill or craft and that can turn if that's successful that can turn into a small conference later on and conferences they are very lucrative and of course you can put on activity and hobby events maybe outdoor activity or events around some hobby so you build interest groups or around some communities or subject matter or you can even have entertainment or parties it's not that often they're that entertainment or parties are fantasticly generators for actual businesses but those are common types of events generally I if you're not sure what you might do try to think can you put on some kind of a workshop where you teach people something and if they fail or if they're not good at it then they can maybe buy some services of yours that flow is ideal from event attendee to client now let's talk about how to actually promote your events well you want to promote your events with search so if people search for like let's say you have a business networking event in Boston so people will search for business networking events in Boston and you will do that SEO with your website and of course you can put your event listing on big event sites like meetup calm or Eventbrite they're not free but they're very cheap and of course you can also list your event on large local event sites even if you browse local search listings you'll find many such sites I'll show you them in a second and of course you can also place your event listings on many local sites let me show you how to find such sites and post your event on them so I just search for cheap events in San Francisco like you can search anything outdoor events or workshops and maybe I found some sites and you you should browse all these sites that come up and see if you can get your business added it's not all the time that your business can be added so for example I know for this site SF on cheap calm you click there and you see if it's add event you see if they have a link like that and they would usually have that kind of a link in the navigation area or at the very very bottom it might say something like create your own event or add event and here you can do more than add event you can add your event and then you can advertise it so your job is to what it is to to find many such sites so you just go to Google and search for the kind of event that you have in your city see which sites come up and of course there you can promote you can list your events usually for free but if you want extra exposure you can advertise and it's usually pretty cheap these kinds of sites I found that they are quite affordable for advertising and since we're on the topic of running ads of course you can create your Facebook events page as well and you can run Facebook ads and of course you can run ads on such local listing sites some ads will be effective some ads will not be effective.

Over time you'll get to see which ones effective when you stop running the ineffective ones and you just keep on running the effective ones and of course consistency is a huge part of event series success because usually the first event is the worst and then you get better and better your email list grows your marketing strategies become better and your attendance just grows and grows and grows your revenue grows and your leads that you drive to your business grow so consistency over time that's the key to success with this and a big part of the success is actually making your events sound attractive people don't want to go to a boring event so my events when I ran them actually a long time ago of course everything starts with a compelling amazing title my title became like this was my best event shipwreck hunt hike it was an outdoor event during low tide so during low tide I took people and we looked at shipwrecks that sunk on the San Francisco Bay and yeah there are really shipwrecks you can see above water during a long time it's pretty cool but when I ran boring hikes like just hike or whatever hike somewhere nobody came nobody cared but when I created this kind of an event so many people came because this sounds almost surreal how can this be right most people don't even know that their shipwrecks around San Francisco so title is everything in grabs the attention and then of course once people once you have people's attention you want to write a well written description that makes the event sound attractive and you want to use inspiring photos and clear agenda for the event and if you have workshops maybe popular speakers or benefits popular speakers or clear benefits that people get from the event are additional things that make the event title sound better for example if I had Bill Gates at the event or whichever celebrity you like their name would draw people immediately they make a great headline or benefits you know in the case of a workshop it would be learn this amazing skill to boost your career and of course you want to have clear directions for how to get to the event and exactly when it will be time and date so people know when to schedule it and they're not confused so that's event marketing in a nutshell create a great event get people in there inspire them give them value of the event and they're gonna want more value which basically makes them a lead for your main business and that's the way to promote your main business this is not gonna work for everything for example you have a cleaning business I wouldn't know how to put on an event serious for that but think of for your type of business is there something some kind of an event you could put on that would generate revenue and bring leads to your main business it's a great option if it's possible for you.