Tactics for Promotional Events

Trade Shows. Booths at big shows can be very expensive, but many associations put on more affordable tabletop expos. Trade shows are better for making contacts than for closing sales.

Live Seminars, Workshops, or Demonstrations. Offer a free demonstration or low-cost workshop to your existing prospect list. If you can fill the room, this can be a useful credibility booster.

Virtual Seminars. Offering a workshop via webinar, or giving a talk via teleseminar allows you to invite prospects from around the world.

Open House or Reception. Find an excuse to throw a party, and invite prospects and referral partners. People who don’t return your calls may surprise you by showing up.

Co-Sponsored Events. Co-sponsoring a workshop, symposium, or fund raiser with a nonprofit will attract clients who support the cause. Collaborating with colleagues on an event will maximize your resources and extend your reach.

Networking Lunch, Breakfast, or Mixer. Invite clients, prospects, and referral partners to meet each other for their own benefit. Tell everyone to bring a guest.

Giveaways, Contests, and Surveys. Offer a free gift, or a drawing for one, in return for collecting a prospect’s contact information. Or conduct a survey of potential clients and offer to share the results with all participants. Be sure to target your audience carefully to avoid cluttering up your prospect list with people who will never become clients.

Many professionals, consultants, and coaches have found paid advertising to be quite ineffective at filling their marketing pipeline with paying clients. Remember the know-like-and-trust factor: Ads don’t allow clients to get to know you personally, nor do they build trust. This doesn’t mean that advertising should be completely eliminated as a possible strategy. Increasing website visibility, for example, is an advertising tactic that many businesses will want to pursue at some point.

For some professional service providers, print or Web advertising can be a reliable source of new prospects. A paid ad in an online or print directory, for example, can bring new inquiries to professionals who people often seek in an emergency, like attorneys; need only rarely, like a résumé writer; or prefer to locate privately, such as a psychotherapist. For professionals with date-dependent offerings like seminars and groups, advertising via direct mail, flyers, and online calendars is often necessary. But in most cases, advertising alone rarely generates business; it must be coupled with direct contact and follow-up tactics in order for it to pay off.

To determine what role advertising should play in your marketing, ask yourself this question: “How do clients usually find a service like mine?” If your immediate answer is “by referral,” you will probably find most advertising to be a waste of money. But if your clients often do find businesses like yours from advertising, you may need to consider some forms of it.

Take a look at your competition and see where and how they are advertising. Ask questions of your colleagues about what type of advertising has and hasn’t worked for them. Advertising can be an expensive proposition. Evaluate the potential return on any advertising investment. How many clients will it bring you before it pays for itself? And is there some other more effective way you could spend the same money?

On the Web, for example, you might choose to have a website for your business but not to invest additional funds in advertising it with pay-per-click ads or paid directories. You can instead use some of the other approaches discussed in this chapter to attract traffic to your site. Strategies like public speaking or writing and publicity are more likely to generate Web visitors that quickly turn into clients. You’ll have a much harder time closing sales with people who get to your site by clicking on an ad.