Make the most of seminars

They are the mainstay of almost every private client practice’s marketing plan. They offer professionals the opportunity to impart their wisdom in person to an audience that can cover all of your potential sources of new work – clients, prospects, referrers and colleagues – in one fell swoop. But are you making the most of seminars?

There are two golden rules to follow: make seminars practical rather than academic so that the audience leaves with more than they came in with, and make sure they are as engaging as possible by booking your best speakers and using pictures, stories and movement to hold your audience’s attention rather than offering line after line of PowerPoint.

You also have to use your planning time to ensure the content you prepare is going to be used as much as possible and reach many people.

Don’t think of seminars as one-off events that end when the door closes, think of them as a midpoint in a campaign that needs to use as many channels as possible.

Every campaign begins with invites, and to maximise the return you need to try a bit of everything as people respond to various media in different ways. Hard-copy invites should be followed by emails and replicated on your website. Links to that page should be broadcast by all members of staff using social media platforms and, where possible, followed up with personal emails to well-chosen contacts. And don’t just send it once, send it two or three times. Like you, your target audience are busy.

In addition, look at the invite list and pick out ten people: good referrers or clients you’ve identified as having real development opportunity so must attend. You need to phone this list and ask them.

It may seem time-consuming but each call will probably be only two minutes and the personal touch boosts acceptance levels by up to almost 100 per cent anyway. You could also use the opportunity to reconnect with your most regular referrers.

After the event, the default is to give people a set of slides. These should distil the key points down to a fact sheet that includes six or seven bullet points, your logo and full contact details of each speaker plus a line highlighting the particular areas they can help with. This is more practical.

Better still, add a clear call to action and make sure the recipients know that if your bullet points raise any specific questions, you’re on hand to answer them.

More importantly, your new fact sheet gives you something you can send out to those on the invite list who couldn’t attend, making sure they know the key facts and – again – that you’re on hand to answer any queries they may have.

You can also add the sheet to your website either as a download (which, in turn, would allow you to capture the name and email address of any interested party) or as text which would help you with the search engines... or, better still, both.

These are only a few techniques to flesh out an event into a campaign. The main point is that it takes a while to put together a seminar, so if you are going to invest that time wisely, make sure you use the content in as many ways as possible to generate the highest possible level of return.

Douglas McPherson is director at Size 10 1/2 Boots

He writes a regular blog about marketing for Private Client Adviser