Super Seminars: Enhance Your Expert Identity By Teaching the Classes Everyone Wants to Take!
Super Seminars: Enhance Your Expert Identity By Teaching the Classes Everyone Wants to Take!
Anything a consumer can do to add to their knowledge base has real value and appeal. At the same time, an opportunity to showcase your specialized knowledge can enhance your Expert Identity and make your services more attractive to the buying public.
Here's a five step process to developing seminars that will appeal to your target audience:
Step One: Define Your Target Audience
Nichepreneurs™ have a range of potential audiences for educational material. Classes could be directed toward colleagues and peers, with an eye toward enriching the industry as a whole and generating referral business. Or you may wish to focus on educating the general public, creating a more educated consumer and enjoying higher sales.
Realize the two groups have different needs and require different information. You need a clear vision of who you're talking to before you worry about what you're talking about!
Step Two: Identify Critical Information
Now that you know who your target audience is, you want to determine what is important to them. What crucial areas are your customers the most eager to learn about? Bear in mind that there is always a hunger for basic, introductory information.
Never assume you know what is of interest to your clientele. Ask them -- either anecdotally, during the course of business, or as part of an outreach campaign. The topics you might think are can't miss might leave them snoring, while something that you considered insignificant could have great appeal. Do your research!
Step Three: Select a Topic
Use the results of the research you conducted in step number two to select a topic. What are the most important points to cover? Create a presentation focusing on those points. Remember, you want to appeal to the wants and needs of your target audience.
Step Four: Select a Format
Consider the type of material you'll be teaching and your own personal style. This is one time when you'll really need to be brutally honest with yourself: if you're an outgoing, dynamic person who thrives in a crowded room yet hates technology with a purple passion, why try to host a web-based event? Select a seminar instead, and let your people skills sell you! The reverse is even more true: Nichepreneurs™ who might be brilliant but pedantic will lose far more customers than they gain by boring a room full of people to tears.
Consider your material. Some information is better presented visually -- financial or scientific data, for example. Other information, such as massage techniques, cry out for live demonstrations.
Step Five: Market Your Classes
Once you've designed your educational offerings, you need to market them. There are a number of ways to do this. If you're trying to reach a purely local audience, then saturating local media with press releases and announcements, as well as fliers and direct mailings is the route to go. For larger events, or web-based classes, you'll want to adopt a broader strategy, taking in e-mail, web site and blog postings, and more.
The key to success of any seminar, boot camp, or educational offering is through marketing and promotion. Yet this is the area where more Nichepreneurs™ drop the ball. Don't short-change yourself. Devote as much time and energy to promoting your classes as you did developing them!
Super Seminars Enhance Your Expert Identity By Teaching the Classes Everyone Wants to Take - To learn more about this author, visit Susan Friedmann's Website.
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Seminars, workshops, boot camps and other educational programming is very popular, with the public and with savvy entrepreneurs. We're in an age where information is the ultimate commodity: our value is largely determined by how much we know and what we can do with that knowledge.
Anything a consumer can do to add to their knowledge base has real value and appeal. At the same time, an opportunity to showcase your specialized knowledge can enhance your Expert Identity and make your services more attractive to the buying public.
Here's a five step process to developing seminars that will appeal to your target audience:
Step One: Define Your Target Audience
Nichepreneurs™ have a range of potential audiences for educational material. Classes could be directed toward colleagues and peers, with an eye toward enriching the industry as a whole and generating referral business. Or you may wish to focus on educating the general public, creating a more educated consumer and enjoying higher sales.
Realize the two groups have different needs and require different information. You need a clear vision of who you're talking to before you worry about what you're talking about!
Step Two: Identify Critical Information
Now that you know who your target audience is, you want to determine what is important to them. What crucial areas are your customers the most eager to learn about? Bear in mind that there is always a hunger for basic, introductory information.
Never assume you know what is of interest to your clientele. Ask them -- either anecdotally, during the course of business, or as part of an outreach campaign. The topics you might think are can't miss might leave them snoring, while something that you considered insignificant could have great appeal. Do your research!
Step Three: Select a Topic
Use the results of the research you conducted in step number two to select a topic. What are the most important points to cover? Create a presentation focusing on those points. Remember, you want to appeal to the wants and needs of your target audience.
Step Four: Select a Format
Consider the type of material you'll be teaching and your own personal style. This is one time when you'll really need to be brutally honest with yourself: if you're an outgoing, dynamic person who thrives in a crowded room yet hates technology with a purple passion, why try to host a web-based event? Select a seminar instead, and let your people skills sell you! The reverse is even more true: Nichepreneurs™ who might be brilliant but pedantic will lose far more customers than they gain by boring a room full of people to tears.
Consider your material. Some information is better presented visually -- financial or scientific data, for example. Other information, such as massage techniques, cry out for live demonstrations.
Step Five: Market Your Classes
Once you've designed your educational offerings, you need to market them. There are a number of ways to do this. If you're trying to reach a purely local audience, then saturating local media with press releases and announcements, as well as fliers and direct mailings is the route to go. For larger events, or web-based classes, you'll want to adopt a broader strategy, taking in e-mail, web site and blog postings, and more.
The key to success of any seminar, boot camp, or educational offering is through marketing and promotion. Yet this is the area where more Nichepreneurs™ drop the ball. Don't short-change yourself. Devote as much time and energy to promoting your classes as you did developing them!
Super Seminars Enhance Your Expert Identity By Teaching the Classes Everyone Wants to Take - To learn more about this author, visit Susan Friedmann's Website.
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Cheryl MatthynssensCheryl is a life skills coach, licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and a 20 year entrepreneur. Cheryl's dedication to achieving a life of balance led to her expanding her teaching from the simple managing of life's daily challenges to adding financial well being as well. A direct marketer with DrinkACT, she is gaining ground in the online community with her concepts of making sure business owners, entreprenuers and employees have well rounded life styles. She opened up a small affiliate site - The Balance Guide- to help others find resources for mental and emotional well being. Visit Cheryl's blog to see more of the diversity beyond business she has began offering online at www.thebalanceguide.blogspot.com - Visit Cheryl Matthynssens's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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