Working towards a workshop: the hardest part…. marketing

With the flyer developed, room booked, date set, ideas outlined and format finalized, the next step is marketing. Even typing the word makes me uncomfortable. Why can’t people just find my eventbrite site, read the info, understand why they should attend, click on ‘buy tickets’ and hand over $149….

Why oh why?

If I just wait and do nothing, then nothing is what will happen. However, if I cold-call 400 people and pester them into buying ticket, I might get enough tickets but I might also burn through my reputation and build a brand that says ‘I don’t think before doing anything’. That is not how I want my brand to be understood.

So its about setting a series of goals that are manageable:

• Develop a set of concentric circles of people who are potential attendees starting from very aligned (and wanted) out to big, amorphous groups or organisations
• Reach out to four people or organisations every three days to discuss the workshop and secure either an order of tickets or a new set of people who I should contact
• Send a couple of bulk emails to mailing lists with teasers to the workshop – focus on keeping it brief and interesting – so that I can pick up any people in the outer circles that I didn’t think were super keen but turned out to be quite interested

I will then repeat these steps for two weeks to see how far I get into my ticket allocation. Checking in on the approach makes sure that I am not delivering the wrong message to potential attendees.