I’ve been doing quite a lot of offline work in the past year and I thought I’d write a post here to talk about that process.

As a regular attendee of other peoples’ events, I’ve learned a lot of nice marketing tricks which I’ll share here … and basically give you a ‘kit of parts’ to get your own offline events started.

I don’t claim this as the ‘definitive’ way to hold an offline event … but it should get you going I hope

Venue

I use a virtual office for my business … which basically means that I pay a monthly fee to register my business address, get my phones answered, receive my post … and get office access if I need it.

So I use my virtual office for my offline events … that way I get use of office space, without the ongoing costs and commitment … it’s ‘pay as you go’ offices basically!

So do a search for ‘virtual office’ + your location and see what comes up.

In my home area of Carlisle I get these results:

Bourne House here

Freerange here

Warwick Mill here

3rd Party Promotion

I tested 3 channels for promotion and interestingly, the cheapest was the best!

I advertised in these places:

1) The local newspaper (very expensive, brought in no paying customers)

2) A local, web based news service (cheap, isn’t established enough to bring in any decent web traffic yet)

3) Local business fan page & website here (ridiculously cheap, filled the room for me!)

4) LinkedIn … believe it or not, in my rural county there are not a whole load of people using LinkedIn actively.

I found it very good for driving traffic, visibility and interest but it didn’t bring me any paying customers.

My promotion

I have built my own website for ongoing promotion, search engine positioning and leads capture.

Whenever I set a training date, I change the video and sales page with a customised, date-based version.

I was intending to use Paypal for payments at first, but I opted for EventBrite which I loved for ticket and attendee management.

My EventBrite page is here

EventBrite does take a small fee, but it allows you to set up ‘early bird’ ticketing at a lower price, it lets you enlist affiliates and gives you a lot of scope when it comes to creating a sales page and incorporating a video.

In short, I love it and highly recommend it for offline events, even if they’re free.

Equipment

When you book a venue make sure that you have access to a projector that works with your laptop and – most importantly – a remote control unit so that you can flick through the slides without being bound to your PC.

If you’re chained to your PC you’re not going to be able to move around much – and that’s going to make like a bit dull!

I bought my own and carry it round with when I do talks as there’s nothing worse that being stuck having to manually change slides!

Ensure too that you have a flip chart or white board.

I would also say that a wireless connection is a ‘must’ these days … and make sure that the wireless password is easily available via the white board when attendees arrive.

Niceties

Make sure you plan very regular breaks – keep attendees fresh, leave plenty of breathing room for networking, chatting, comfort and cigarette breaks.

Here’s how I set out my days, note how regularly we break: http://www.cumbriafanpages.com/training/

Make sure that you ask attendees if they have special dietary requirements before they turn up on the day.

Most catering companies will provide a vegetarian option, I found that a Vegan option was much more tricky to accommodate.

A nice touch that I learned from a Jo Barnes event is to put different ‘treats’ on the tables during breaks … sweets (not always hard boiled), fruit, chews.

The constant change and ‘surprise’ really keeps attendees fresh … it’s funny how the ‘little things’ make such a big difference.

Have pens and paper available for anybody who forgot to bring some … and I always provide name badges and company/business info for attendees so that they don’t have to struggle to remember names.

Marketing

As internet marketers, we need to know how to leverage our time and resources.

I purchased a pull up banner for use at my events, and as attendees arrived, we had a photograph taken together in front on my branding, and these were placed on Facebook for ‘social proof’ and awareness building.

We video recorded the entire event for future use as a physical DVD, audio product or membership bonus.

Finally, we recorded testimonials for social proof and future marketing here

Summary

I’m currently experimenting with my offline marketing to see if I can create systems which work for me like my online activities do.

So at a local level, I’m trying to create brand awareness and a flow of traffic into my auto responder so that I can host and record these local events whenever I want to.

I’ve found it much harder than working only online – certainly when getting started – but now I have social proof, images and local endorsement, life is much easier.