There’s no shortage of workshops out there these days. You can ‘Transform Your Life’, ‘Quadruple Your Turnover’ or ‘Obliterate Your Competitors’, all in a day’s work. Apparently. But competition’s tough, so it’s crucial to have a unique (and genuine) workshop offer and a clear strategy in place to not just get bums on seats, but SELL OUT, again and again.
Digital media powerhouse duo Cat & Cherie from The Digital Picnic shared with us their tried and tested tips for planning a sell out workshop, and believe me, with 75 of them under their belts, they know their stuff. Oh and psssst…they have a killer lineup of social media workshops across the country (including right here at Newstead Studios in Brisbane). More info here.
6 steps to planning a sell out workshop
with The Digital Picnic
If Newstead Studios had asked us to write this blog post 3.5 years ago? We’d have had none of the answers, ha!
Truly.
None.
At the start of all of this, whilst we did feel like we knew our digi-marketing stuff, … we were brand-spankin’-new at the whole “selling out workshops” thing, and in 3.5 short years? My goodness, we’ve been on quite the learning journey [learning from a healthy combination of huge wins, … and epic fails, … or as we prefer to call them? Lessons].
These days? No kidding? Most of our workshops sell out with a healthy waitlist, and it breaks my year 12 economics brain with the whole figuring out the supply-and-demand thing, i.e. we can’t quite figure out if we stick with our current workshop schedule [and subsequently sell out with a waitlist, for the most part], or increase our workshop schedule and go back to the days of agonising over whether or not the workshop will fill out, ha!
Them’s be the questions we battle with, frequently.
So, with a great deal of “workshop wins” under our digi-marketing belts now, we thought it was high time that we put some good business karma out to the small business world, and imparted some of our tried-and-tested tips to sell out your workshops, because we want you to experience some “workshop wins” too.
1. Walk the walk
You can do all of the social media marketing. You can do all of the FB ads to support the promotion of your workshop. You can get all of your friends to tell their friends about your impending workshop, … but if you’re not walking-the-walk with regards to what you’re allegedly teaching your attendees? … your workshop isn’t gon’ sell out.
Promise.
Graphic designer with a one-day design intensive, … but your visuals aren’t great? No bookings.
Photographer pushing how-to-use-your-camera photo tours, … but your photography / editing sucks? No bookings.
Social media “expert” with sh*t socials? No bookings.
2. Word-of-mouth will be your BFF
Y’know, … we really do know how to market something online. We really do. We’ve been doing it for 20+ years collectively on behalf of our clients.
We know strategy. We know how to strategically implement something online so that it will “sell”. We know how to lay it all out visually. We know how to write engaging copy. We know how to build online community.
Truly, … that list of little social-media-marketing-sumpin’-sumpin’s go on [and on, and on], … but do you wanna know something? Word-of-mouth referral is still one of the biggest drivers to TDP workshops, so making an incredible impression on everyone who walks through our workshop doors?
Crucial.
3. Allow ample time to promote. And then PRO.MOTE!!!
This one? We’ve learnt the hard way, ha!
Minimum x8 weeks to promote any workshop, unless you’re delivering a Facebook Ads Intensive [holy heck, that workshop of ours sells out in less than 48 hours, ha!]. But no, seriously, jokes aside? X8 weeks [minimum] to sell out a workshop.
Every single time we’ve thought there was “enough interest” based on e-mails alone for a particular regional area / city centre, and so subsequently given ourselves less than x8 weeks? We not only don’t sell out, … but we struggle to make minimum numbers.
St.ruggle.
Suh-many-lessons-learnt.
4. Personable presenters
This one is so important, and it took us x3.5 years to realise that the reason our workshops do so well, is because we:
- know our stuff, but [more importantly] we are,
- people-loving presenters, who can seriously read an audience / read a room, and so we subsequently present our content in a really engaging way, that’s delivered to suit the unique personalities within our workshop rooms.
We’ve always downplayed this skill, and confession? For a long time, we didn’t recognise this as even being one of our unique skills, but now that we’ve presented as much as we have / listened to others present at industry events, … we’ve come to realise you can have a Masters of everything, but if you can’t read people / understand people / learn how to tweak your presentation to suit the people within your mix on that very day? Your people won’t like your workshop, … which isn’t a great thing for the aforementioned word-of-mouth consideration.
5. Pretty venue
Sounds superficial, huh?
It’s really not.
If you’re taking in a one-day workshop [and often? Our workshops are on Sundays, so we’re expecting folks to give up a Sunday, ha!], your people are going to be wanting to take in that info in a light-filled, feel-good, good vibes, well designed space.
Truly.
Clinical’esque “dungeons”, with minimal natural light / fluorescent lights, and sh*t coffee, and … mission brown carpet? Aw, hell no!
Your vibe really attracts your tribe, and so we do a *lot* of research when we’re looking for the perfect venue. In our humble opinion, it’s time well spent, because we’ve spent a lot more time preparing curriculum / ensuring it’s perfect / delivering that content to our beloved attendees, so for a feedback form to come in at the end saying something along the lines of, “loved the workshop, and every inch of your content, … but the venue wasn’t great”, well ya, … it breaks our workshop-lovin’ hearts.
Invest in a good venue.
6. Use case studies in a non-clinical, non-case study’esque manner
Lastly, try [where possible, and as frequently as possible] to share results from previous folk who’ve attended your workshop, i.e. xyz came to my workshop and after taking in a day’s information, achieved xyz results post-workshop [within a realistic timeframe].
We try to do this as much as possible, … in a far less clinical way than what I’ve just described above, ha!
We’re not lying either, … our workshops genuinely transform businesses’ social media presences [when they apply the information we deliver], so we try to walk people through what positive change they can expect to see too.
It can help your folk who are umm’ing and ahh’ing about whether or not to book, go ahead and book on in.
So that’s x6 of some of our favourite tips to help you sell out a workshop, and we’re only an e-mail / PM / DM away if you have any workshop-sell-out questions!
If you need help with the social media marketing + strategy associated with that, check us out via the following ways;
Contact Newstead Studios to discuss our venue hire packages for your next workshop:
0420 768 746
