Page 191 - 101 Ways to Market Your Business

101 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

88 Run free training seminars

I recently saw an advertisement in the paper promoting a
three-hour training seminar on car maintenance. The
course was designed to teach basic car maintenance skills
such as checking oil, water, tyre pressure, battery levels,
automatic transmission fluids etc. The course was only
available for women and it was free of charge. It was being
run by the local caryard.

This is a very clever idea and the principle is applied in
many other businesses. We often see free seminars about
subjects such as creating wealth, investing, personal develop-
ment, weight loss and other similar areas of interest.
If the seminar is free, the odds are that the people running
the seminar will want to sell you something. It might be a
book, it might be a training program, a video or cassette
tape.

A friend of mine wrote a book on weight loss. She
published the book herself and promoted it through a series
of free seminars entitled ‘How to stop dieting and start
living today’. Through these seminars she has sold over
5000 books in a few months.

The free seminar draws the crowd and enables the
business to sell their product. Perhaps your business could
run free seminars you could then use to sell your products.

Some other great free seminar ideas include a nursery
running a course on landscaping or making beautiful pot-
plants. The beautician running a seminar on looking your
best for job interviews. The wedding caterer could run a
seminar on planning a successful wedding. There are thou-
sands of potential seminar topics and as long as you can
run them for free you will draw a good crowd.

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