Most Burning Question:

Where's are the best places to post an event to maximize attendance?

I'm planning an event that will benefit a ton of people. I'm needing help figuring out where to post it.

What are your ideas and thoughts about places and venues to promote this? Thanks!

You probably won't like my answer, but it comes from doing things the hard way before I got smart and learned better.

Here is the secret in a nutshell…

If you want to successfully get people to your event, promote it to your own list of prospects. OR, second to that, partner with people who have BIG lists and have them endorse you and your event to their list.

I have in the past busted my fanny to help people promoted events that did not have a list. It is brutally hard work.

I won't take on any seminar marketing unless they have a big list to promote it to. I don't care how much money they wave at me. The headaches aren't worth it.

If you want to do workshops and seminars, build a list of hot prospects who have in interest in what you do. Build it to be at least 10 times the size of the event you want to have. (100 times larger or higher is better)

Give them good content, establish that you are the expert in your niche, build a relationship with them so they trust and believe you.

Months out start to tease them by sharing about your event giving them 'behind the scenes' stories. This builds anticipation and can be fun for both you and your readers.

Then start pitching the event with an early sign up discount. (Note: even if it is a free event, you still have to sell it, because FREE = no value until you show them there is a value).

Keep mixing in stories about the behind the scenes work to keep them excited so even if they registered, they will attend.

Other Tips:

Don't just rely on Internet Marketing. Send a post card, fax, letter, etc. Conversion on the same marketing pieces used offline vs online is as much as 5x higher.

Use video so they get to know you and the other people involved in the event. Video allows people to feel connected to you. Email is much more sterile, hard to build a bond unless you are a great writer.

Take Away Action:

I'm guessing you don't have your own list, so if I were you I would figure out everyone who does have a list of people who would enjoy/benefit from this event and work a JV deal to have them promote the event to their list.

One more thing… one of the other answers mentioned blogs. This can work for you if the person blogging has:

1. Readers who fit the profile of your ideal prospect
2. A large readership
3. A good relationship with the readers

Certain bloggers have quite a bit of respect and authority with their readers, so if they say "you should go to X event" the readers will respond.

Most Burning Question:

I have a question… we are told to use keywords (hypnosis)!! in headers in content etc. What I am confused about is that at the same time we are told that because of the number of hypnosis sites (already ranked on first page with those keywords)we need other keywords to be distinguished and noticed. Then should we be using hypnosis on every page?????

From what you write, it sounds like you are trying to Optimize your site for Search Engine placement. Otherwise known as SEO.

I'll explain about keywords in a minute, but let me get this very important point across.

SEO is a moving target. There are people who spend all their waking hours trying to get listed on the front page of 'organic' search results.

Google (owns about 70% of the search market) changes their rules all the time to keep people from 'gaming' the search engines and using 'black hat' techniques to get listed on the front page.

Every time they do it changes the game and who is listed on top.

So here is the key learning for today…

If it's important to you, pay someone who knows what they are doing. Really good keyword research involves hours of time and you need to know just what it is you are looking for.

It's not just the number of searches per month. You need to know how to evaluate if you a have snowball's chance of getting ranked high for the keyword.

This means you need to know how to evaluate the competition for that keyword AND what tools to use to get data you can trust.

This kind of market research is a skill all it's own.

Now, some important things to know about keywords, web pages, and search results.

1. It is generally better to work with keyword phrases than single keywords.

Trying to get ranked for a word like golf, car, pets, hypnosis is a complete waste of time. If you want to be ranked highly for words like that… just buy the website that is already ranked. It's the most effective strategy and likely the less expensive one over time.

Cal Banyan recently did this when he bought Hypnosis.org

2. On any web page you can only get ranked for one keyword phrase, possibly two.

Search engines look at context, not just keywords. They can tell when you are 'word spamming' to get ranked. Real content has semantically related words and is linked to related content.

One topic per web page, one keyword phrase.

On a website you could get ranked for only a handful of topics and they would need to be tightly related.

Lesson: It's like I teach in how to position yourself… what do you want to be known for?

3. As a small business, your best hope lies with 'long tail' keyword phrases.

Instead of hypnosis, you should try to get ranked for "san mateo hypnotist"

Instead of stop smoking, you should try to get ranked for "stop smoking delray beach Florida"

There are two reasons to do this, first the competition for those phrases is much lower, second people who type in 3 or more words are usually looking to BUY. People who type in one word are looking for information, a different part of the buying process.

This is how I got my blog ranked #1 in Google and Yahoo. I picked specific long tail phrases and worked at putting articles on my blog with those phrases. And I used a blogging tool highly SEO optimized so all the work was done automatically for me. It took me about 4 months to get on the front page and 6 months to get to #1.

4. It is good to do basic SEO to every web page on your site (once you know what you want to optimize for). But again you can PAY someone who knows what they are doing. You should NOT be doing this yourself.

Here is a list of basics:

* Primary objective should be accomplished from the homepage

* Keyword in title (unique for each page, include keywords)

* Keyword in h1 on each page

* Keyword in text

* Optimize URL architecture (www.website.com/birds/eagle instead of www.website.com/allanimals/?type=bird&species=eagle). Use 301 redirects if you rename pages

* Information architecture - as few clicks as possible

* On relevant images include keywords in alt tags in filenames

* No-follow appropriate links

For those of you who can't resist tinkering, or want to know how to direct your web monkey to do it for you… download a copy of the SEO web developer's cheat sheet.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet

Or if you are really masochistic and want to try to do it yourself… here is a link to the SEO beginner's checklist.

http://tinyurl.com/6pkvcc

5. You can BUY traffic much faster than you can ever hope to get a top ranking in Google

by using Google's adwords advertising system.

In less than 15 minutes you can create an ad with adwords and have it on the front page of Google. You can target ANY keyword phrase you want, and then send the traffic to any web page on your site.

[Note: I'll be teaching a course in how to use Adwords at the National Guild of Hypnotists 2008 Convention]

This change is so simple you might not believe it. And of course I always encourage you to test to make sure it will work for you, nothing works for everyone. It will take you about 10 minutes to make the change.

Take a look at this image. The buttons look virtually the same don't they? But notice the one difference.

This little change to the button has been tested to yield an increase in sales ranging from 18% to a mind boggling 45%!!!

After I thought about it, this makes sense. Gary Halbert always told the prospective buyer exactly what to do to buy the product or service he was promoting. In fact he would spell it out in very specific detail, leaving nothing to chance. As Halbert said "don't assume anything".

By putting the pointer on the buy button, you are visually doing the same thing as Halbert did in words in his sales letters. You are showing the prospect exactly what they need to do to complete the sale.

Now, go change your buy buttons and make some more sales!

Most Burning Question:

I am giving a 10 minute presentation to my new BNI group this Tuesday. It is incredibly important to me to wow them. I have already set up a volunteer for a demonstration which I am very comfortable giving, but I'm not sure what to do. I have some ideas, but I thought yours might be better!

I want to educate folks on the myths and misconceptions of hypnosis, of course, but I also want to visually demonstrate the hypnotic experience. I have hypnotized my groups before, but I find that they get very sleepy and quiet and that's not the kind of energy I want to leave them with. I want them excited an talking about hypnosis and what's possible. Also, I am a big EFT person so I don't want to leave that aspect out.

I want to incorporate all these things and I only have 10 minutes to do it! Oh yeah, and I'd like to do an indirect suggestion about giving me referrals, too! Any ideas of any of this???

You are trying to do too much. Even if you had an hour it would be too much.

Always follow the KISS rule. (Keep It Simple) And think of what Stephen Covey said in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People… "Begin with the end in mind"

So… what do you want to accomplish with this talk? Me, I always think in terms of

Here is what I want to accomplish with any talk I do… I want to add qualified prospects to my list so I can follow up with, build a relationship with them, and by building the relationship I increase my business. Or…

I want to find JV (Joint Venture) partners and add them to my list, so I can follow up, build a relationship and increase my business.

Do you detect a common objective?

If you think of speaking as another media to reach your target audience (your market), then the ideal outcome is to convert the audience into either hot-leads for you list, or to convert them to a sale.

The more effective strategy (unless you are a master of platform selling) is to use your time in front of the audience to find either people who may want to pay you for your services (prospects) or to find people who can help you find prospects (joint venture partners).

In this case, it would seem that find JV partners would be your desired outcome.

Now, with that in mind… I would structure the entire 10 minutes to help me achieve this goal.

BUT… you can't do it from the point of view that they are there to help you. It has to come from the point of view of how partnering with you will help their business. In other words, you will need to answer the question of What's In It For Me (WIIFM) for each of the business owners in the room with you.

Example: the Dentist in the room can benefit by referring phobics to you to make it easier to work on their teeth

Example: the Doctor in the room can refer the stop smoking patients to you who can't quit on their own.

Example: The spa owner can refer clients who they notice are too stressed out to enjoy their spa experience.

And you want to show PROOF ELEMENTS of how this type of thing has helped other business owners.

I've written extensively about the importance of Proof Elements in your marketing, it is the single most important element.

If you want to do a demo etc. I would suggest that you have an 'open house' scheduled within 10 days of your talk and invite everyone at the talk to come learn more about how hypnosis works and how referring clients can help their business.

Then close your talk with an offer that gives something of value (related to your theme) in exchange for contact info. Those who request the offer will be your list of people raising their hand and saying "I'm interested".

Follow up IMMEDIATELY. And follow up more than once in different ways (email, thank you card, letter, phone, fax, etc.)

Key Point: In a 50 minute talk, all I can hope to achieve is to show my audience an idea that can help them and make their business better/easier/profitable/etc.

I can't possibly educate them on everything I know. But if the idea is compelling enough they will want to know more, and they will want to do business with me.

In 10 minutes, you have 1/5 the time so you need to be tight on ONE idea and get it across fast and powerfully.

I suggest you get a copy of my talk at the NGH last year and model the structure I used. It was called "How to Effortlessly Attract More Clients"

(I'll be doing two workshops this year at the NGH, both on marketing, both on Friday Aug 8.)

This is one of the most inspiring video's I've ever seen. Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University where they have a tradition called "The Last Lecture", which is the lecture you would give if you knew you were about to die.

In his case, it was very real… he knew he had terminal cancer in his pancreas, and he gave this amazing lecture and had it recorded on video and uploaded to YouTube. It has been viewed 4,031,952 times. In other words, it went viral simply by word of mouth.

Now, this isn't about a lesson in marketing… it's about a lesson in how to live your life. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it better. That's why I want to help him spread his message.

Randy Pausch just passed away two days ago. To honor him and his dream of helping as many people realize their childhood dreams, I am placing these two videos on my blog and encouraging you to watch them.

The first is the full Last Lecture. It's 76 minutes and 26 seconds long. Worth every minute. But I realize not everyone has the time. So I've also included a link to the shorter version when he appeared on Oprah. It's 10 minutes and 10 seconds.

Here are a few the gems he passes on:

• The brick walls are there for a reason — they let us prove how badly we want things.
• When you are screwing up and nobody bothers to tell you, it means they have given up on you.
• Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.
• Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you
• Decide if you are a Tigger or Eeyore.
• Don't complain just work harder
• If you live your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you.

Be sure to pass this on to others after you watch it.