How Much to Charge for Seminar Tuition
Don’t Want to Scare People Away … Or Leave Money on the Table? Discover How to Properly Price Your Seminar to Maximize Attendance and Profits
By Jenny Hamby, the Seminar Marketing Pro™
Certified Guerrilla Marketer and Direct-Response Copywriter
Figuring out what to charge for your seminar can be difficult for new seminar promoters. You don’t want to set your seminar tuition so high that it scares people away. But at the same time, you don’t want to leave money on the table.
Start by researching what your competition is charging, so you can begin to discover what your target audience is used to paying. With this info in hand, you now get to make the (sometimes) tough decision of whether to charge less, charge the same price, or charge more than your competitors.
You might be tempted to charge less. Unless you’re trying to pack attendees in like sardines because you have a killer sales pitch that will produce truckloads of back-of-the-room sales, reconsider this strategy.
Competing on price can be a no-win situation. Every time your competitors lower their prices, you have to lower yours. Plus, if your seminar is significantly cheaper than competing events, you may be signaling to your audience that your event is not as good as the competitors’ seminars.
If you’re new to speaking, you have virtually no house mailing list (meaning you’ll be promoting your event to a rented list of people who have never heard of you), and you’re the only speaker (in other words, more established and known speakers will not be sharing the stage with you and drawing their own fans to the event), your safest strategy is pricing your event at about what your competitors are charging.