Using Strategic Discounts to Fill Event Seats and Build Your Network

By Jenny Hamby, the Seminar Marketing Pro™
Certified Guerrilla Marketer and Direct-Response Copywriter

How do you get busy people to register for your event when they’re on the fence about attending? To fill seminar seats, you need a great name, a marketing plan, and a fresh concept. But you can also offer discounts to give an extra push to would-be attendees.

The problem is that discount offers must be chosen carefully and used sparingly. Let’s go over some of the most effective types of discounts that you can use while planning your seminar.

• Flyers, including flyers that are inserted into other publications, such as newsletters and newspapers
• Postcards, which can range in size from the standard 4×6 to oversized cards as large as 8.5×11
• Sales letters that are stuffed into envelopes
• Self-mailed brochures, which range in size from “Slim Jim” format (8.5 x 11″ sheet of paper folded in thirds and then sealed shut and mailed) to brochures consisting of 6, 8, or even more pages

1. Early-bird discounts

One of the most common discounts used to fill event seats is the early-bird discount. The premise is simple: Sign up by a certain deadline, and you’ll receive a set discount on your registration fee.

Straightforward and effective, early-bird discounts not only reward your most responsive attendees, they also provide a sense of relief to you, the event promoter. Obtaining a solid number of advance registrations can give you some financial assurance early in the marketing process. Instead of worrying up until the last minute whether you will be able to cover basics like the cost of room and staff, you’ll know early on that you’ve at least broken even on your event production costs.

Early-bird discounts are great to offer to groups that are frugal, are unable to afford your full price, or are still unsure of the value of your workshop or seminar. You may even want to test offering multiple discounts. For example, offer a super early bird discount of 30% if they register 12 weeks before your seminar, followed by another early bird discount of 15% at 6 weeks before your seminar, and so on.

2. Group discounts

Group discounts are used to get multiple seats filled with one sale. A common form of the group deal is the “buy one, get one free” deal. When you spend $500 for a full-price ticket and get a second one free, the first ticket feels like a great deal for the buyer. Using this type of discount can get more seats filled by people who feel they’ve gotten a bargain on registration fees, increasing their satisfaction.

However, group discounts come in many other variations, such as “buy one, get one half off,” “buy two, get one free,” etc.

Group discounts are great when marketing to companies that could send multiple employees to your training. They can also be effective when marketing to people who might feel uncertain about attending your event alone – or when you really need multiple people in the room to make a back-of-the-room buying decision.

The most effective way to implement this type of discount is to have the attendees register at the same time, with the payment occurring on one credit card. Rather than offering a group discount with three, four or more attendees, offer the discount as soon as the “group” reaches two people. This will help you fill a higher number of seats at your event, which is a benchmark for the success of any seminar or workshop.

3. Affinity discounts

Affinity discounts are a great way to reward groups you’ve worked with or that have co-sponsored your events through partnerships. You can offer affinity discounts to a group and its members in exchange for their help with promoting your event, which will also help you fill more seats at your seminar or workshop, creating a win-win situation for you and your partners.

In addition to offering a members-only discount to your promotional partners’ members, you could sweeten the deal further by offering a monetary commission for new registrations that your partners generate.

4. Scholarships

If you’ve successfully organized a lot of events and you want to help someone who’s new or currently struggling, consider offering them a scholarship discount, or special discounted price, at your discretion. Rather than offering a discount out of the goodness of your heart, make sure that you’re getting something as well — namely, assistance. Ask that the scholarship recipients remain available during the event to work a certain number of hours in case you are understaffed.

This can be a great tool to have in your back pocket in case you need extra help and can be a productive offer to propose to people who call you asking for discounted registration prices.

5. Discretion discounts

Discounts can be a powerful tool to drive the growth of your network and your professional image. Want industry luminaries, potential partners, and other VIPs to attend your workshop or seminar? Personally offer these people discretion discounts to make sure your event seats are filled by the right attendees.

6. “Sale” discounts

The last major type of discount is the sale discount, or a steep, time-limited reduction in registration price. For a certain window of time, offer a major discount, such as half off, with a strict deadline. This type of discount will be attractive for anyone who might attend your event, but especially for people on a tight budget or those on the fence about attending.

The risk of offering too many sales and discounts

There is one word of caution I’d like to offer with these tips, and that is to approach your sales and discounts with a measured, steady strategy.

If your audience begins to expect that you’ll offer massively discounted registration prices, they’ll simply start waiting for this to occur before registering for your event. This is dangerous not only for your bottom line, but for your financial planning, as you’ll find it difficult to know how many seats you’ll fill until the last minute.

While early bird discounts can be used repeatedly to encourage early sign ups, short-term (and heavily discounted) sales should only be used once or twice a year. Working with a holiday theme for your sales can be effective – consider a Thanksgiving sale one year followed by a Halloween sale the next year. “Shaking it up” when it comes to your sales dates prevents attendees from simply waiting until your deep sale to take advantage, but still allows you to offer these discounts to your audience on a relatively regular basis.
Having a measured strategy can allow you to capitalize on the benefit of running sales and discounts and capture an audience with a smaller budget who wants to take advantage of your pricing, without creating a sense of dependence on the deep discounts to reliably fill your seats.

Early bird discounts can be used repeatedly, but short-term sales should only be used once or twice a year, such as on a holiday. You can implement a Thanksgiving sale one year followed by a Halloween sale the next, and so on. Promoters can choose to shake it up by changing sales dates, or retain the same sales period each year. Having your sale at the same time can create reliability, but in this case, attendees may simply learn to wait until the expected sale date to purchase their tickets.

Offering your sale at the same time each year can allow those with smaller budgets to reliably attend or strategically boost attendance for a slower period of the year.

Bonus tip:

Your ultimate goal is to have all those seminar seats filled the moment your event starts. If you have 10 unsold seats a few days before your event starts, that’s a missed opportunity. To fill the last remaining seats at your workshop or seminar, post them on lastminutetraining.ca with a discounted offer. Last Minute Training is a Canadian company and website which allows you to post your unsold event seats for cheaper prices.

Instead of sending this offer to your whole list, promote it locally – near where your event will take place – as nearby residents are much more likely to attend your event at the last minute (they don’t have to worry about travel or hotels).

A great tool to fill event seats

Discounts are one of the most basic and essential tools to promote a successful event. Using these tips and ideas, you’ll be using discounts to reward reactive attendees, build stronger networks, reinforce partnerships, and fill every last seat at your next workshop or seminar.

Jenny Hamby is a Certified Guerrilla Marketer and direct-response copywriter who helps speakers, coaches and consultants fill seminar seats and make more money from their own seminars and workshops. Her on- and offline direct marketing campaigns have netted response rates as high as 84 percent … on budgets as small as $125.

To explore how Jenny can help you generate more registrations and profits from your seminars, workshops and webinars, book a 30-minute complimentary discovery session.