Promotion for a seminar?

[Bill Deakin]

Hi all

I'm doing a beginners web design seminar in a few weeks time. I've done a press release, taken out some advertising in a local paper and created a small website. I'm wondering if anyone has any other ideas of how to promote the event. If it's a success I'm hoping to do them on a semi-regular basis in the future.

The target audience is small businesses, freelancers, self employed, work from home mums etc. who either have a site and outsource their updates and maintenance, or who want/need to build/edit small sites for their business.

I've web design workshops before but they were promoted for me (I just turned up, ran the workshop, and got paid a flat fee), and I've done lots of private tuition with local businesses so I'm pretty confident that the course content is right, and pitched at the level my audience wants. I'm just looking for extra ways to promote the event. Any ideas would be very welcome.

All the best,

Bill

[peterjhale]

Hi Bill,

Off the top of my head:

- forums
- small business newsletters
- adwords
- ecademy

anywhere where small business owners hangout really

[Bill Deakin]

Thanks Peter - strangely I'd not really considered online promotion since I'm pretty much only targetting Cornish businesses at the moment... I shall slap myself around the head and get an Adwords campaign setup immediately!

Cheers

Bill

[peterjhale]

I am sure you can just target people in cornwall

Up here in the Midlands Google geo targets companies in Birmingham in my search engine results - if I untarget the search, the Birmingham companies disappear....

[Bill Deakin]

Originally Posted by peterjhale

I am sure you can just target people in cornwall

Up here in the Midlands Google geo targets companies in Birmingham in my search engine results - if I untarget the search, the Birmingham companies disappear....

How to you target by county? I only seem to be able to target by town, and since the biggest city in Cornwall is Truro with a population of around 20k that's pretty limiting, unless I specifiy every little town in the area?

Bill

[Purebathrooms]

I thinks banner ads and advertising on social bookmarking sites are better options for you.

[fisicx]

Not banner ads. Apart from the appaling CTR, how would you know which sites to target? And social networking only any good if your target audience does it. Small businessess don't spend their time online looking at facebook, they may visit forums and blogs for advice but how would you know which ones a builder from Penzance frequents?

Bill, when you set up the adwords you have the option to restrict the ads to a country, county or town. Google help says:

Regional or customised targeting
How do I target my campaign to entire countries or territories?

[Bill Deakin]

Hi

Thanks for the help guys... I was tearing my hair out trying to add by county and couldn't do it - search or browse would only show up towns. I did find a way that works though - click on custom, then enter a postcode and a radius. I'm now targetting anyone within 80 miles of the venue!

Thanks again for your help.

Bill