Workshops, live events and now especially online events can help small businesses and entrepreneurs in many different ways. If you’re thinking about holding your own on or offline event, it’s important to clarify exactly why. The reason is that all of your major decisions in planning and running the event follow this “why.”
There are many benefits or potential reasons why you might want to hold a workshop.
Your Expertise Can Help Others
No matter what line of business you’re in, you have knowledge, skills, experience, and expertise that can help others. You can help your customers solve their problems. It’s a shame not to put this expertise out there for other people to use.
Take a minute to think about your specific expertise.
- What questions do you typically answer for your customers?
- What is something you know a great deal about that a layperson might not?
These are the kinds of things you can teach others through your online workshop.
Running Workshops for Profit
Online Workshops and live events offer a great way to create a new income stream for your business. There is very little overhead cost and once you have a few workshops under your belt, the details like setting pricing get easier.
The main costs of running a workshop offline are securing the venue and preparing materials such as handouts. However, you can find a free or low-cost venue if you search, and you can cut down on material costs by sharing files digitally. You can do all of your promotion and marketing online for free.
You can potentially reach more people on an online event and actually provide a good service at a lower cost because online there are no venue costs, people don’t have to travel and you can provide digital downloads. The only costs would be you even hosting service such as zoom.
You can technically adapt your offline approach and work the promotion in exactly the say way for online events. Online events will increase as more people get use to the technology and develop the confidence to speak in front of a camera. It was surprising to see how many people use to shy away from the camera during live events, but now all that is changing.
Expand Your Audience
Holding online workshops is a great way to bring new people into your audience. Naturally, most businesses aim their workshops at their current customer base at first. But then, your participants will tell others and spread the word, and there are strategies you can employ to extend your reach.
Once you hold your first workshop, you can then use it to draw new audience members. Record your event and make a highlights video that shows people what they can expect. Ask your participants for testimonials where they tell others about the workshop for social proof. All of this can go into the marketing for your next one.
You can simple record your screen now using zoom or even programs like camtasia.
Establish Yourself in Your Niche
Your online workshop can help you establish yourself in your niche. If you’re holding events and sharing your knowledge and expertise for people, this shows that you’re a credible authority. If you keep doing workshops, you’ll eventually have a huge following of people who have taken your course and will vouch for you.
You can upload workshop content or pictures to your website. Add that you’re available to give workshops or speaking engagements. You can also use this increased authority in your niche to branch out to other types of live events, like retreats, bigger workshops, boot camps, keynote speeches, and so on. Both on and offline.
The first step in planning your online workshop is to decide on your “why.” It may be helpful to clarify it by writing it in a statement. Write one sentence and be as specific as possible about why you want to hold your live event.
We discuss this in greater detail in module 11 of the Digital SIMAC Method. If this is something you would like to find out more about click here.
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