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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
Today on episode 51 of the be a marketer podcast, it's another ask Dave episode, and I'm answering your questions about how to better market new in person events and classes. This is the be a marketer podcast.
Intro Voice:Be a marketer.
Dave Charest:I'm your host, Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact. And I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing.
Dave Charest:And on this podcast, we'll explore how
Dave Charest:to find the time to be a marketer. Remember friend, you can be a marketer. And at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
Dave Charest:Well, hello, friend, and thank you for joining me for another episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. Today, we have a question from Ashley, and she's the director of communications and public relations at a youth soccer training facility. And so I want you to think here soccer classes for different age groups. Right? And Ashley's question is, how can we better market new in person events and classes?
Dave Charest:And we have consistent numbers, but we are hoping to increase attendance. So, Ashley, I'm gonna talk through a couple of things here that I think are important to consider, particularly when you start to look at what you're doing already. And one of the most important things, of course, is that knowing your buying audience, and this is obviously gonna be the parents of your children here that take your classes. And and the more specific you can be in talking with them will really allow you to better address the wants, needs, and challenges of the parent so you're able to push them to that place where you're gonna start to see people desire or want to register their children for these classes more. And this, of course, will also help increase attendance to those because more people will be signing up and registering for these classes and and those types of things.
Dave Charest:And so the first thing that you really need to think about is really think about how you're segmenting your list. Okay? Because it's likely that you're again, we're you're talking about different age groups here. And so you might think about creating lists that allow you to talk to those different age groups that you have classes for. So maybe you have, you know, 2 years to 6 years.
Dave Charest:You have 6 to 10 years. You have 7 to 12 years. Right there, there's 3 distinct groups where the classes that you're offering for those groups are different, and the way you're gonna talk to the parents of each of those groups is gonna be a little bit different as well. But, again, it allows you to get more specific into what it is that you're doing. Now a couple of ways that you can start thinking about segmenting this list if you have not done that already is, 1, you can think of using a click segmentation, and this really allows you to allow your contacts to kinda self segment.
Dave Charest:What that means is if somebody you put a link into an email. So let's say my child is this age group, this age group, or this age group. Right? So you've got the 2 to 6 to 6 to 10, 7 to 12. You can actually let people say, click the links that are appropriate for them.
Dave Charest:And then on the back end, you connect that link to a specific list that will then add those people to those lists. So you're starting to segment people based on the age groups that their children are in, and then, again, that will allow you to send more specific information to those groups. The other things you can do is also use we have a real time segmentation or segments tool within your Constant Contact account and that allows you to build what we call, again, real time segments or dynamic segments, which means they update based on the criteria with which you put in them. And so that means you could say something like you could use a tag, you could use a custom field, which could use that age information if you wanted to to then start as people get added this tag or have a specific age group associated with their account. They automatically get added to these segments that you've made.
Dave Charest:So that way, every time you're sending new information to them, you have the most updated information or list with which to send that information to. So that's another thing to think about. The other thing that I would say is make sure that you're using the integrations between the management software that you're using and your Constant Contact account. So, for example, DaySmart Recreation is a popular facility management software out there that has an integration with Constant Contact that will allow you to easily export that contact information within that account directly to your Constant Contact account. And then within your DaySmart account, you can actually see the details of your Constant Contact email campaigns in there as well.
Dave Charest:So it's a good way to, again, get that information from one place to the other and then allow you to work with it more easily. So the other thing to think about here is, of course, as you're thinking about your offerings, I'm sure you're doing this already, but you really need to figure out where do these offerings fit within their schedule. What are the best times to offer these classes? When can parents get people there? Those are all things to take into account.
Dave Charest:As you're thinking about making new offerings, new classes, you always wanna make sure that you start talking about the classes before you release them. Right? You kind of want to pre sell these classes a bit. So you want to get your current connections involved early and really kind of take them on a journey with you as you're developing these new courses, because then you're starting to lay out that path. And you can actually also think about, particularly as you're creating classes that span age groups, Obviously, if you've got someone starting with you in that younger age group, at a certain point, they're gonna start progressing to those next age groups and those next class offerings that you have.
Dave Charest:And so you wanna make sure that you're actually making it pretty clear to the parent what that path looks like. It's almost like karate, for example. Right? When you're doing karate, you know that you're starting at 1 belt, and then as at a certain point, you're gonna progress to the next belt and the next belt and the next belt, and you can see that clear progression. High school, you're gonna start as a freshman.
Dave Charest:You're gonna go to your sophomore year. You're gonna go to your junior year. You're gonna go to your senior year. Right? We've got this very clear progression, and I think if you can lay that out for people at the beginning, they kinda start to see the path themselves, and they know already.
Dave Charest:They're already pre selling themselves on what their child will do next if, of course, they're responsive to the classes and are enjoying them and all of that stuff that goes into being a parent. So think about that as well. Like, how do you lay out that path for everybody? A good thing to do is always make sure that you're getting feedback. You can use your Constant Contact account to ask for feedback, just having people reply to you, or you can use the survey feature within your Constant Contact account.
Dave Charest:But also think about having those one on one conversations with what I would call your VIP customers. Right? These are the folks that are coming back to you again and again highly engaged with the things that you're sending out because those people will help you understand how you can do better and how you can communicate more efficiently and more effectively with them to make sure that they're taking action and coming to those courses that you're offering. The other thing I'll mention is get those VIPs involved as much as you get as you can. Give them special invites to bring a friend.
Dave Charest:They can bring somebody to a course. Bring somebody to the classes that you're offering or the events that you're doing. Let them do some of that marketing for you so they're bringing new people into the fold. Of course, the other thing I'll you'll wanna think about is when do these registration deadlines happen? The more you can do to set up some type of urgency within the emails that you're sending allows you to get people to try to take action.
Dave Charest:They know they have to do something by a a certain time in order to get registered for that to include that in the messaging that you have. Also, I've talked about this before. I think it's really important to give people multiple opportunities to take up the offer that you're sending out. And so when you're sending out information about a course, think about letting them know, announcing the course. Right?
Dave Charest:Reminding them about it and then giving them a last chance to register for it because oftentimes people are looking forward to doing the thing or maybe attending the class or getting their kids signed up. But the problem is their life gets in the way, and they get distracted and move on to something else and and sometimes just forget to do it. Okay? So the other thing is when you're thinking about creating the emails that you're sending or the promotional materials, whatever they are, make sure that you are only providing the information needed to complete the action you want people to take in that particular email. And so you really want to focus on one thing at a time.
Dave Charest:Don't have a whole bunch of different calls to action with the in the email. Now with those calls to action, you wanna create better calls to actions. Right? So you wanna provide information within that call to action or that button usually is what people will use to get people to click to go to that next action. You wanna use an active voice and do that in the first person.
Dave Charest:So you can try experimenting with things that are a little bit more action driven. So instead of saying something like soccer classes or register for youth leagues, something like that, you can actually try something like show me the class schedule, right, to get people to click through to find out about those soccer classes or save my kids spot to get people to register for those youth leagues. Right? So your the outcome with that you want is the same, but you're using a more active way to get people to do that thing, and that's a good way to test to see if you can get more people clicking through and registering for those classes. Now the other thing that's really important here is to make sure that those links on those call to action buttons go to pages that have more specific information or lead them directly to that thing that you want them to do.
Dave Charest:So instead Okay? And this is another area where segmentation, of course, the better you can segment those contacts and get those into the groups that you need them to be in, the better you're gonna be able to send more specific information to them. Now the other thing I'll bring up here is, you know, one of the ways you can integrate your Constant Contact Us account is also with Facebook and Instagram and and creating ads, and that could be another way you start to expand your reach with getting more people, not only on your list, but aware of these new classes that you're offering. And then I would also say, you know, make sure you're taking advantage of the events features on other platforms so that you can extend your reach as well. So, for example, you can create an event with on Facebook and then link off to your actual registration pages from Facebook to let people know and and raise awareness for those events within the platform itself.
Dave Charest:And that's a more organic way to be able to do that, of course. So those are some things to think about when you're thinking about getting to this place where you can better market those new in person classes and events that you're offering. And, again, go beyond those consistent numbers that you're getting, which is course is great, but you can really start to increase attendance by doing some of these things here that will allow you or the people receiving your communications, again, will be really able to feel that you're speaking to them more directly. You're always gonna see some better results from doing things that way. So let's recap a few things here that we're talking about.
Dave Charest:1, make sure that you segment your contact list as much as possible. This is, again, going to be really important to get that specific information to people. Connect your tech using the integrations that are available between the different platforms that you're using. This, again, will allow you to save time and get even better results because you're making those connections. And then, lastly, make sure that you're updating your calls to action or upgrading them, I should say.
Dave Charest:You wanna make sure that you're using active voice in the first person and link to drill down information from your emails or text to make sure people are getting exactly where they need to go. Well, Ashley, I hope that helps. And, again, thank you so much for sending in your question. Listener, are you taking advantage of the connections between the tools that you're already using and Constant Contact? Well, I want you to make sure that you're checking out the integrations tab within your account, so you not only save yourself time, but also start getting better results from your marketing efforts.
Dave Charest:I'll include more details for you in the show notes. Well, friend, do you have a marketing question for me? Well, I'd love to hear it. If you're a Constant Contact customer, you can head right on over to the Constant Contact community to post your question for an upcoming Ask Ask Dave episode. I'll include a link for you in the show notes.
Dave Charest:I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. If you have questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me directly at dave (dot) charest (at) constantcontact.com. If you did enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.