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You know what it takes to promote your seminars. But if the myriad to-do items exist only in your head, you may be limiting your success.

Promoting an event requires a lot of work, especially when you consider all of the steps that go into accomplishing a milestone. For example, “hold a preview teleseminar” may be one of your to-do items, but many steps are required to accomplish that goal. You need to write marketing copy, talk to your web designer about getting the appropriate web pages up, setting up an autoresponder in your shopping cart to hold the sign-ups, arranging for a conference call line, and so on. With so much to do, it is difficult to slow down long enough to write out or type up a to-do list.

If you are the only person responsible for promoting your seminars, you may not think there is a need to prepare a detailed list of action steps. However, documenting your work will benefit you. Here’s how:

1. It reduces stress. It’s exhausting trying to remember everything you did the last time you promoted your event and need to replicate every time you promote the event. If something is not written down, your mind feels responsible for remembering it. You’re using up valuable resources juggling balls that could be easily set down.
2. It eliminates opportunities for error. There is no guarantee that you’re going to remember everything you need to do to promote your seminar the next time around. Write it down so you don’t accidentally miss a vital step, very much like pilots run through safety checklists before takeoff.
3. It enhances productivity. There will be no more time spent thinking about what you need to do. You’ll have a list. Look at your list and you’ll see dozens of activities to do. Pick one and you’ll be off to the races.
4. It makes planning more realistic. It’s easy to underestimate how long various marketing tasks will take. But when you’re looking at a list of all the steps that are required to bring one particular marketing campaign to life, you’ll get a handy reality check and be able to better plan your time.
5. It enhances your feeling of accomplishment. Checking an item off a to-do list is incredibly rewarding – far more so than marking it as complete in your head.
6. It will make it easier to expand your team. Documenting the work you are doing to promote your events now, it will be easier to bring someone on board to help you down the road. Presumably, you’ll be even busier than you are today when you bring an assistant on staff. Creating a checklist of to-do items at that point may add additional stress to you; it also may frustrate your assistant if he or she has to wait for you to do this work. If your checklists are ready to go, you can turn responsibility for promoting your events over to an assistant immediately.

As you document your seminar promotion steps, start with the major milestones and to-do items, such as “update the website,” “prepare 5 email announcements” and “print the marketing flier.” Underneath each major item, write every single thing that needs to happen to achieve the goal. Then incorporate deadlines for key steps. It’s also helpful to note details such as preferred vendors used for various steps, as well as their contact information; account login information; and notes about time needed to complete each step. For example, my checklist includes my web designer’s name and contact information, as well as a note that we should allot at least a week to get changes made to our website. It also includes the URL and login information for my shopping cart, so everything we need to get the registration form set up is in one handy spot.

Slowing down to create production checklists may be frustrating when you have so much to do to successful promote your seminars. The time you spend on this vital task is an investment that will pay off in less stress, fewer mistakes and a sounder business.