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“What’s In It For Me?” – affectionately known as WIIFM among marketers – is the question that’s constantly running through prospects’ heads. To effectively promote a seminar, you must provide the answer. An easy way to do so is by identifying how prospective attendees will benefit by participating in your training.

Developing a list of powerful benefits involves identifying all of the things attendees will learn at your seminar … and then explaining how learning those new skills will pay off. Benefits include both measurable results, such as increasing revenue and productivity, as well as intangible results, such as gaining peace of mind and greater confidence.

As you create the list of benefits your seminar offers, remember that there are two audiences that may be reading your promotions and making a buying decision:

• Participants. These individuals are very focused on WIIFM. They have specific frustrations, challenges and goals, and they’ll be evaluating whether your event will teach them the skills and information they need to solve their problems and achieve their targets.

• Decision makers. Depending on your target audience, there may be a second group of buyers involved in the decision to purchase a seat at your event. This group consists of decision makers – supervisors, company owners, HR personnel and other professionals who control the education dollars at organizations. If you are marketing events to employees, they typically will need to get approval from someone higher up the corporate food chain to attend.

This group wants to see benefits that pertain specifically to them and their needs. As you develop their list of benefits, think about:

• What problems you’ll help them solve

• What challenges and pressures they face in their jobs – how does your seminar help them?

• The skills they’ll learn at your program… and what this will help them do

• Their career goals – can your training help them move up the ladder?

Then develop a second list of benefits targeted to the decision makers. Decision makers review your marketing materials with a different focus. Their goal is to protect the organization’s resources. They need to ensure that spending money to send workers to your program is a wise investment, or the decision could come back to haunt them.

Decision makers will be evaluating your seminar in relation to two things:

• Investment in human resources. Supervisors will be reading your promotions to determine how and if their employees will benefit from participating in your seminar. After all, they have (or should have) a clear understanding of what skills their employees need to improve and the goals they’ve been assigned.
• Investment of financial resources. Decision makers also will be evaluating your offer with a bigger picture in mind: is this the best place to invest part of the organization’s limited training and travel budget?

To address both set of concerns, include a second list of benefits – “How Your Organization Will Benefit.” Think about the bigger-picture goals that supervisors and managers are focused on. Show them how sending their employees to your seminar will help their organization achieve its goals, as well.