ThemeLogistics & venue
CardCard 25 of 60
Questions5 to explore

Marketing

How do you get the word out?

The right people will not come if they do not know the workshop exists, or do not understand why it is for them.

Marketing covers how you communicate the workshop to the people you want to reach: the message, the channels, the timing, and the call to action. For internal workshops, this might mean a short email to the team and a calendar invite. For public events, it might mean social media, a mailing list, a landing page, paid ads, and outreach to partner networks.

The message matters as much as the channel. People decide whether to come based on whether they see themselves in the description, whether they trust the organizer, and whether the timing and the cost work for them. A vague workshop title and a long paragraph of text are a reliable way to get low registration.

Marketing also sets expectations. How you describe the workshop determines what people arrive expecting. Overselling the outcome or underselling the work involved leads to a room that feels misled, or that has not prepared in the way you needed.

Easy to missName a concrete, specific outcome in the very first line of any workshop description, because 'join us to explore' does not convert; 'leave with a draft plan you can use on Monday' does.

How experienced facilitators handle it

The same building block, handled by people who have run a lot of workshops. Patterns and illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

Speak to one person

Experienced facilitators write workshop descriptions to a specific imagined participant, not to a generic audience, which makes the copy feel relevant rather than broadcast.

Use social proof

A short quote from a past participant, the name of a trusted co-organizer, or the logo of a known partner does more for sign-ups than a longer description of the content.

Time the outreach

They send the first announcement four to six weeks out for a public workshop (to capture people who plan ahead), then a reminder two weeks before and one the week of, to catch the late deciders.

Match channel to audience

They go where the audience already is, which may be a specific Slack community, a professional association newsletter, or a few well-placed personal emails, not a scatter-shot broadcast.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Who is this workshop for, specifically, and what is their reason to come?
What concrete outcome can you promise that someone would find genuinely useful?
Which channels do those people actually use, and how much lead time do they need to register?
What is the one-sentence description that a participant would forward to a colleague with 'you should come to this'?
Are your registration and payment processes simple enough that someone can sign up in under two minutes?

Watch for

Workshop titles that describe the process ('a workshop on') convert worse than titles that name the outcome ('how to plan a workshop that works').
Sending all your communication at once early on is less effective than a sequence: announcement, reminder, last chance.
Word of mouth is still the most reliable channel for workshop sign-ups; a personal invitation from someone trusted outperforms any email list.