Finding Engineers to Attend Your Event

You can’t host a webinar or a lunch & learn without attendees. So, where do you find engineers to invite to your PDH event?

The best place to start is by looking at your existing customer database. Don’t limit your efforts to current customers, but also reach out to your past customers who have not purchased from you recently.

Send out emails to engineers in your database inviting them to attend your webinar and earn 1 PDH of free credit. Send a postcard to their office. Post the webinar on your company’s website. Post it on your company’s Facebook page and on LinkedIn. In addition to reaching current and previous customers on social media, you’ll also reach new potential leads via reposts, shares, and “likes.”

Better yet, have your salespeople pick up the phone and call some of the engineers in their Rolodexes (um, I mean their CRM system). Invite the engineer to the webinar and encourage him to spread the word amongst his coworkers. Or ask if he would be willing to set up a lunch & learn at his office. Either way, it’s a great opportunity for you to meet and engage with other engineers in his company that may not be on your radar.

Here’s another idea: distribute brochures at your company’s tradeshow booth. The brochure could advertise upcoming PDH events to be held on specific dates. Or you could go the generic route and list all the available topics in your “library” with instructions on how the engineer can request a webinar or lunch & learn for himself and his coworkers.

Most of the tools that marketers normally use to find new leads can be used to find and invite engineers to your PDH event, including SEO, search engine ads, direct mail, trade publication ads, etc. I won’t address these because there are plenty of resources available in books and on the internet that can teach you how to get the most out of each of these channels. Instead, I will address a couple of lead generation tools that you may not be aware of: conferences and Gracone webinars.

Some engineering associations and trade organizations hold annual conferences that include, as part of the member’s fee, breakout sessions where engineers can earn PDH credit. There are typically several sessions running concurrently, which allows the engineer to pick the topic each hour that is most interesting and relevant to him.

Some organizations will allow your company to present to their audience in exchange for a sponsor fee. Others will issue an open “call for papers” to their members, in which case there is no fee required to speak. With a sponsorship arrangement, you can expect to get broad exposure for your company in the conference’s marketing collateral. With a “call for papers” arrangement, there will be no mention of your company in marketing materials distributed to the conference attendees. A brief listing of your topic in the conference schedule will likely include your speaker’s biography, which can (and should) list his current employer and position.

If a conference uses the “call for papers” model, don’t lose any sleep over the lack of exposure in the marketing collateral. That’s nothing more than branding.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with getting brand exposure, but that not where the power of PDH marketing lies. The engineers that you really want to get in front of are the ones who, when given a choice of topics, choose to attend your presentation. Once your speaker is in front of that audience, it makes no difference whether you paid for a sponsorship or not. Educate and engage them. Establish credibility. Let them know that they can rely on your company (and specifically your speaker) as a trusted resource to help solve their problems.

A second lead generation tool is Gracone. Gracone provides free lunchtime webinars for professional engineers to earn PDH credit. For more details, see Lead Generation – Gracone Webinars.