One of the greatest ways to promote your professional service is to give presentations, workshops and conferences that inform and inspire your target audience. But the # 1 complaint I hear from people attempting to do this is about how difficult it is to fill seats. Here are a few sure-fire ideas to getting participants every time.

Do your homework. It bears repeating: know your target audience, know their needs, know the solutions you give them. Too many seminar titles and descriptions sound too general, or worse, too unoriginal to inspire anybody. Run your proposed seminar titles and descriptions past clients, colleagues and members of your target market (by doing a survey, for example) to see whether you've got a hit or a dud.

Partner with others. There is no overstating how critical great partners can be in promoting your event, giving door prizes and providing content and speakers for your event. The more "weight" you've got behind you, the more the likelihood of success.

Check out corporate sponsorship. While this may not be an ideal technique for a first-time event producer, be sure to put seeking corporate sponsorship in your marketing plan. Learn to think creatively - corporate sponsorship doesn't only mean IBM and FedEx. Ask your printer whether he'll print conference hand-outs free in exchange for a full-page ad. Ask local businesses and colleagues that offer complimentary but non-competing services. You can give goodie bags with your sponsors' promotional items (see if you can get a sponsor to pitch in with the goodie bags themselves!). A fabulous resource for learning how to do this is The Sponsorship Seeker's Toolkit.

Start early and promote often. Too often I hear laments about an empty seminar, only to learn the promoter started promoting 6 weeks before the event. To produce a truly successful event, you must start planning at least 6 months before an event, and longer for one where you're expecting a bigger turn-out.

Put together a kick-butt marketing plan. It won't get done unless you've got a plan, with dates that go into your appointment calendar. Write it out like someone else is going to follow it (even if it's just you for now). You make it much more likely that you'll follow your plan if you make it clear and easy to follow.

Employ diverse marketing techniques. Don't expect to send one or two e-mails to your newsletter subscribers and have that be the end of it. Top things to include in your marketing plan: a great sales letter (get this one professionally done, please!), all partnerships you want to pursue, Google Adwords (remember, if you're running a smaller, regional event, you can target your Google Adwords to show up only to people in a certain geographic location), direct mail, phone blasts, e-mail campaigns, local newspaper announcement lists. Check out if your city or town has any event announcement websites, like CraigsList. Do a search to see whether your location has something comparable.