Sometimes the best strategy is to let the class cancel
A webinar lacks registrations. A tour is underbooked. A service isn’t being used. A class is underenrolled.
Often, the immediate response is to promote it. Send a couple of emails. Make some posts on social media. Spend money on ads. Do whatever needs to be done to fill seats and grow the audience.
Ask "why" before asking "how"
Promotion seems logical, and sometimes it is the right decision. Other times, however, the best strategy is to let the class cancel. Not because marketing doesn’t work. Not because the class isn’t worthwhile. Because the first question should be, “Why are we filling this class?” not “How do we fill this class?” They sound similar, but they lead to very different answers.
“How do we fill this class?” produces execution-based answers. Send an email. Make a social media post. Pay for advertising.
“Why are we filling this class?” leads back to the organization’s goals. Does the class serve a priority audience? Is it required? Does it support a larger program? Is there evidence that demand will grow? Or are staff time and budget being spent simply because the product exists?
Start with the purpose, not the promotion
The Continuing Education department at the University of New Mexico offered hundreds of classes, ranging from watercolor painting to nursing certification courses. The classes were designed to help adults build fuller professional and personal lives.
It was not uncommon for a class to fall below the minimum number of registrations a week or two before it began. When that happened, the department would often send emails, publish social media posts, and even spend money advertising the course in an effort to reach the enrollment threshold.
Some classes still ended up with very few students. Others lost money because the revenue from registrations was lower than the instructor’s fee. Spending additional time and money promoting them only deepened the loss.
The same pattern can appear anywhere. A travel company may have tours with higher operating costs or greater demands on staff. A retail brand may have a struggling product line without a large enough market to justify continued promotion. Sometimes those resources can simply be used more effectively elsewhere.
Connect the offering to a larger goal
Of course, not every organizational goal begins and ends with more sales.
A class may provide access to an important certification. A service may reach a population the organization is committed to serving. A tour may help the company enter a new market. An offering with limited revenue may still support a larger goal. The important thing is knowing what that goal is.
Every organization has limited resources. Staff time, budgets, attention, and capacity spent in one place cannot be spent somewhere else. Not every action needs to produce immediate revenue, but it should have a reason for consuming resources.
Understand what marketing can and cannot fix
There may be a present need to fill seats in a class, but filling them does not necessarily address the larger issue. The class may be poorly timed, aimed at the wrong audience, priced incorrectly, or no longer aligned with market trends. Those are strategic and operational problems. They cannot be solved solely through promotion. Marketing can help fill a class. It cannot decide whether the class should exist.
Before investing more resources into an underperforming offering, it’s important to ask:
What organizational goal does this support?
Is promotion the best use of the available resources?
Would those resources create more value somewhere else?
What would happen if the offering were allowed to pause or end?
Sometimes the answers justify additional investment. Other times, they reveal that the time and energy spent pushing an offering uphill would be better used elsewhere.