Behind The Scenes Of A Simple And Successful First Summit with Hannah Murphy

About Hannah's Summit

My summit was quite niched down for wedding and engagement photographers, and I wanted to help them create a sustainable business.

There was a day around building, a day around growing, a day around marketing, and then a day around scaling.

Themed days worked well because someone was able to plan their day around what day to show up for. It was very easy for them to think, “Okay, I'm at this stage of business so I need to show up on this day.” And it helped me clarify what kind of topics I should have on that day to reach that kind of photographer at that level of business.

Hannah's Experience with Niching Down for her Summit

I find it always scary when you niche down, just because you don't want anyone to feel left out. But at the same time, I was confident in the fact that a lot of my clients were photographers, and I knew the most about photographers because I had the most experience with them. I knew what their problems were.

The other side of it was that I had the most connections in that niche for speakers. That helped me go down that route in a confident way.

Looking back, it was a smart decision because it made it easy to plan and market.

Why Hannah Hosted a Virtual Summit

First off, a summit was never on my radar to do, to be honest, I didn't even really know about summits, but I saw a lot of my clients or business friends in the US that were attending events, in-person events, and I was craving that community.

And then, I came across you at the same time. I was invited to be a part of a summit, and that made me realize I love this idea.

Schedules and Different Time Zones

Scheduling and different time zones were the hardest part of the summit. I’m from Australia, and from the beginning, I decided to do it in the US time zone. While that was harder on me, I knew that majority of the speakers were US-based and I wanted them to make sure they were meeting the marketing deadlines.

Because a lot of the speakers were based in the US, probably a lot of the attendees would be based there as well. People showed up a lot more and the speakers marketed a lot better in that time zone.

Results Hannah Expected to See

Hosting the summit wasn't a huge financial move. My goal was to increase my exposure within the industry and grow my email list. That's where I wanted to head. And because I've never done a summit before, I didn't really know what to expect.

The Results Hannah Saw

My summit results went above and beyond what I was expecting. It helped get my name out there, but at the same time, the speakers were able to get their names out there as well.

We had over 900 people register for the summit, and 150 of those purchased our all-access pass. That’s over a 16% conversion rate!

The all-access pass was priced at $47/$97/$147. The best-selling price point was that first 48-hour sale where it was $47. All the speakers were promoting it at the same time. It was “cheap” compared to the other price points.

What Hannah Included in her All-Access Pass

My all-access pass included all the presentations and workbooks for 12 months and then we had over 10 contributions from the speakers and affiliates.

Some of the contributions were:

• Productivity course
• Blogging course
• Bookkeeping masterclass
• Branding guides
• Wedding guides
• Pinterest guides

There was a lot in there, which really did help contribute to those toolkit sales. I think the greater the value, the greater the attendee’s saving, which also helps speakers as well. It's important with your all-access pass to have a lot of value in it because it helps speakers promote because of how much is in there.

Hannah’s Summit Speakers

There were 14 speakers and me, so there were 15 presentations altogether.

I also brought in 5 key affiliates who couldn't be part of the presentation, but I knew they had solid audiences and they would be able to help promote it.

That helped as well because it wasn't extra work on my end trying to find more people to get more speakers in there.

How Hannah got her speakers to promote her summit

While many speakers promoted wonderfully, not every speaker did.

A few key things contributed to my speaker’s success:

1. I used all the resources in Summit in a Box®.
2. There were speaker and affiliate prizes for the top 3 earners.
3. I was active in the Facebook group and made sure every speaker was in there.

Hannah's Promotion Strategy

First off, I am great with Pinterest, but Instagram is not a strength. And so, I knew I had to up-level for Instagram in this summit.

I have 14 speakers, so that's 14 days of content and marketing. Because I chose these speakers, I knew about them, I knew their strengths. I'd either worked with them or bought their products.

I think a lot of my marketing comes from a place of real encouragement. I wanted to rave about that speaker, and I found that when I did that, they were like, "Oh wow, this person seems so cool. I want to hear more about them." It was very non-salesy.

A lot of the lead-up was more so just talking about the speakers, and I found that I would do that again. It was a very helpful strategy in just giving a lot of content.

I think the biggest thing is you want to show up in that two-week period.

The best decision Hannah made for her summit

First of all, I asked myself the question, How can I make this easy on me without sacrificing results? Because I could very easily get overwhelmed with the tech and funnels.

It was my first summit. I wanted to make sure that I was showing up and helping people without being a hot mess stressed behind the scenes.

Second, I think the 48-hour sale helped the summit in this situation. That's when I saw the greatest number of sales and the most amount of people sign up.

Hannah’s Summit Tech

I used ThriveCart with Squarespace, that's just how people got the free ticket, how they signed up. All the sales pages were in Squarespace and the ThriveCart affiliate tracking was amazing.

At the end of the payouts, ThriveCart tracked everything for me and it was only a one-off payment. I didn't have to pay a month-to-month payment.

To host the all-access pass, I used Podia because that's where my other courses are, and that was just an easy fit.

Would Hannah host another summit?

I have absolutely fallen in love with the idea of summits. There are definitely a few things I'd do differently.

1. The first thing is I would add in another bonus and consistently add into the all-access pass and do surprise resources to create a little bit more hype.
2. The second thing is that I would be more strategic with email. I didn't do much email marketing to the summit people attendees. I used a sequence of about 3 emails. I’d considered doing more post-summit emails next time.

Hannah’s big takeaway

I have a couple of things I’d suggest as my biggest takeaways from this.

1. Start small but give a lot of quality.
2. If something goes wrong, and it will, don’t freak out. Find an easy way around it because there’s always a solution.
3. Before you start promoting, have a marketing plan.
4. Write down the topics that you want and find speakers for those specific topics.

About Hannah

Hannah is a content and productivity strategist for driven and passionate creatives. She helps creative entrepreneurs show up consistently and wholeheartedly without the overwhelm through systems.

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