Boosting Virtual Summit Results Using Facebook Ads with Destini Copp

guest expert making money summit promotion May 05, 2020

The right Facebook ads strategy will skyrocket your virtual summit’s results. Let’s determine your budget, test your audiences, and use ads to boost engagement. You want to get the best possible results from your virtual summit and know that doing so means extending your reach outside of your current audience. But what are the most effective ways to use Facebook ads to boost summit results without banking the bank or overcomplicating things?

Today, I've brought in first-time summit host, Destini Copp, to talk about her virtual summit and powerful Facebook ads strategy.

Destini breaks down things like:

how to determine your ad budget
how to boost your ad results before your summit begins
how to increase engagement throughout your summit with some simple, low-budget ad campaigns.

Let's dive in and hear from Destini!

Behind the scenes of Destini's first virtual summit

My first virtual summit was The Funnel Cure, which ran for 3 days. It was designed to help online course creators sell their existing products.

In terms of speakers, they were all focused on helping people sell their online course. We touched every aspect of a funnel, including things like:

email marketing
content marketing
PR strategies
webinars
deadlines
Pinterest
virtual summits
and more!

We really covered every piece of the online course funnel.

Was it worth it to niche down?

I've been in marketing for 25 years and one of the things that I've learned is that you have to design products and services for specific people.

If you are talking to everybody out there, then you're really talking to no one.

That includes virtual summit audiences. You have to be very specific in what your message is and you have to talk to a certain niche.

How Destini's summit led to a course launch

I ran my summit Tuesday-Thursday one week and the following week transitioned into launching my Facebook and Instagram Ads Course. I wanted to keep the momentum going and attendees moving forward so I didn't include much time between the two.

To launch, I hosted a webinar the Wednesday following my summit and closed my cart a week later. Facebook ads were helpful in keeping attendees engaged between when the summit ended and the webinar happened.

Boosting Virtual Summit Results Using Facebook Ads

1. Test your audiences

Before your summit, use Facebook ads to list-build while testing a variety of audiences. You'll both get an idea of which audiences perform the best while building up a warm audience to run ads to when it's time to promote your summit.

I really highly recommend that you run ads to a freebie related to your summit topic before your summit promotion begins. If you don't test beforehand, you're going to be testing when you do your ads for your summit. Since the launch runway for a summit is short, you don't have that kind of time.

2. Run ads to the registration page

Testing ahead of time worked well for me because when it came time to run ads for my summit, I already had audiences that were locked and loaded - primed for this particular offer.

Not only did I have a larger warm audience to target for a cheaper cost-per-lead, but I also had cold audiences that I knew would respond well.

3. Deciding your ad spend

Making a well-educated decision related to ad spend is another reason why testing is so important. If you test beforehand, you'll have an idea of what your cost per lead is going to be.

For example, I know that for my business that my cost per lead for a cold audience is going to be around $7 or so. And I know for my warm audiences it's going to be somewhere between $4-5.

With that information, I can break down how much I need to be spending.

Let's say that you want to get 1000 people registered to your summit with Facebook ads and that, through testing, you know that your average cost per lead is about $3.

That means you'll take the $3 cost per lead, times $1000. That will mean you need to spend $3000 on your ad campaign.

If you'll be running ads for 14 days, you know you'll need to spend about $215 per day .

The only way to know these numbers is to test beforehand.

What to look at once your ads are running

Once you have summit ads running to the audiences you tested and know what your cost per lead should be, let's talk about what to look at to determine whether they're working or not.

1. Registration page conversion rate

The first thing you need to know is how your registration page is converting. Look at how many people are clicking through from your ads versus how many of those people are actually signing up for your summit.

A lot of people will say that 20% is fine, but I like to see a minimum of 30%. Mine converted at 47% and I can usually get my clients up to that range as well.

The higher the percentage of the conversion on that landing page, the lower the cost per lead you're going to have.

2. Click-through rate

Another thing I look at is click-through rate in the Ads Manager. I like to see this around 1-2%. This will tell you whether or not your ad is resonating with the people you're getting it in front of.

If it's not, it could be something wrong with the image not catching their eye or the copy not being compelling enough.

Running Instagram Ads to your Summit

Since you set Facebook and Instagram ads up the same way, most people will end up running ads to both platforms.

I don't do this all the time, but sometimes I'll set up Dynamic Creative ads and run them everywhere. From there, Facebook will figure out what works best for each platform and show only those ads.

How to keep attendees engaged with Facebook ads

Like we mentioned earlier, between my summit and launch, I kept my attendees engaged with the help of what I call a "reminder ad". I'm happy to say that it worked very well!

Boosting engagement before the summit began

I also used these reminder ads a few days before my summit began. It was an ad I ran to anyone who registered basically saying, "Hey, your seat is saved. Just want to let you know that The Funnel Cure Summit is right around the corner and if you want to go ahead and start planning your schedule..."

I had a link in there to the schedule of the summit, so they could look at the schedule and figure out which sessions they wanted to attend and get them on the calendar.

I also used a carousel ad showing pictures of many of the speakers along with their presentation topic that people could flip to. Each of the carousel pictures took them to the schedule page as well.

As for ad spend, I spent $10 per day for 3 days. So $30 total to make sure my attendees remembered what was coming.

Keeping attendees engaged during the summit

Another great thing to try are engagement ads during your summit.

The goal of these is to keep attendees interested and engaged with the summit material.

If you have a launch coming up, you can also run simple video ads to summit attendees simply to remind them of the webinar.

$10/day on these types of ads is plenty.

Keeping engagement up before the course launch

Once your summit is over and before any webinar or launch you do, continue running ads to your summit attendees to remind them that the webinar is coming up.

I also recommend running ads to your webinar even for people in your warm audience who didn't attend the summit.

Destini's biggest takeaway

I'm experienced with launches, but this was the first summit I've hosted. And if I had to share one piece of advice with you, it would be to make sure you have access to some type of system.

I would have made a ton of more mistakes had I not had Krista's step-by-step process in Summit In A Box® to walk me through exactly what I needed to do. The templates and swipe files in this program were also a lifesaver. I really don't think I could have done it otherwise.

Destini's Facebook ads workshop

If you need help testing your audiences, getting an understanding of your numbers, and learning to run ads, check out my free five-day workshop. It will walk you through setting up your first list-building ad campaign.

About Destini

Dr. Destini Copp is a Facebook ad and marketing consultant with more than 25 years of experience in marketing, sales funnels, and online education. A multi-passionate entrepreneur, she makes it her mission to help coaches, consultants and experts succeed in online marketing and growing their online course business.

Website | LinkedIn | Facebook & Instagram Ads Workshop

Resources

View related episodes >>

Free Training Series: Summit to Sales

Learn how virtual summits can become your most effective lead generation strategy, cash injection method, and lead to a long-term, reliable increase in sales of your signature offer.

JOIN NOW