Welcome back to the Behind the Summit Series! We're in the middle of promotion and this week was all about putting the finishing touches on things along with supporting and encouraging speakers.
Finishing Touches
This week, I focused on putting together all the final bits and pieces that need to be in place before a summit starts. This included tasks related to presentations, the community, and the all-access pass.
Most of those tasks fell on my assistant, Kate, and she worked to:
- Edit closed captions for each presentation
- Schedule prompts in the Facebook group
- Load all the content into the all-access pass
While she was doing that, I focused on keeping everything for our sponsors organized and ready to go.
What’s the game plan?
Kate and I have run several events together now, so after a quick Voxer chat, we made our game plan for summit week (next week!).
Kate is going to…
- Manage the chat boxes
- Keep an eye on the community
- Manage the inbox
- Flag anything that needs my attention
I am going to…
- Keep an eye on the community
- Engage with speakers and attendees
- Keep an eye on the tech
- Manage the live sessions
If you get to this point in your summit planning and have a decent amount of people registered, I suggest hiring someone, even if it’s just a friend, to jump in and help you the week of the event. It’s hard on your brain to worry about everything happening all at once!
Speaker support and encouragement
The next big thing I did this week was support and encourage my speakers. I wouldn't be putting this event together without them! Because of my schedule this year, I couldn’t add some of the more personal touches I’ve done in the past, like personalized IG stories or emails, but I did my best!
However, I shared each speaker at least once in my Instagram Stories, reshared as they posted, and answered any questions they had as quickly as I could…whether they came in on Voxer, Instagram, or email.
I also sent out speaker emails with updates on Monday and Thursday to keep them up-to-date and excited, while keeping the event at the front of their mind.
The Monday email included:
- A big thank you and encouragement to promote with all the links and swipe copy they needed.
- An update on numbers, including where registrations and conversion rates are and where I'd like them to be.
- Sharing what my goals were for the week.
- A free all-access pass.
The Thursday email included:
- More thanks and encouragement.
- Asking for a big final push for registrations and sales.
Again, if you have Summit In A Box®, you have these exact templates. I saw a boost in registrations after that Thursday email which was encouraging to see.
Where The Numbers Are At
Let’s talk about where the numbers are at this week. If I don’t compare it to last year’s event, it’s going pretty well. Here’s where we sit:
- 3600 registrations
- $23,000 in AAP sales (I later learned that this was sales minus affiliate commissions, so the gross sales were actually higher)
- 8-10% conversion rate (much lower than I'm used to seeing, but I know it will go up!)
How Facebook Ads Are Doing
I’ve done a lot of watching and tweaking Facebook ads this week.
- Our cold audience cost-per-lead was over $40.
- The retargeting ads were at $7.50.
- The warm audience ads were $12.
Based on those numbers, it was time to turn cold audience ads off. On Thursday, the warm audience ads hadn’t reported results, but the budget was low and we saw a good return, so I let them run.
I also noticed that registration retargeting (retargeting people who registered but didn’t buy) returned a great profit, so I left those on.
Pro Tip: Since Facebook doesn’t report sales super accurately, it’s important to set up separate funnels to track on your own.
The Excitement Is Building
Overall, it was a low-key week for me, but Kate was hustling hard to put all the finishing touches on things. If you’re doing this by yourself, I would expect this to be a much busier week for you.
I’m excited about next week! I’m ready to move on to other projects and love on my attendees and speakers.
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