Virtual Summits Don't Work? Here's What I Have To Say

Have you heard someone say that virtual summits don't work? I have and, as you'd probably guess, I have some pretty strong feelings about it.

In this episode, you'll hear all about those strong feelings and what I think you can do to make your summit not only profitable for you but impactful for your attendees.

Do Virtual Summits Work?

The idea for this episode came to me earlier in 2018 when I was watching the Instagram stories of someone I really liked who had hosted a summit. I'd never heard her say anything but positive stuff about the results of her summit.

But on this particular day, she went totally off about how summits don't work and why they're not worth doing. As you can imagine, I was a little fired up!

• If you host your summit in a way where you're not set up for success, it's not going to work.
• If you don't use the right strategies, it's not going to work.
• If you don't have the right audience or offer or summit topic, it's not going to work.
• If you can't get your summit in front of the right people, it's not going to work.
• If you don't include connection and building relationships as a part of your summit, it's not going to work.
• And if you go in with only the goal of making money and not paying attention to the experience people are getting, it's not going to work.

If you can find me something you can do with bad strategies, the wrong audience, ineffective promotion, and no focus on the results people will get, and can still be successful doing that, please let me know and we'll revisit this conversation.

If you find someone who says that summits don't work, they've either never hosted one before or they didn't do it right. It's as simple as that.

Having the Right Audience and Offer

One of the biggest reasons people host a summit without seeing results is because they don’t have the right audience and topic. Everything else about the summit can be spot on, but if the audience and the topic are wrong, none of that matters.

The biggest mistake comes from a summit that's too general.

For example, a summit for all business owners who want to grow their own business. It’s not going to hit them hard enough to make them want to participate and purchase your all-access pass or anything else you have. They also sold their all-access pass for $19 and it’s going to take a lot of people to purchase your all-access pass to see a big growth revenue.

Use the Right Strategies

The next thing I want to touch on is to use the right strategies. If you're going to do something as big as a summit and expect it to work, you have to do it right.

You wouldn't expect your Facebook ads to get good conversions if you had no idea what you were doing. You wouldn't expect something like a week-long challenge or a webinar to get great results for you if you had no idea what you were doing.

Don't make this up. Use proven strategies that work. That's why I have this podcast. That's why I have Summit In A Box ®, and why I have the Summit Host Process Map. Those tools all give you my step-by-step strategies that are proven to work, so don't waste your time and energy making things up.

I know there are other resources out there as well. You don't have to use mine. Of course, I would love it if you did, but what's more important to me is that you're running summits that get you results.

Get Your Summit in Front of Your Audience

The third thing is to get your summit in front of your audience. People struggle to get their summit in front of enough people to get good results, and if you don't have an email list, it's still possible to host a very successful summit.

For that to happen, you either need to pitch speakers with larger and relevant audiences or know your ways around paid advertising.

If you don't give yourself an audience to promote to, you're not going to get any signups.

It's not one of those things like “if you build it, they'll come”. That's not how it works. You have to at least get in front of those people and when you have that great specific audience and a topic that's really just chosen for them specifically, then they'll come, but they have to see it first.

You also have to be willing to promote and have a good strategy for that. Don’t be afraid of emailing your audience several times and repurposing that content on social media. People need to see you talk about your summit many times before they're ready to sign up.

Connecting with Speakers and Attendees

The next thing I want to talk about is connecting with your speakers and attendees. This is another huge issue with summits that might not be successful. If they're missing the connection aspect, your conversion rates are not going to be as high.

You need to connect with both your speakers and your attendees. The more connected you are to your speakers, the more effort they'll put into promoting and then the bigger return you'll see. If they're not feeling engaged or like they're an important part of your summit, they're not going to promote as hard. I

Just as important as your speakers is your audience. You can't let them register for the event and just sit around waiting until day one to get blasted with emails about it and then call it done.

Invest in the people who sign up for your summit.

• Send them valuable and informative content leading up to the event.
• Have a Facebook community where they can connect with each other and you.
• Ask questions and feel involved overall.
• Have a way for them to participate live during presentations, even if they're prerecorded.
• Don't talk at your audience throughout your whole summit. Talk with Ask them questions. Give them a reason to participate and communicate with you and your speakers and each other.

The more connected you are to the people who sign up, the more sales you're going to make.

People Over Profit

The last thing I want to touch on is the importance of caring about people over profit. I'm not saying you need to sacrifice your profit, or you're not allowed to care about the money you make, but you need to care about the people involved, your speakers and your attendees, more than the profit.

The more connected you are with them, the more your profit will increase.

When you're focused more on the people, you're going to create a better experience for them, which will naturally increase those sales, both the sales you make as a part of your summit and the sales that come in afterward through audience members.

Focus on the Audience and Topic

Focus on the most important part of your summit - your audience and your topic.

Resources

• Episode 4: Discover the Ideal Audience for Your Online Summit
• Episode 5: Choose a Profitable Topic for Your Virtual Summit
• Episode 15: How to Host a Successful Virtual Summit With No Email List
• Episode 37: 3 Pieces of Promoting an Online Summit
• Episode 38: Use Facebook Ads To Increase Your Summit's Results with Tony Rulli
• Summit Host Process Map
• Summit Host Hangout Facebook group  

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