How to Position Your Virtual Summit For Success

In the last two posts we've done the work to identify your summit's audience and topic. Now, we'll put those pieces to use to determine your summit's positioning. 

Once you have this down, everything else will become so much easier - from attracting an audience, to writing copy, and so much more!

We'll cover:

• How your positioning ties into your audience and topic
• Positioning mistakes to avoid
• How to position your summit, and
• Where that positioning will show up.

Positioning Your Virtual Summit for Success

Your summit's positioning will be directly decided by the audience and topic you choose. The difference is who it's for (audience) and what it will do for them (topic) versus the way that you're actually going to communicate that (positioning).

That leads us right into the top positioning mistakes to avoid:

Positioning mistakes

The first one is not putting enough thought into it. A lot of hosts treat their summit registration page as this short, basic landing page that doesn't need any information and skips the strategic positioning altogether.

It's almost like they think the fact that they're hosting a summit is all that's going to matter to make someone sign up. As wonderful as it would be, it's just not the case.

Similarly, I see a lot of summits focused on a few things that don't matter as far as your audience is concerned. Some of those things include:

• The fact that it's a summit - Yes, it is a huge accomplishment to put a summit together, but that's not what will make your audience sign up.
• Your speakers are awesome - Again, spending too much time on that or displaying full bios on the registration page won't encourage anyone to register.
• The schedule - While we want to show off the incredible presentations that will be featured, in most cases displaying the full, detailed schedule will serve as more of a distraction than anything else.

None of those things are what you want your positioning to focus on. But let's go into what to do instead.

How to position your summit the right way

Remember when we chose your profitable topic based on your audience's biggest problem? I want you to go back and brainstorm all of the big pain points that your audience is experiencing.

For example, one of my summits helps designers streamline and simplify their business so it can be more efficient, profitable, and stress-free. A lot of the pain points I hear from them are things like:

• They don't have time to work on their own business.
• They can't even dream of having enough time to make a passive income product.
• They either have no clients or way too many clients.

Next, flip that around and brainstorm the benefits of solving those problems.

Transformation

Those two pieces come together to create a transformation that you can give your audience. That's what your positioning should focus on. Start with bringing those pain points to life for your audience members.

For me, it's the fact that designers can't break past $3k months because they don't have the time they need, or they reached the end of the day, are exhausted, and feel like they gave it all they had without making any progress.

From there, show them what their life or business will look like after the summit.

For me, it looks like a streamlined business that can be run in a fraction of the time with time to focus on things like passive income products or even relaxing, which is something a lot of them can't even fathom.

It's up to you to paint a picture that lets them see what's possible through your summit. This is so much more powerful than the fact that you're hosting an event with some pretty cool speakers.

Where your positioning will show up

Now that you have the positioning down, let's talk about where that positioning will show up.

• Registration Page - This is where you really paint the picture for potential attendees. You'll remind them of where they are now, while pointing out where the summit can help them get.  
• Registration Email Sequence - Once attendees are registered, you don't have to necessarily keep hitting hard on pain points, but keep bringing up the benefits they're going to see through taking part in the summit to keep them interested until it begins.
• Presentation Topics - Presentations should focus on solving the problems you uncovered and bringing the benefits and the transformation you have promised to life. It's important that your positioning carries all the way through the summit and then that you actually follow through on what you're promising. 

Put It Into Action

• Brainstorm the pain points your audience is currently experiencing.
• Write down the benefits your summit will bring to them and let that be your transformation.
• Decide how you can bring those to pieces together to illustrate a transformation.
• Infuse that transformation in all of your summit's messaging, goals, marketing, and presentations.

Resources

• 12 Secrets To Your First Profitable Online Summit
• Episode 4: Discover Your Ideal Virtual Summit Audience
• Episode 5: Choose A Profitable Topic For Your Virtual Summit
• Episode 22: Creating Transformations Through Summit Presentations
• Episode 33: What To Include On Your Virtual Summit Registration Page 

View related episodes >>