The 5 Major Pieces Of A Virtual Summit

A virtual summit can be a lot to wrap your head around. If you're feeling a little uncertain or overwhelmed, know that it's totally okay! Today, I'll give you a quick overview of the 5 major pieces that go into hosting a virtual summit.

We'll cover what each of those pieces are, some of my top tips, and resources you can reference to learn more about each one.

Who the summit is for and what it’s about

The most important piece of hosting a virtual summit is getting clear on who it's for and what it's actually about.

This ends up being a struggle for many first-time hosts because sometimes the target audience for your business can't be the target audience for your summit. That's because a lot of times the target audience for your business is too broad. You can't have a wide audience and expect a summit to convert well.

Because of that, it's important to narrow in so you can catch the attention of the people you built the summit for.

So from here, choose who your summit is for and get specific! After you've narrowed on your audience (and no, "creative entrepreneurs" and "online business owners" don't count), choose a topic that your people need help with.

Find and manage your speakers

Finding and managing your speakers is the most time-consuming part of hosting a virtual summit. A lot of it is waiting to hear back from emails, giving them time to create their presentations - things that don't require direct action from you.

Find Speakers Who:

• Have the same audience that your summit is targeting
• Are good at connecting with their audience
• Are not constantly pitching their offers
• Have something valuable to your audience to share

Look for and connect with these people. Taking time to connect upfront will make pitching easier!

From there, it's all about management and getting the information you need. 

Speaker Timeline:

• 1 week for finding speakers
• 2 weeks for connecting with speakers
• 2-3 weeks for pitching speakers
• 4 weeks creating presentations

For more on summit speakers, check out this category of podcast episodes!

Your website

I know that setting up your summit website can be intimidating. But to make it easier, my recommendation is to use whichever virtual summit tech platform you're already on.

Personally, I really like WordPress or Kajabi. I have all kinds of templates for both platforms in my Summit In A Box program, but to keep it from being overwhelming, start with what you have.

What you need for your website:

• A registration page with email integration - a way for people to go learn about your summit and sign up.
• A way to publish and take down presentations - whether the presentations are published every hour, whether they're published every day, like all at once, it doesn't matter.
• A way for people to be able to purchase and access the all-access pass, which we'll talk about next.

Depending on your tech platform, your experience level, how in-depth do you choose to go, whether you use my templates or if you're doing it from scratch, this can take you anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks. Base your timeline on your comfort with the tech piece.

Your offer

After someone registers for your summit for free, they're going to get an offer, which is typically an all-access pass.

Usually, inside of the all-access pass, you're giving access to presentations for a longer period of time along with some fun and relevant bonuses.

Requirements For All-Access Pass Sales:

• Sales page - a page that tells them all about what they’re buying
• Checkout page - where they'll check out and purchase
• Members area - a way to login and access the content in the all-access pass

Usually, you can have something like this setup and ready to go within a day or two. If you consider yourself more tech-challenged, you might want to give yourself more like a week, but it doesn't have to be difficult.

Promote the summit

Like anything else, if you want to see a return on your summit, you need to promote it. And this applies whether you have a huge audience of your own or if you're relying on your speakers.

Plan for a 2-3 week promotion period.

Requirements for Promoting:

• Email copy – promo emails for you and your speakers to send out
• Social media copy – shorter versions of your emails
• Graphics – graphics of all sizes for yourself and speakers to share on social media

Wrap Up

The five pieces we covered today are the most important when it comes to hosting a profitable virtual summit. These things take time, but you can do it! 

If you're ready for more detail, check out how to host a virtual summit with a more detailed 10-stage process.

Resources

• Episode 1: How to Host a Virtual Summit
• Episode 4: Discover Your Ideal Virtual Audience Audience
• Episode 5: Choose A Profitable Virtual Summit Topic
• Episode 9: How to Make Money with a Virtual Summit
• Episode 31: Virtual Summit Tech Platforms
• Episode 37: 3 Best Ways to Promote a Virtual Summit
• Summit Host Hangout Facebook group

View related episodes >>