125: Why Virtual Summits Are the All-In-One Sales Funnel

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase their revenue with digital products and evergreen sales funnels. Today we're in our podcast series talking all about virtual summits. If you've been following me for a while, you you know that I'm a big fan of virtual summits. I've hosted several of them in the past and used them as our main business building strategy in our hobby school brand. So I wanted to bring some virtual summit experts together and walk you through the strategies behind virtual Summits and when you may want to use them in your business. Before we jump into today's episodes, don't forget to sign up for our free class the three part framework to triple your monthly revenue with a Virtual Summit. While building your list for free, I have put the link to sign up in the podcast show notes. So don't forget to grab it there. Let's jump right into our show.

And today I have Krista Miller with someone in a box with me and we are continuing our podcast series where we're talking all about virtual summits. And today we're going to be talking about virtual summits and how they are the all in one sales funnel. Now what I'm going to do, Krista, I want to turn it over to you and you're going to talk about how virtual summits are that full funnel all in one. And we're going to continue kind of what we talked about in the last part of the last episode. And you know how virtual summits just really kind of pull everything together and are that, you know, are that full funnel. So Krista, I'll turn it over to you.

Yeah, this is one of my very favorite parts about virtual summits is something that took me several summits to actually see the power of like we are so used to hustling hard and piecing together all types of strategies to make a funnel. So like, you know, when you think of a funnel, you, you see the top of funnel strategies, the middle of funnel strategies, the bottom of funnel strategies, and there's different things that fit in well with each of those. And we talked about those in the last episode. A summit does it all. So I'm just going to kind of walk through some of those things and destiny, we can kind of dig deeper in each piece if you want to afterwards. But like when we think of top of the funnel, we're thinking of things like networking and visibility. What are strategies that are getting your name out? What are strategies that are Getting people to know about you. A summit is absolutely incredible for those things. When you think about it, you're hosting a summit and you're bringing together, depending on the size of your event, 10, 20, 30 experts that are all coming to contribute to and support something that you are doing. So you are connecting with these people in your industry that you might have never been able to connect with otherwise. And that has been my experience. Like, people I wouldn't have been able to just like, you know, do a cold pitch for like a JV webinar or some or something like that are more than happy and excited to come be a part of this summit. So it has increased my connections and network by so much and like, the opportunities for that are just endless. So a summit is so powerful for increasing your network and in doing so, it will increase your visibility. Because when all of these experts are sharing about your summit, that's all of their audiences that you're suddenly getting the eyes of on something you're doing all at once. So assignment will absolutely skyrocket your visibility. And that's where it's so strong with those top of, with the top of your funnel. And then we get into lead generation. And when you host a summit the right way, you can expect like 50, 65% of people who see your summit registration page to sign up for your event, which can very easily turn into thousands of new leads that you have on your list that you're now able to communicate with. And I like to tell people, you know, if you are starting really small, if you have like, you know, 100 or fewer, couple hundred subscribers, I like to see you set a goal of a minimum of 500 people signed up for your summit. If you have a little bit bigger audience, you can expect that to be larger. If you have 2,000 people on your list, maybe your goal is 4,000 people. A summit is so great for, for increasing your email list really, really quickly. There is nothing else that's going to grow your list as quickly as a virtual summit done the right way. Then, you know, you get new leads and then you have to usually pile on another strategy to engage those leads, right? Not with a summit. A summit will engage those leads so quickly and get them excited and learning about your, your area of expertise in a really short time frame. Maybe you host a three, four, five day event, maybe that's what, three to five days of them learning about your topic, getting excited, taking action, seeing that forward momentum that usually you'd need to put another strategy in place for or it would Just take a lot of time if you were relying something on like weekly newsletters or something like that, so you're engaging those new leads really quickly. While you're doing that, you're also engaging or re engaging any audience you already have. And this is one of my favorite parts is people who have been on my email list for, for years might see this fun summit I'm hosting and finally decide to like re engage and come to that event and have fun and you know, get to know attendees and engage with me again. So it's so powerful for that part. Then we get to the bottom of the funnel where we're actually making sales. Summits are so powerful for this because during a summit you're selling an all access pass and you know, depending on your all access pass strategy, they can convert not well to very well. Our students and clients tend to see 12 to 15% conversion rates. You know, we can see as low as 10, as high as 25. But 12 to 15 is kind of where we see that standard. And that can lead you to tens of thousands of in revenue right during the event itself. And then you add on that launch at the end of your course or membership. And it is not rare to set a new launch record when you launch through a summit. So we just worked on a summit going from how it's connecting you with new people all the way down to how it's selling your signature offer rather than piecing together tons of different strategies to make all of that happen. A summit does it all at once.

So you gave us a lot to kind of break down here. And I do have up your Instagram post and it's a picture. And I'm going to put this link in the podcast just so everybody has it because it's such a great picture of breaking down bundles versus webinar challenges, even Facebook ads, which we haven't talked about much today, versus a summit and how, you know, how all of this breaks down and when you would use one versus the other. So we'll make sure that that link is in the show notes. And I want to use the brand that I just started building recently, Krista. It's called Hobby School. And the reason why I want to use it as an example is because it was new and I know a lot of folks out there are maybe just getting started or they might have small audiences, small email list or non existent email list. So I want to talk kind of use this as an example because I did start from absolutely nothing, you know, zero people on my email list. And zero people on social media, zero people in the Facebook group. So we're starting to build it and I would say, you know, we started with kind of the paid bundles. I haven't done webinars with this particular brand yet, but Summits has been the way that we've grown it. I want to say we haven't ran a lot of summits yet, but we have a few thousand people on our email list, we have a few hundred in our Facebook group. So it's growing. It's been a great way for us to do that. But the networking that we've been able to do, the visibility that we've had in the marketplace from these summits has been great. Of course, the lead generation, obviously with getting new people on our email list. We're in the process right now of doing our third summit. We're not doing huge summits. We're only doing two day summits. So we don't have a lot of speakers that we're bringing in. This is all from less than 20 speakers per summits that we've gotten. These definitely been a way to engage new leads and sell. We're starting to sell with the All Access Pass and we're adding on some other products that we're going to add it on in the future, you know, as we get a little bit further down the road. So I love it. I love what a summit does. Now tell us a little bit about selling our offers. Now, obviously from the summit we can sell the All Access Pass, but what are some ways that you recommend that people either go sell a service or digital product or membership at the end of their summit?

Oh, I love this question you're giving me like one of my favorite topics. Okay, so the key to selling through a summit is to not actually sell in your summit, which I know might sound a little strange, but you know, I used to actually really, really dislike summits because the first few I went to felt like nothing but a sales pitch. Like I sign up to go to these awesome presentations that you're promising and see, see this change in my life or business that you're promising. But all I'm doing is getting pitched the whole time. I can't open an email, I can't go to a presentation without seeing this huge pitch for, for your product. And I always just walked away with this terrible taste in my mouth. So when I finally did decide to host the summit, I was determined to do it my, do it my way. And that has carried over to as we started to integrate launching through the Summit. So launching with a summit is so powerful, but what you want to focus on before and during the event itself is just really low key. Building awareness of your offer. So whether that is a service or a course or membership, which are the two that I have more experience with, you're just letting people know it exists. And to give a couple examples of that, like, I could talk about different ways to do this all day long, but it could be as easy as, like, when you introduce yourself, you're adding in the name of your program. So. Hi, I'm Krista from Summit in a Box and I, you know, have my signature Summit In A Box program where we help you, you know, give you every, every training template and resource you need to launch a virtual assignment with ease. Like, I'm not selling it, I'm just including it in my introduction of myself because it's like a core piece of what I do. Now they've heard one time about my program, and I can kind of keep giving those little pieces here and there. Another one of my favorite strategies is like offering a scholarship to one attendee for my. For my program. And I advertise that right on the registration page. Like, as an attendee of this event, you have the chance when you engage and do these things, to win a full scholarship to my Summit in a Box program where we help you blank. So now I'm able to talk about my program even more throughout the summit, but it's in a way that's adding value to them. They have a chance to win a full scholarship of it. And I'm talking about the program even giving, like, behind the scenes looks at it from, from the point of view of here's what you're applying for. Not like, hey, go buy this thing. Right now. I'm focusing on building awareness. So then at the end of the event, like, when you do this all throughout the event, you truly have people being like, please open your cart so I can give you my money. And that's what we do at the end of the event. We open the cart to our program, usually with a webinar, like you said, you do Destiny. And it just leads to such an incredible launch. And of course there's gonna be people who aren't ready for that yet. You're never gonna get sales from everyone you launch to. But the people already have engaged with you through the summit. They've made progress, they're excited, they're ready to take action. And your offer comes at the perfect time for those people.

So at the end of the Summit. So let's just say the summit was a five day summit. Do you do it on day five or do you wait until maybe the next week to do the webinar?

I like to do it right on day five. Like whatever you would consider the final day of your summit, do it right then. Because the longer you wait gives attendees more and more of a chance to kind of forget their excitement, forget the progress they were making and move on and focus on different things. So I like to build it right into the summit so they're transitioning right into it while their excitement and engagement is still high.

What if they don't have their course built yet or they haven't launched their membership? Should they still run a summit to kind of build, build their email list and when they're ready to launch, they'll have them, you know, they can do a webinar or whatever or challenge maybe at that time. What would you recommend to somebody who's still kind of working on things?

Yeah, I would say it can go either way, just kind of based on your priorities. Do you feel like right now it's going to be a better use of your time to build an audience or is it going to be a better use of your time to get your offer out there for the first time? Something I caution people with when they're using a summit to sell an offer is using a summit to sell a new offer. Because what I hate to see is someone go through the work of hosting a summit and, and then try to sell an offer that doesn't work. And I do that. I say that because I did it and it was not fun. I was like, oh, this summit I've run before has been super successful. I'm just going to use it to launch this new coaching program that I had the idea of. Well, people love the summit. They did not love the coaching program. And there was a way easier way to figure that out. Now, luckily I still did get to grow my audience by thousands of people, bring in tens of thousands of dollars to the All Access Pass. But the launch itself kind of flopped. So I would encourage you to do one or the other. Either use a summit right now for list building and getting people excited and engaged and then kind of go through and figure out your offer or launch your offer first, make sure it converts and then go ahead and tie it into your summit. Either way is great. It just kind of depends on maybe even what feels better to you at this time. Where do you feel like your focus is going to be better spent?

I love that tip. And Krista, before we hang up here today, any last minute tips on how you know talking about virtual summits as the all in one sales funnel?

Yeah, I would say my biggest tip to get the most out of both the summit itself and the launch afterwards is just to be really careful about who you are pitching, pitching all your business besties, pitching all these big names in your industry. It's not going to do anything for you if those people don't have the audience that you want to sell your offer to. Right. So that is like my biggest tip for you right now. When you are using a summit as the all in one sales funnel, make sure your speakers are going to bring in the type of people you want going through that sales funnel.

Oh, and that's, that's so important because if you're getting people on your list that aren't going to be interested in your offer or any anything that you're selling is kind of, you know, I hate to say it, but it's kind of a waste of time.

Yep, it definitely.

All right, so Krista, you tell people where to find you on Instagram and I will make sure that link is there in there for them so they can see that kind of that picture that you had.

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram Summit in a box and I would love to get to know you and answer any questions you have about this episode over there.

And we'll make sure that the link for people to register for the training that we have coming up is also in the show notes. So Krista, thank you so much and be sure to join us tomorrow where we wrap up our series on virtual summits. And tomorrow we're going to be covering all of your FAQs.

Thanks for listening all the way to the end of the episode. Now don't forget to sign up for our free class the three part framework to triple your monthly revenue with a virtual summit while building your list for free. Go to the link in the podcast show notes and sign up today. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.