Hey, welcome to the Summit Host Hangout Podcast where you'll learn how to host a high converting virtual summit that leads to your biggest signature offer launch yet, I'm your host, Krista from Summit in a Box. And I can't believe we are at the end of 2022 here. I feel like so much has changed in the world of summits over the past couple years that I thought this was the perfect opportunity to kind of round out the biggest changes I've noticed, noted and like adjusted in my own events, and our strategies over the last year, because we've been making some big changes. So I'm going to cover the main things that come to mind for me, but I want to hear from you too. So head over to the Summit Host Hangout Facebook group, and let us know what changes you have noticed as well. I could probably talk all day about different things I've noticed, but I just want to kind of touch on the biggest things here.
But in 2022, I hosted two summits of my own for different businesses, I hosted one conference, and we have a third summit for a client fully produced and ready to start promoting a few days from when this episode is going live. So my hands have been in an event of some kind all year round. And not only that, but we also opened the doors to our Launch with a Summit Accelerator program where we've worked super closely with over 50 clients in so many incredible niches. And this has given us so much room to continue to monitor our strategies, make adjustments, live with them, and just see so much more than we can when we only have our hands in our own events. So all of that experience is where these things are coming from. Now, I have my bullet point list here of changes I want to talk about. And I feel like as I'm reviewing these, it's going to sound like bad news. But I actually think it's good news for those of us who are really willing to use them as a long term strategy, take it seriously and make sure we're using the best strategy. So I will kind of talk more about that at the end. But for now, let's dive into these changes.
So the first change I've noticed is that five day events, packed with sessions all day, every day, I just too much. People don't want to be at five days of sessions all day, and they're just not going to do it. You're gonna notice every single day your engagement is lower, and lower and lower. I think if you are in a B2C niche, like your audience is not business owners, you have a bit of a better chance at that working for you. But still, you're just going to notice every single day, your engagement is going to go down a little bit more, a little bit more a little bit more. Now the summit we're producing for our client are happening in January is actually five full days of sessions. So I'm interested to see how that goes. They do have a really engaged B2C audience, but I think for most people, you're gonna see five days of jam packed presentations is going to be too much for you. We did this in our March event, and by the end, it was like a ghost town. And I felt so bad for our speakers who were on that day, because we did do chat boxes, and you know, there was just no one left by the end, which is so weird, because we didn't we have not seen that in the past. In the past, we did see like a bit of a drop off day after day. But there were still like super engaged excited people left at the end. And this time, it just wasn't like that.
So for our December event, we had really only two days of sessions. Day three was a day of live sessions that I led, it was really only two days pre recorded sessions, we didn't do chat boxes, and like for our audience for that event, they're more advanced business owner. So I know they're not gonna like wait to come just so they can like be in a chat box or anything like that. They're just gonna watch on their own time or listen when they can. So we kept that in mind for them. But shorter events are where it's at right now, the longer events that we're working, like in 2020 are just a little bit too much. So keep that in mind.
The next change I've noticed is that there are more summits, which means you have to do something to stand out. And I have always preached the power of having a specific audience and topic for your event, I wish we would have like a marked all of the episodes where I said something like that in because it would probably be at least half of them. But I've seen it become even more important over the past year, because people are seeing the power of summits more wanting to host it themselves. Or, you know, I've seen a lot of times where someone breaks into this industry for the first time with a summit. And all of their speakers are like, oh, I want to do that. And then they start hosting very similar summits, which I know how frustrating that is, trust me. So if you're one of those people, I see you, we've had that, you know, several of our clients lead the charge in an industry, which is really amazing, right? It's frustrating as the person who did it first and then kind of feels like you're being copied, but it is because of that it is becoming harder and harder to stand out again, especially if you're a B2B business owner, you have to do something. A lot of times that comes with the positioning again, you're not going to host a successful summit about like teaching online business owners to grow their business. It has to be something that really really stands out to people, you know, even things like you know, it seems like growing your audience and getting leads stuff like that's more specific, especially if it's like for a certain industry, but we've even seen those become more and more effective, more or less and less effective, excuse me, because they're becoming like more and more popular. So you have to do something to stand out with your event.
The third thing I've noticed is I've seen a lot of people who have had a hard time getting speakers to promote. I haven't necessarily Well, I guess maybe we did experience that in our March event. But we have seen like clients and students struggling to get speakers to promote. So we went into our December summit, knowing that that was the case, and we just like didn't mess around with our requirements. We had very set speaker requirements, we made them like, we made it very clear, right in our pitch, like we weren't hiding it. In our basic information form, we had our speakers feel that we addressed it again, I think it was even in the agreement, which I've never done before. We just made it really clear upfront. Now for us, I felt comfortable doing that, because we have, you know, a larger email list, we have an audience that I know I'm bringing to the event too. So I feel comfortable with those requirements. I don't think necessarily like if you're a first time host with a really small audience, I don't know, I have mixed feelings about promotion requirements, if you can't guarantee that you're bringing results as well. But just know, you might find it harder to get speakers to promote.
So doing things like just treating them so so well. Maybe even like making them custom emails and videos and sending it to them during the promotion period, sending them gifts during the promotion period, tagging them on social media, just like making it your personal responsibility to make it easy for them to promote and encourage them to promote. Not to like badger them and harass them to promote, the goal is always encouragement and support. But you might notice it's a little bit harder to get speakers to promote, especially if you don't have a plan for it going in.
The next thing I have noticed in 2022 is that engagement just seems down, like especially in communities like summit communities, again, I think this is especially true for B2B businesses, if you run a B2B business, you're just going to have a little more resistance to seeing the big growth we saw, or like the easy growth and results we saw, I guess in like 2020 and 2021. You know, it's you're gonna see lower, or at least I've seen our community engagement, fewer people opening emails, fewer people on kickoff calls and other live sessions, which is again, fine if you know about it, and can plan for that going in. Again, I've seen our B2C clients just kind of killing it and not necessarily seeing these things, but my point here is you can't just be lazy about like throwing together a Facebook community and calling it good. Again, there are so many summits, people know the drill, right, and they need a reason to interact. They're not just gonna go to a community because it's a private community, like come in, and you know, whatever talk to us about the event, they need to have a reason to join. And I think people are maybe a little more resistant to Facebook these days to again, especially B2B. So they might have just a little more resistance to go joining yet another group. Again, I think this goes back to positioning and goes back to the purpose of the event, they need that reason to sign up for the summit and show up for it. And that includes the community and and why they're engaging. So give your people a reason to engage. Having a private community isn't enough is my point here.
The next change I've seen is a more positive one. And that is people see the power of summits. We are seeing speakers, I wouldn't expect to say yes, say yes to a good pitch. We're seeing more people hosting summits, we're seeing more sponsorship opportunities, given and accepted by by like peers, right, like not these huge, huge businesses, smaller business owners are starting to see the opportunity in summits. And I think that's so cool that people are seeing the power of these events. Relationships are still very, very important. I have an episode, I think coming up on that yeah, episode coming up. And that just kind of based on our experience with, you know, pitching speakers for our own event, where there were relationships and pitching speakers for a client event where there were not relationships. Relationships make a difference. But with that being said, if you're in an industry where you know, people are familiar with summits, they generally see the power of them. Now of course, there are people who are kind of like, you know, against how summits work for one reason or another, maybe they don't fit in their promotion strategy or business model. That's fine. But overall, maybe even because like Facebook ads and stuff like that are a little tougher right now. People see the power and not having to pay money to get in front of a really well targeted summit audience. And again, we're circling back to the event positioning now.
The next change I've noticed is related to your all-access pass. So we have seen all access pass conversion rates go down if you don't have super, super relevant and valuable bonuses that are connected to the goal of the event for your all-access pass. You need that for your all-access pass to convert and stand out, and especially convert as highly as we aim for. Like just throwing in random bonuses that are not related to your summit are not going to do you any good. If your Summit is to help people, you know, overcome a certain a certain struggle, your bonuses need to be related to that in some way, it can't be something totally random. So that's something to keep in mind, and depending on your audience, maybe you even want to have kind of that guideline for them. Like we need your bonus to be on, you know, this, this or this topic. So you can make sure that you're not just throwing in something totally random, because I think that really throws people off.
Something we have started doing. I don't remember if I've talked about this in a different episode or not, we've started installing hot jar on our sites and having our clients do that as well. So we can kind of watch how people are using the all-access pass sales page, what bonuses are like confusing them or keeping them stuck, or if they see something and then leave, that can give you really valuable information on your sales page page as a whole. But also, if there are any all-access pass bonuses that are kind of giving people pause. Sometimes they stopped because it's awesome. But sometimes they stop because they're like What even is this so you want to make sure that everything is really clear. Don't be afraid to like edit the descriptions that your speakers give you so that what the bonus is actually make sense. and it's clear, and they see the value of it and how it ties in to the summit.
And then the last big change that we've noticed that's really standing out to me, are that you probably need to be louder about your launch. So if you're using your summit to launch, you need to be louder about that launch, and this is something we totally reworked our summit to course launch strategy in the Launch with a Summit Accelerator. You know, we gave our clients a whole presentation on what these changes are. And we've been kind of coaching them through that process, but you need to not hide your launch. And don't be afraid to make sure everybody knows it's a thing. Even if someone didn't show any interest, including a PS and an email to make sure they know what's happening is a really great thing to do. Letting them opt in to the lunch is a really great thing to do. And we go through that whole strategy in our Launch with a Summit Accelerator.
If you're ready to host a high converting virtual summit to replace your slow growth marketing strategies, and use it to lead into your biggest course launch yet, I've got an exclusive training just for you. This training is for those who are interested in working with me in our Launch with a Summit Accelerator to host a summit that blows industry standards out of the water uses feel good engagement based strategies to create an amazing experience for everyone involved seamlessly leads into your biggest course launch yet, and sets you up for additional post summit profits on the back end. Inside the Accelerator. We help our clients consistently host life and business changing virtual summits. And in the free private training. I'll show you exactly how it works along with all kinds of examples. So apply for an invite to the Launch with a Summit Accelerator and a training at summithosthangout.com/apply.
So I know a lot of that might sound like bad news, but honestly, I don't see it that way. Like for me, it's kind of like a fun challenge and a fun puzzle that my team and I get to tackle. But to me this all means that events that are not put together well, I'm going to continue to struggle. But when you put your heart into an event, and you host it the right way, you are going to stand out. That is why we are just so passionate about the clients we get to work with. That's why we are so passionate about our strategies, because we know they work and we know if something, you know, we see a conversion rate start to dip or something that's not as effective. We know, okay, let's just look at that. What do we need to tweak for the way online businesses the way people are, you know, interacting with events right now. It's all just, you know, tweak and repeat. And having a community of people who are in summits and see these things is really, really helpful. But like I said, when you really dedicate yourself to hosting a good event the right way, you're going to be able to stand out still. It's those events that are not put together well, people who don't really know what they're doing as much or try to throw an event together and a couple of weeks that are still going to struggle.
I also see it as a fun challenge and an opportunity to stay ahead of what everyone else is doing with their events. And I again, I love that we have the Accelerator to take our clients right along with us in that and experiment in different niches and help them get the best results we can and then apply that to the rest of our strategy. And I also think it is really cool that we're seeing some it's become more of a big picture business strategy. You know, before we saw a lot of people they want to go in and host their first summit and hit six figures the first time and if that didn't happen, they give up. Okay, you can do that but you're gonna miss out on so much opportunity. We have seen recurring events that you build on every single time pay off so much for the hosts that are doing it not just with the event itself getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But we have seen these events literally fueling people's businesses. We have a interview coming up with one of our clients actually don't know when it's going live. It might even be a couple of months. But her first event, I want to say she profited like $6,000. And by her fourth event, she brought it in over $90,000. And that did not include her membership launch on the back end, where she brought in 300 people to her membership. So it is worth sticking with an event, getting that first shot out of the way and being like, okay, what can I change? What can I improve? What needs to happen? Where's the biggest opportunity to improve conversion rates? And go from there.
And this is someone who did host summits the first time without the Accelerator, come into the Accelerator, and just blow her results out of the water because we were able to do that with her look at her events. So okay, these conversion rates were kind of low, let's do this, oh, this copy isn't, you know, the most effective let's change this. And she was able to blow it out of the water with that fourth event. And I want you to look at events like this to that first one. Yeah, sure. We want to make money right. We don't want to work on something for months and not see great results. But don't look at that as like the final result your summit's gonna get. Look at that as an opportunity to build on it and make it bigger and better and more effective each time because this is a long term strategy for your business that can pay off over and over again. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. For show notes and resources mentioned head to summithosthangout.com/205. Now go out and take action to plan, strategize and launch your high converting virtual Summit.
