SHH203

Krista - Summit In A Box9min

Krista - Summit In A Box

00:00

Hey, 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 at launch yet. I'm your host, Krista from Summit in a Box. And last week, we talked about why your offer needs to be proven before you launch with the summit, and we're going to follow that up this week and episode 203 by talking about what results to expect when you make that launch happen. This should be another pretty short and sweet episode. But this is a place in the summit hosting process where I see a lot of fairly unreasonable goals being set, quite honestly, just due to hosts not knowing what to expect, which is reasonable. How would you know before you've done it? So we're going to dive into that and talk about, you know, what I usually see with those expectations being too high, and what results you can actually expect, and then we'll touch on the power of a virtual Summit. So let's start by diving into where a lot of first time hosts tend to set their expectations too high with using a summit to launch their offer. And really, I think it's based more on just choosing a number of sales that sound nice, or a revenue goal that sounds pretty rather than anyone purposely doing it. Like, for example, I just had someone send me an email this week asking, asking me to break down the numbers of what it would look like for her to host a $100,000 event her first time around.

Krista - Summit In A Box

01:12

And I think she just picked a number that sounded nice, and then wanted me to, you know, tell her that it would happen. But we have our clients and students submit goals to us at certain points of their journey. And the two goals I asked for are how many registrations they're aiming for, and then how many sales of their offer they're aiming for. And a lot of the time just like this person that email me, what I find there is that those two goals don't quite match up. So someone might say that they want 1500 attendees registered for their summit, and 150 sales of their course, like that sounds great on paper, right. But that's a 10% conversion rate to a cold audience. And that's just not how a summit is gonna go. Okay, with the summit, you're attracting a significant amount of cold audience members. And along with that, there are a lot of people who sign up who won't actually engage with the event. That's expected. So expecting that full list of attendees to convert like you'd normally see like at something like a webinar, that's just not going to be realistic people who sign up to a webinar are coming, being with like a lot of interest, and specifically what you're teaching and usually knowing that something's going to be launched, right, like they're coming with that expectation of Summit audience is different. Okay, so let's move on to talking about what is realistic. Overall, you can expect a summit to convert similarly to how you would expect a promotion to your full audience to convert.

Krista - Summit In A Box

02:37

So for example, if I did an email launch to my email list, and I saw a, let's say, 2% conversion rate, I'd expect a conversion rate similar to that, when it comes to my summit attendees. And like I kind of mentioned, if you host something like a webinar, you'd expect that webinar to convert higher, because you're already getting buy in from people that they're interested in your topic, they're interested enough to register for that webinar. So you're gonna get a higher conversion rate from that webinar. So like I said, you promote that webinar to your full list, people who are already engaged and interested sign up to that. And then you have that warmer pool of people who are ready and interested to launch to, so that conversion rate should be higher than launching with a summit, since people that sign up for your summit are are not necessarily indicating interest in your offer or framework yet. They're interested in your topic for now, and it's your job to either during the summit and over time to then make them interested in your offer or framework. I talked about this more in Episode 197. But part of the power of a summit comes from attracting people at all different stages of being ready for your offer. So some people had no idea they were even interested in your solution or topic until they saw the summit. And they're signing up to learn about that topic as a whole for the first time. They're not necessarily ready for what you do yet. But you'll have the opportunity to get them to that point throughout the summit and afterward. You'll also attract some people who they had thought about it as a solution or benefit before like the topic of your summit, but they've never taken action on it.

Krista - Summit In A Box

04:10

Again, this is your summit topic as a whole though, not necessarily exactly what you do. So it's still a wider group of people. And then you're attracting people all the way up to people who do know, they're ready to purchase a solution. And they know they want your exact solution. You're attracting people at all different ranges of the spectrum, which is part of the strength of the summit. You want that to happen as compared to something like the webinar where you're promoting it to people who are already engaged, interested, and know what solution they want and need. So you see how those starting points are a bit different. So the reason I say that base it like the conversion rates you want to see for your summit on an email watch is because unengaged subscribers come into play their open rates come into play, and it's a more reasonable place to base your goals on. So for me, if I launched my program to my email list, I would expect about a one and a half or 2% conversion rate, that's where I'm going to set my goal for a summit. And that comes from a combination of people who sign up for the summit, and then don't open another email about it all the way to people who attend the webinar you host as a part of the summit, that you'll see incredible conversion rates from last time I hosted a webinar as a part of a summit it converted at 41%. 41% of live attendees purchased a about $2,000 offer. Okay, but all of that, from the people who don't open an email about the event to people who come and, you know, you get a 41% conversion rate on the webinar, all of that evens out to the conversion rate you'd normally expect from something like an email launch.

Krista - Summit In A Box

05:38

So what is the point of a summit if it's not going to convert higher than normal launch? Really, I could talk about the benefits of a summit all day long, you have over 200 other episodes to listen to me doing that. But specifically in terms of revenue from your offer, there are three pieces to consider. Number one is the fact that you're launching to a relatively high number of new audience members, while also having the chance to reengage your existing audience. So launching to 1000 new people, and seeing your normal conversion rate is better than not having those 1000 new people, right, like I'll take those new people and still getting a normal conversion rate with them. The second thing to consider is the fact that people who sign up for your Summit, they will continue to become aware of what you do, the solutions you offer. And the fact that they want those solutions over time after the summit is over. That's 1000s More people who know what you do, and who you can continue presenting your offer to for when the time is right for them. We still have attendees from a summit we hosted two years ago, over two years ago, still join our program every single time we launched that summit is still paying off.

Krista - Summit In A Box

06:49

And the third benefit is speaker connections to leverage and things like affiliate promotions, JV webinars, podcast or guest training tours, other collaborations or just like, you know, friends that you have online, that's nice, too. But to throw out some numbers, the last time we put this into action for our own business, we had about 2000 people on our email list. We brought in 45,000 in course sales directly from summit attendees, and have brought in at least an additional 160,000 in sales of our signature offers since then, from those attendees. Not to mention sales that have come from affiliates, JV partnerships, referrals, due to brand recognition from that, and a whole lot more. This strategy is powerful, both immediate and long term. I just want you to have the correct expectation set and also see the long term wider benefits of hosting a virtual Summit.

Krista - Summit In A Box

07:46

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 wate, 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 posts on my 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.

Krista - Summit In A Box

08:41

So I hope this clears up what to expect when you're launching through a summit and lets you set better expectations and goals so you can go in excited for both the immediate return you're gonna get and for the future possibilities. So thank you so much for tuning into this episode For show notes and resources mentioned head to summithosthangout.com/203. Now go out and take action to plan and strategize and launch your high converting virtual Summit.

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