Replace Your Marketing Strategies with a Virtual Summit

They're thinking about things like challenges and webinars and things like that. Those strategies are not designed to grow your email list. Those strategies are designed to convert the audience you already have. And if you don't have an audience, those things aren't gonna, they're not going to work, where someone has the audience generation built right in, and it's just really powerful.

This is the entrepreneur school podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business, while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to entrepreneur school.

I'm thrilled to bring you another amazing guest episode of entrepreneur school today, where I am chatting with Krista Miller from Summit in a Box. And after re listening to this episode that we recorded some time ago, I am just so reinvigorated about the idea of hosting a virtual Summit, and how this particular strategy can replace the multiple other things that you're already doing for marketing. If you're trying to create leads and build an email list and create income and all of these things, you can do all of that with this one specific strategy. So at Summit In A Box, Krista helps you replace slow growth and costly marketing strategies with a high converting virtual summit that will multiply your revenue and lead to your biggest course membership or group program launch yet, so get ready because she isn't sharing all of the details about what you need, what you don't need, and exactly how to make your summit and your virtual events stand out. And I can't wait for you to connect with Krista, if you want to explore working on building a virtual summit further. Hey there, Krista. Welcome to I live just about to say welcome to seven in a box because I'm reading the box behind you that's know you seven in a box and welcome to entrepreneur school. I'm really excited to chat with you today. All things, virtual summits, and this really amazing strategy that people can use to help boost their visibility and launch their programs.

I am so excited to talk to you about this today. It's gonna be so much fun. I'm excited to talk to you like as someone who really pays attention to visibility, and like when different strategies are right for people at different times. It's gonna be a really great conversation.

that's, there's so many good tips in there. Wow. Definitely love that idea of being super niche and like really specific. So that because I think the biggest objection that from somebody on the side of wanting to participate as the as a, as a participant as a listener, consumer or whatnot in the summit is time, right? And so what what am I going to spend my time on today? Am I going to sit and watch, you know, multiple hours of presentations on a summit? Yes or No? And why? Because it's something that's absolutely perfectly aligned with what it is I'm thinking about and is a priority for me right now?

Yes, yeah, like your presentations. The topics have to be a priority for your people if they're gonna watch and that when you were talking about that, that led me to something else that has shifted lately and that is like, you can't have a summit that has 10 hour long presentations a day, people are not going to watch those. We've really pushed for a shift and therefore have seen a shift in length of presentations. We're telling our students and clients 15 to 20 minute presentations, keep it at that and some of them can't help themselves, but you will get the best feedback from your attendees. If you have short and sweet 20 minute presentations. They get right into the action and no fluff getting get out, they get what they need. And we're also seeing a shift towards adding more audio aspects, whether that's audio only summits, or having an audio feed available not only in the All Access Pass, so the paid offer, but for free in the summit. So if they have, you know, 24 hour access 24 hours access to the videos, they also have 24 hour access to the podcast feed. That's something we experimented with last year, and I've been pushing people to do and we're seeing that really take off because people people love it. So accessibility make it short and sweet and easy to consume is a must.

And you talked a little bit in there just just so we can dissect a little bit of like the structure of a summit and what's included in like, why a summit is a really good strategy as a business owner, you can pull out some of those pieces like you like there is free access. There's all access, there's it's a lead generator, email list builder, those kinds of things like give us your like why summits are amazing spiel,

debunking that thank you for because it's true. And yeah, you might not see like sales immediately. They might be like, Oh, this is the exact same thing I need right now. But like there, there's that trust that builds up in the bat, like respect. And I owe that. Yeah, I remember Krista because she put on this amazing event that I attended. And I learned so much. And I like got exposed to all these people. And then I tried some of the things that she said that I learned for free in the event. And then I was like Kate, give me more.

I am blown away by those numbers actually, especially just like with all access pass, because when small access paths cost like 100 bucks.

Yeah, depending on the audience we typically see between like 47 and 197. Okay,

Yes, I'm glad you asked that. So industry standard, if someone just goes out and host a summit, typically you'll see two to 4% conversion rate. Not worth it. I have like some trainings that break down the math net worth it. Our students and clients b2b Right now we're seeing eight to 10% most often. So you know, that's, that's quadruple our b2c clients, we're seeing around 10 to 15%. Some of them are still up there in like the 20% range, which is wild. But as you'll see, you should see a high conversion rate when it's all you know, done, quote unquote, correctly.

And do you think that's like, what, what do you think the biggest factor is in that?

Whoo, yeah. Okay. I'm like right away ever. No wonder you do podcast because I'd like everybody listening. Because it sounds amazing. Because I actually used to run summits, it was part of a strategy, I learned to help grow my email list. And also, as part of like wanting to be a speaker and engage a speaker, you need to know people who are on stages, you need to create relationships with people who have stages, or platforms like this, and this totally counts. So your ability to practice and be put be put into like a leadership role, positioning yourself as the person who's bringing together all of this fantastic news. But also, it's such a great opportunity to make connections with people who you really want to, you know, connect with, because maybe you want to get in front of their audience. And this is, this is like, it's a no brainer, because you're offering them an opportunity to get this exposure, you're creating the platform for it. And then their job is simply to tell their people about it, and say, Hey, come into this thing that I'm doing and that there's that alignment there. That is such a key to everything quite honestly, Krista, if if anybody listening is not listening to anything, listen to this. It's about your audience. It's about knowing your audience and finding more people like that. And when you said, like, this is a strategy to help lean into other people's audiences that is so powerful, it helps you multiply so much faster into, you know, finding the right people who you could eventually support and work with.

Yeah, and I think that's part of the reason that some people shy away from summits is like, well, these other things I've done, haven't worked for me. They haven't added, you know, people to my email list. And they're thinking about things like challenges and webinars and things like that. Those strategies are not designed to grow your email list, those strategies that are designed to convert the audience you already have. And if you don't have an audience, those things aren't gonna they're not gonna work where somebody has the audience generation. built right in it.

It's just really powerful. Oh, so good. Okay. Let's talk about the hard parts. Because yes, you have a little bit you didn't use directly said, it does a lot of work and it does take like 120 days, maybe 90 days if you're getting polished at it, to pull this off. If so, like, let's just set the expectation bar at the right level for people who are thinking about considering doing this.

Yeah. And then there's the tech side of things that people get pretty nervous. Yeah, sometimes.

Yeah, I love tech. So that doesn't slow me down at all. If you're someone who are like, you're like, oh my gosh, I do not want to create this page on my website. I do not know how to set up like a webinar or you know, all these different things. I don't know how to integrate email marketing platforms, it can be a lot. I don't recommend hosts are like hosting your summit on a brand new platform. I don't want to see someone go out and like buy a $10,000 event hosting platform or $200 A Month event hosting platform, use what you already have. So if you already have a website, if you're already like, have some kind of digital products, you probably already have most of what you need. So like I have hosted my summits on WordPress and Kajabi in the past, because that's what I already used. We have clients on oh my goodness, Squarespace, show it kartra FBA create, click, some people have used LeadPages, click funnels, whatever the funnel, gorgeous one is, like people use everything. And that's what I recommend, whatever you're already using, already paying for already familiar with. Use that and if you need other tools to supplement, okay, great. Like if maybe your service based business, you don't have a cart or of course platform, go with Thrive cart, one time fee, everything is in there. And it's the best of the best, you know, or maybe you are selling digital products, but you've never used like a countdown timer, deadline funnel or countdown here, always probably the only thing you'll have to add one of those timer tools. So you can make the tech process way easier on yourself by using what you already have. But there are a lot of moving tech pieces for sure.

Okay, there's so much there, people will have to definitely re re listen to this episode multiple times. And I'm trying to think of a great Zinger question for the end. Because I'd love for you to like end with, like your best piece of advice for someone thinking about hosting a summit. Yeah, my

best piece of advice would be not to wait until you think you're ready for it. I hear a lot of people making excuses. Like, I'm gonna go grow my email list. First. I'm gonna go make these connections first, oh, I have a challenge that I want to host in a couple months, I'm going to do that first. I don't have time. I'm too busy on calls and posting on social media and doing all these other things. Because some of you don't need to do those other things. They replace all of those other things that does it much more effectively. So I want you to look at that. Are you putting off a strategy that will grow your business way faster than other things because these other things aren't All right, I did that. That's why I know to look out for it because I did it. And I literally sat down one day listed out a bajillion things I was doing it was ridiculous. It was like, Okay, what's not actually working for me, it was like, weekly YouTube videos posting 10 times a day on Twitter or posting on my Facebook page, like all these silly things, I took so much time that weren't doing a darn thing. I got rid of all those things. And suddenly, I had time for a summit. And then after my summit, I did have the freedom to be like, Okay, do I want to add any of those other things back? Most of them I did not. But But like, that just gives you so much freedom to focus in on the strategies that are working for you. So don't put off a summit, because you are too busy with things that aren't working. And if you are waiting to host us on it until you have an audience until you have the connections, you're doing it backwards, because assignment will get you those things, stop waiting, there's like no requirements, I want you to know who your audience is, and how to speak to them effectively and what they need from you. But that's really all you need. Everything else will probably come as a result of the summit.

Oh, I'm convinced. And when we go back. Chris is gonna hit hear a lot from me. Okay. That's so good. That's amazing. And, and so true. You know, sometimes I feel like we're we're sitting around, we're not sitting around, we're filling our time, with things that we think are important, and that we're supposed to do, to, quote, grow our businesses and get visibility and build an audience and find make connections. And we're piecing it all together, where this truly is capturing all of those pieces into one big effort that's coordinated. And ultimately, I like as somebody from a branded brand and marketing perspective, what you need is a coordinated, cohesive strategy that's going to work to pull all of these pieces together. And we sometimes will just call that a marketing strategy, or we'll call that, you know, a visibility plan or whatever it is, we can also just call it a summit.

There you go, boom.

So good Christian, please let everyone know you have amazing podcast, you are on some social platforms, where can people find you? And we'll make sure that all the links are also in our show notes. Yeah,

so I have a podcast called The Summer hosts hangout podcast, where over 260 episodes at this point. So you can you can go real deep on time. It's real fast if you want to. I'm on Instagram at Summit in a box. I have a training series that I think would be perfect for anyone to dive into if they really kind of want to just like feel out if it's a strategy that's going to be good for them, kind of dip their toes into what the topic could look like and things like that. It's called summon to sales. And that's at Summitinabox.co/series.

Amazing, thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you for having me.

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