Monetizing Your Summit: Summit Series Part 3 | 157
In this week's Saturday Strategy Session, we’re discussing Virtual Summits! Whether you're gearing up for a virtual summit or you just want to learn more about them, this series will give you tons of information to help you make the most of it.
In this 4 part series, we'll be covering:
What a summit is and why you might want to host one? (Ep. 155)
How to monetize your summit (Today!)
My predictions for summit trends in 2024
In this episode: Virtual summits aren't just great for boosting your email list, they can also be a cash influx in your business. With VIP sales, sponsors, and a post-summit launch, many summits are quite profitable for both the host and speakers.
Key Takeaways:
Creating a tiered ticket structure for success
Securing sponsorships to help cover upfront costs
Using the summit as a launch mechanism
Want to work with Jenzaia to promote your summit with paid ads?
Episode Transcript:
Welcome back to a part three of the summit series. Super excited about this one. I'm super excited about every episode. You know that the first episode of this series, we were just talked about, like, what is a summit, what are the benefits, who should host one, that kind of thing, part two, we talked about promoting your summit.
And then part three today, we're going to talk about monetizing your summit so you can actually make some cash money. And then next week, we have the summit trends for 2024, what my predictions are. So, today with monetizing your summit, we're going to talk about the different ticket tiers. that allow for various access levels to the summit and what my recommendations are.
We're going to talk about sponsorships and then we're going to talk about post summit product or course or bundle or whatever, launch. So three different ways that you can make some money from your summit. So let's talk about the first one. I think that this one might be like the most obvious. When summits like first first started, I think that This, well, I don't even know.
I want to say that this was people's primary focus and there's been like a shift to the post summit launch, but maybe not. I had never been to like a full on like live event that launches a product, like a group mastermind or anything like that. I've been to one of those book ones before, but I've never been to like a product salesy one.
I've just been to conferences where they're really really focused on Like the value and the education piece and maybe I was just like asleep during the sales pitch. I don't know. Uh, I don't think so though. I'm trying to think of the conferences that I've been to. Anyway, for some reason, I feel like when virtual summits started to become a thing, that ticket sales were the primary focus for revenue.
Things have shifted and they've now really become a launch mechanism. Unfortunately, the digital space has changed and so it is harder now than ever before to Do a launch after a live event, especially one like a summit where you're bringing in hundreds if not thousands of new people into your world and Hoping that after two three five days of a summit that they're gonna buy from you.
So We'll talk so I know I'm being like Uber negative right now, but the post summit launch has become harder. So I would say that the ticket sales are becoming more and more important for like breaking even on the summit
with any lead generation activity that you're doing. If you sell something on the back end, we refer to that as a tripwire. So whether it's a free lead magnet. Or a training, or a summit, if there is a free ticket, and then on the thank you page is a sales page for a paid offer, then that's a tripwire. It's a sales page that is like, sign up and you pull the tripwire and then this page falls in front of you kind of thing, right?
And so they work really, really well to get people to buy something right away. But if they don't buy, you have their email address. So I do really like tripwires. And it's a really great way to find out if people are interested in buying from you immediately. And if you're going to be running ads, it is a really, really, really great way and can be a very effective way to regain some of the money you spend on ads immediately.
Now, typically, tripwires are not designed to be cash flow positive. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it, typically, the price point of a tripwire is really, really low to get the people in, and then there's further upsells, maybe downsells, and side sells, and email funnel sales going on as well, so that maybe immediately They're not quite profitable, but in the long run they do become a profitable.
With my clients, we typically aim for 75 percent return on ad spend. So for every dollar that you spend, you make back 75 cents. So you're kind of actually only spending 25 cents, if that makes sense. Too many cents in there.
And this is how I personally believe that summits, virtual summits should be run. But it really, really, really depends on your niche and your goals and what your, like the energy that you want from your summit, like anything else. Do you want a free tier or not? But we're gonna assume. for the purposes of this conversation that you do have a free tier.
The goal, obviously, there is to get people onto your email list. The first level, paid level, I would call this the VIP ticket or all access. And it needs to be really, really no brainer. And I've ran summits where the VIP pass was 19, and I've ran them where it was 149 dollars. So, there's a wide range that it can be a no brainer.
It really depends on your target market, like what niche you're in. Uh, had I ran Like, flip those prices, the people who were willing to pay 19 probably wouldn't have paid 149, like, for that audience. These are teachers that are still in the classroom. 149 would be the cost that they're, they're gonna pay for like a full weekend in person conference.
Whereas the audience that I, we did the 149 VIP ticket was a very specialized professional market and so 150 for a VIP ticket is a no brainer and also something that they could pass off to their employer. So it really, really just depends on who you're targeting to. I would say that the most common thing to offer for the VIP pass is either unlimited or extended access to the recordings and I really like that But I'm not sure if it is enough.
There needs to be a little bit more of a pull especially the unlimited or Extremely extended access like I'm talking 6 12 months type of access if someone's not consuming the content immediately then they're probably not going to go back to it. Now I do realize that there are some people who watch it and then they're going to watch it again and then they're going to watch it again and they're going to watch it again and so that 12 month access is really great for them but the majority of people if they don't watch it while it's live and then they still don't watch it within a week or two after the summit they're probably never going to watch it and so the VIP pass to really draw people in especially now in 2024 we've all been part of multiple summits at this point, I think.
And so it, it isn't as attractive as it used to be. Some of the things that I have seen part of those VIP tickets are bonuses from the speakers. So these are like low ticket offers that would normally be sold for anywhere from that 19 to 97 range. They can be mini courses or resources really depends. But including a bundle of resources from the speaker.
I really, really love audio recordings, like a podcast version of the summit as part of the VIP upgrade and transcripts as well. The only exception there is if someone were to reach out to you. Having signed up for the free version with some sort of accommodation that's required, like if they are hard of hearing or something else where they, they can't listen or that access to the transcripts would make the summit accessible, I would highly recommend that you are willing to provide.
That, that service to someone who's reaching out and asking for the requirement or the accommodation, I'm sorry, for some sort of medical reason. I also really like when there's live Q& As or panels that are exclusively available to those VIP ticket holders and or networking events. Anything that really is going to take their experience to the next level, but also require them to show up live and get that nurture piece and that experience piece live on the spot with you.
Then I've also seen this new Surgeons, if you will, of like this ultra extreme beyond VIP tier, like a one to one VIP tier or yeah, something next level. So you could almost have like the all access pass and then the VIP pass is the next level up. And to make it worth their while, often these will include some sort of one to one access to the host.
So whether it is live coaching sessions where you hop on a Zoom call, or two weeks of Voxer access, or hot seat coaching where they actually get pulled up on the video at the conference and they get some sort of live coaching that happens. Something that really, really gives them an accelerated experience, I'm losing my words here, to really get needs to be worth it.
And I've also seen this, having this higher price help to anchor the lower price and companies like Starbucks do this, where they're. Grande is like 3. 95 and, or sorry, their Tall is 3. 95 and then their Grande is 4. 95 and then their Venti is like 7. 95. And so, they're, they're giving you those two that are close in price, but then the Venti, the, the bigger one, It's not completely unreasonable, but you're like, well, I'm gonna go to, instead of going for the tall, I'm gonna go for the grande.
It's only a dollar more. It's not like that 3 jump, right? And so it's kind of the same idea. If your VIP pass is 27, let's say, offering two weeks of Voxer, you could do that for like 4. 97 or 1. 97 or like whatever's a reasonable rate for you. And But anchoring in that 20, like that's how amazing that 27 price point is with.
I don't want to say, like, an ultra extreme, like, ridiculous price, like, you wouldn't want to say two weeks of Voxer coaching 10, 000 if that's not your normal price point. But you absolutely could put it at, like, 197 or 497 or whatever is a very reasonable point. But a big difference between the extended access and that one to one offer.
If you're offering like one to one coaching where you have to jump on a call or anything like that that's going to be a time piece for you, you really need to make sure that the one to one coaching is. Not only reasonably, no, not only that big price difference, but is a reasonable compensation for your time.
If you're offering like six weeks of coaching where they get one 60 minute coaching call every single week for six weeks following the summit, how many spaces do you have available for that coaching? And what is the, the price point that is, Going to feel good for you and also hopefully bring in somebody because that would be an amazing Bump of cash right there.
So Those are the different ticket tiers So again, just to repeat you have the free tier that people give their email address and or phone number I don't talk much about phone numbers because I don't love texting, but they are becoming more and more popular to be collecting people's phone numbers and having text lists, so that can be an option.
Definitely email, and also if you want phone number collection for the free tier, VIP or all access ticket is a really, really cheap option. amazing deal. It has to be a no brainer. And then you can have that like ultra extreme beyond VIP level that has some sort of one to one high touch offer like one to one coaching or voxer support something like that.
That is that like. luxury press price point if you will.
Okay, the second one that we're going to talk about is securing sponsorships. The first thing you need to consider is are they relevant companies, brands, people in the industry to Brands that will be relevant to your audience. You absolutely do not want something that doesn't align with your values, doesn't align with your brand sponsoring your summit.
So you need to really consider and vet these possible sponsors to make sure that they do line up with you, your audience, your brand value, your brand messaging, all of that. And you can offer different tiers of sponsorship. So you could have like bronze package, that's 150, and then a silver package, that's 500, and a gold package, that's 1, 000.
And each of those package levels, there's different pieces, like there's different bonuses or features that they get. So you could have different, Companies or brands sponsoring the stages where the speaking is happening if that is what's going to be like if that's how your event is set up if there are booths then by sponsoring the event then they could get access to one of the booths that you are Creating I've seen some really cool virtual booth kind of setups and really like it.
So if you have people who are sponsoring the event, then they could get a booth where they're able to promote their brand. Possibly a lead magnet or some sort of offer there similar to in a live Conference if you had the there's typically some sort of like Expo Hall where? Different companies and different brands and the speakers will set up their booths.
So be the kind of idea you could also have their Logos and the brands featured in some of or all of the pre communicate like pre summit communication So any emails that go out if there are PDFs you could have a page that's like thank you to our sponsors I know that I talked about this in one of the last Episodes where I have a friend who's doing a live event and they have a doughnut company in from the area who is sponsoring their doughnut wall.
And so that company has provided the doughnuts for free and they get a free ticket. And. They get a free booth in the expo hall. It's not really an expo hall, but that kind of idea. And so the donut wall is going to be created by the company and they're able to include their brand and have someone standing there and talking to people.
And because this is a local event, just a really great way for them to get more brand recognition in their local community. So same idea. For sponsors of a live or of a summit of an online virtual summit If you have live panels, you could have the marketing panels sponsored by JD Teacherpreneur Marketing or something like that.
Where the sponsor is actually sponsoring one of the live events, or the Q& A, or if you have a yoga instructor that could sponsor one of the movement breaks. Something like that. You can also have people who sponsor the event by providing free gifts. So I've definitely offered up coaching sessions to be either raffled off or if there's a bingo card or tic tac toe game or something like that.
One of the participants can win a coaching session with me. So I've done that. I've sponsored the event by providing a free gift. You can have sponsors that are providing physical GIFs. Products that can go into grab bags or digital like coupons that would go into a grab bag. So I know I've definitely got coupons for like 10 percent off of a course or save 50 or buy one get one those types of Coupons so you can ask your presenters and other people in your audience if they have anything that they want to donate to the grab bag or to be ruffled off as one of the the sponsorship pieces So, the sponsors can pay actual cash to become sponsors, or it can be almost a bartering situation where they are providing a product or a service for potentially a free ticket or if they might not want to attend, but.
You can always offer it still. And you have to remember that having sponsors for your event is win win for everybody. Especially if they are going to help promote it. So you can always offer, if you have an affiliate program in place, you can always offer a Affiliate link to your sponsors as well because the additional exposure is good for their brand It's good for your brand.
It's good for the participants. So You get a little bit more cash. They get more exposure. It's really just win win for everybody Highly recommend that you consider having some sponsors for your events and then the last way that you can monetize your summit is by creating that post summit Launch and I do want to start this off with a caveat that I was talking about at the beginning and that is if you have hundreds or thousands of people who have joined your email list.
For the summit, they have never heard of you before, whether they're joining you super, super, super cold from an ad, or maybe a little bit warmer from somebody else's email list, or a friend recommended the summit to them, they're still cold. And with buyer hesitancy as high as it is, and trust in the industry really, really low, and lots of economic challenges currently going on in our world, I just want to be sure that you are very, very aware of how challenging these post summit launches have been in the last three to six months for my clients.
So I'm not saying you shouldn't do it at all, but just remember that it does take three to six months minimum to be warming up most people these days. And so the ones that are going to buy after the summit are probably the ones that are already on your email list. You want to create a plan in your mind, maybe even like officially where the goal of the summit is to nurture, nurture, nurture, especially new people.
And the post summit launch, you're setting up your success and you're looking at your numbers. based on the pre registration number. So if you had a thousand people on your email list before you started registration for your summit, then that's the number that you want to create your post summit launch goals based on.
Like, let's just say, okay, I'm going to sell 5 percent of my list. So, what is that? Uh, 10, like 50? Is that 5%? Yeah. So making 50 sales, let's just say, based on your pre summit launch, like your pre summit email list. And so even if you get 2000, 3000 people onto your list and you've now like doubled or tripled your email size list, like that's amazing, but you don't want to change those goals.
You really do want to keep it based on. Before the registration, you really want to focus on the sales being made to the people who have been on your email list, who've been warmed up, who have been nurtured, who have a relationship with you already. And just make sure that you're scrubbing that email list, so anyone who's been inactive, I personally go with more than 90 days of inactivity.
You can pick whatever date, like, time frame that makes the most sense for you. But just regularly removing people who are no longer active from your list to ensure that they, the people who are on your list really, really want to be there. So the event is going to create a lot of hype and it's going to nurture your audience.
So it is a really great precursor to a launch. It also is typically longer than like a webinar and more intensive than a challenge. And so people really can become consumed by the summit. And if they have A really great time and are really enthralled by what you are creating and what you're providing.
It can be a really great time to do that launch and to sell to them. This is why it is so, so important that you run the email campaign campaign to increase registrations of your existing subscribers. So you don't want to ignore people who are already on your list. You want them to be participating in the summit.
You want to give them a reason to participate in the summit and make it really, really meaningful for those existing subscribers because they're the ones that are most likely going to take advantage. Of your offer after the summit and then. I also want you to plan three months after the summit to have another sort of live launch.
It doesn't need to be a full summit. It could be an email only promo, or it could be a live webinar, or something else, whatever way that makes the most sense for you to do another live promotion. It could be a flash sale of your program, or your membership, or whatever it is that you're selling. But at three months after the summit, those people who have joined your list will have A good amount of time, consuming your content, consuming your emails, getting to know you, and will hopefully, at least some of them, be ready to buy.
So if you do another event of some sort, three months down the road, you can capture some of those new registrants at that point. So You don't want to let the snowball, like you don't want to stop the snowball from rolling down the hill. You really want to use the momentum that the summit is going to create in your business and take advantage of it by having that second launch and potentially even like another one at six months down the road so that you're, you're capitalizing on the amazing results of the summit, even if immediately after the summit, a lot of those people, especially the brand new ones, might not have bought.
So, just to recap, the three ways that you can monetize your summit are by offering different ticket tiers with varying levels of access and using that extreme one to one VIP level to kinda anchor how great of a deal the cheaper ticket is. You want to consider securing sponsorships in the form of actual cash money, gifts, prizes, grab bag items from businesses, speakers, people in the industry that are aligned with the message and values of your business and of the summit, and then consider having a post summit launch of a product or a membership or a program, and then also having another smaller event three and or six months down the road to fully capitalize on those leads who have come on to your list
Thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll be back next week to wrap up this series and then in two weeks from now, I think it's two weeks from now. Yep. I have a really, really exciting episode on Taylor Swift's marketing genius that is going to be coming out and I'm, I'm obsessed already with it.
And, uh, It's still like two weeks away. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are looking to run Facebook ads for your summit, I have a couple dates open for end of March and in April. And so if you wanted to, you need to get that ball rolling quickly if your summit is coming up if you have a summit that is going to be happening in like May, June, or July.
Now is the time to be thinking about Facebook ads. So the link is in the description to book a free call and I would love to chat with you and I'll be back next week with the final part of this series. Thanks so much.
And then part three today, we're going to talk about monetizing your summit so you can actually make some cash money. And then next week, we have the summit trends for 2024, what my predictions are. So, today with monetizing your summit, we're going to talk about the different ticket tiers. that allow for various access levels to the summit and what my recommendations are.
We're going to talk about sponsorships and then we're going to talk about post summit product or course or bundle or whatever, launch. So three different ways that you can make some money from your summit. So let's talk about the first one. I think that this one might be like the most obvious. When summits like first first started, I think that This, well, I don't even know.
I want to say that this was people's primary focus and there's been like a shift to the post summit launch, but maybe not. I had never been to like a full on like live event that launches a product, like a group mastermind or anything like that. I've been to one of those book ones before, but I've never been to like a product salesy one.
I've just been to conferences where they're really really focused on Like the value and the education piece and maybe I was just like asleep during the sales pitch. I don't know. Uh, I don't think so though. I'm trying to think of the conferences that I've been to. Anyway, for some reason, I feel like when virtual summits started to become a thing, that ticket sales were the primary focus for revenue.
Things have shifted and they've now really become a launch mechanism. Unfortunately, the digital space has changed and so it is harder now than ever before to Do a launch after a live event, especially one like a summit where you're bringing in hundreds if not thousands of new people into your world and Hoping that after two three five days of a summit that they're gonna buy from you.
So We'll talk so I know I'm being like Uber negative right now, but the post summit launch has become harder. So I would say that the ticket sales are becoming more and more important for like breaking even on the summit
with any lead generation activity that you're doing. If you sell something on the back end, we refer to that as a tripwire. So whether it's a free lead magnet. Or a training, or a summit, if there is a free ticket, and then on the thank you page is a sales page for a paid offer, then that's a tripwire. It's a sales page that is like, sign up and you pull the tripwire and then this page falls in front of you kind of thing, right?
And so they work really, really well to get people to buy something right away. But if they don't buy, you have their email address. So I do really like tripwires. And it's a really great way to find out if people are interested in buying from you immediately. And if you're going to be running ads, it is a really, really, really great way and can be a very effective way to regain some of the money you spend on ads immediately.
Now, typically, tripwires are not designed to be cash flow positive. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it, typically, the price point of a tripwire is really, really low to get the people in, and then there's further upsells, maybe downsells, and side sells, and email funnel sales going on as well, so that maybe immediately They're not quite profitable, but in the long run they do become a profitable.
With my clients, we typically aim for 75 percent return on ad spend. So for every dollar that you spend, you make back 75 cents. So you're kind of actually only spending 25 cents, if that makes sense. Too many cents in there.
And this is how I personally believe that summits, virtual summits should be run. But it really, really, really depends on your niche and your goals and what your, like the energy that you want from your summit, like anything else. Do you want a free tier or not? But we're gonna assume. for the purposes of this conversation that you do have a free tier.
The goal, obviously, there is to get people onto your email list. The first level, paid level, I would call this the VIP ticket or all access. And it needs to be really, really no brainer. And I've ran summits where the VIP pass was 19, and I've ran them where it was 149 dollars. So, there's a wide range that it can be a no brainer.
It really depends on your target market, like what niche you're in. Uh, had I ran Like, flip those prices, the people who were willing to pay 19 probably wouldn't have paid 149, like, for that audience. These are teachers that are still in the classroom. 149 would be the cost that they're, they're gonna pay for like a full weekend in person conference.
Whereas the audience that I, we did the 149 VIP ticket was a very specialized professional market and so 150 for a VIP ticket is a no brainer and also something that they could pass off to their employer. So it really, really just depends on who you're targeting to. I would say that the most common thing to offer for the VIP pass is either unlimited or extended access to the recordings and I really like that But I'm not sure if it is enough.
There needs to be a little bit more of a pull especially the unlimited or Extremely extended access like I'm talking 6 12 months type of access if someone's not consuming the content immediately then they're probably not going to go back to it. Now I do realize that there are some people who watch it and then they're going to watch it again and then they're going to watch it again and they're going to watch it again and so that 12 month access is really great for them but the majority of people if they don't watch it while it's live and then they still don't watch it within a week or two after the summit they're probably never going to watch it and so the VIP pass to really draw people in especially now in 2024 we've all been part of multiple summits at this point, I think.
And so it, it isn't as attractive as it used to be. Some of the things that I have seen part of those VIP tickets are bonuses from the speakers. So these are like low ticket offers that would normally be sold for anywhere from that 19 to 97 range. They can be mini courses or resources really depends. But including a bundle of resources from the speaker.
I really, really love audio recordings, like a podcast version of the summit as part of the VIP upgrade and transcripts as well. The only exception there is if someone were to reach out to you. Having signed up for the free version with some sort of accommodation that's required, like if they are hard of hearing or something else where they, they can't listen or that access to the transcripts would make the summit accessible, I would highly recommend that you are willing to provide.
That, that service to someone who's reaching out and asking for the requirement or the accommodation, I'm sorry, for some sort of medical reason. I also really like when there's live Q& As or panels that are exclusively available to those VIP ticket holders and or networking events. Anything that really is going to take their experience to the next level, but also require them to show up live and get that nurture piece and that experience piece live on the spot with you.
Then I've also seen this new Surgeons, if you will, of like this ultra extreme beyond VIP tier, like a one to one VIP tier or yeah, something next level. So you could almost have like the all access pass and then the VIP pass is the next level up. And to make it worth their while, often these will include some sort of one to one access to the host.
So whether it is live coaching sessions where you hop on a Zoom call, or two weeks of Voxer access, or hot seat coaching where they actually get pulled up on the video at the conference and they get some sort of live coaching that happens. Something that really, really gives them an accelerated experience, I'm losing my words here, to really get needs to be worth it.
And I've also seen this, having this higher price help to anchor the lower price and companies like Starbucks do this, where they're. Grande is like 3. 95 and, or sorry, their Tall is 3. 95 and then their Grande is 4. 95 and then their Venti is like 7. 95. And so, they're, they're giving you those two that are close in price, but then the Venti, the, the bigger one, It's not completely unreasonable, but you're like, well, I'm gonna go to, instead of going for the tall, I'm gonna go for the grande.
It's only a dollar more. It's not like that 3 jump, right? And so it's kind of the same idea. If your VIP pass is 27, let's say, offering two weeks of Voxer, you could do that for like 4. 97 or 1. 97 or like whatever's a reasonable rate for you. And But anchoring in that 20, like that's how amazing that 27 price point is with.
I don't want to say, like, an ultra extreme, like, ridiculous price, like, you wouldn't want to say two weeks of Voxer coaching 10, 000 if that's not your normal price point. But you absolutely could put it at, like, 197 or 497 or whatever is a very reasonable point. But a big difference between the extended access and that one to one offer.
If you're offering like one to one coaching where you have to jump on a call or anything like that that's going to be a time piece for you, you really need to make sure that the one to one coaching is. Not only reasonably, no, not only that big price difference, but is a reasonable compensation for your time.
If you're offering like six weeks of coaching where they get one 60 minute coaching call every single week for six weeks following the summit, how many spaces do you have available for that coaching? And what is the, the price point that is, Going to feel good for you and also hopefully bring in somebody because that would be an amazing Bump of cash right there.
So Those are the different ticket tiers So again, just to repeat you have the free tier that people give their email address and or phone number I don't talk much about phone numbers because I don't love texting, but they are becoming more and more popular to be collecting people's phone numbers and having text lists, so that can be an option.
Definitely email, and also if you want phone number collection for the free tier, VIP or all access ticket is a really, really cheap option. amazing deal. It has to be a no brainer. And then you can have that like ultra extreme beyond VIP level that has some sort of one to one high touch offer like one to one coaching or voxer support something like that.
That is that like. luxury press price point if you will.
Okay, the second one that we're going to talk about is securing sponsorships. The first thing you need to consider is are they relevant companies, brands, people in the industry to Brands that will be relevant to your audience. You absolutely do not want something that doesn't align with your values, doesn't align with your brand sponsoring your summit.
So you need to really consider and vet these possible sponsors to make sure that they do line up with you, your audience, your brand value, your brand messaging, all of that. And you can offer different tiers of sponsorship. So you could have like bronze package, that's 150, and then a silver package, that's 500, and a gold package, that's 1, 000.
And each of those package levels, there's different pieces, like there's different bonuses or features that they get. So you could have different, Companies or brands sponsoring the stages where the speaking is happening if that is what's going to be like if that's how your event is set up if there are booths then by sponsoring the event then they could get access to one of the booths that you are Creating I've seen some really cool virtual booth kind of setups and really like it.
So if you have people who are sponsoring the event, then they could get a booth where they're able to promote their brand. Possibly a lead magnet or some sort of offer there similar to in a live Conference if you had the there's typically some sort of like Expo Hall where? Different companies and different brands and the speakers will set up their booths.
So be the kind of idea you could also have their Logos and the brands featured in some of or all of the pre communicate like pre summit communication So any emails that go out if there are PDFs you could have a page that's like thank you to our sponsors I know that I talked about this in one of the last Episodes where I have a friend who's doing a live event and they have a doughnut company in from the area who is sponsoring their doughnut wall.
And so that company has provided the doughnuts for free and they get a free ticket. And. They get a free booth in the expo hall. It's not really an expo hall, but that kind of idea. And so the donut wall is going to be created by the company and they're able to include their brand and have someone standing there and talking to people.
And because this is a local event, just a really great way for them to get more brand recognition in their local community. So same idea. For sponsors of a live or of a summit of an online virtual summit If you have live panels, you could have the marketing panels sponsored by JD Teacherpreneur Marketing or something like that.
Where the sponsor is actually sponsoring one of the live events, or the Q& A, or if you have a yoga instructor that could sponsor one of the movement breaks. Something like that. You can also have people who sponsor the event by providing free gifts. So I've definitely offered up coaching sessions to be either raffled off or if there's a bingo card or tic tac toe game or something like that.
One of the participants can win a coaching session with me. So I've done that. I've sponsored the event by providing a free gift. You can have sponsors that are providing physical GIFs. Products that can go into grab bags or digital like coupons that would go into a grab bag. So I know I've definitely got coupons for like 10 percent off of a course or save 50 or buy one get one those types of Coupons so you can ask your presenters and other people in your audience if they have anything that they want to donate to the grab bag or to be ruffled off as one of the the sponsorship pieces So, the sponsors can pay actual cash to become sponsors, or it can be almost a bartering situation where they are providing a product or a service for potentially a free ticket or if they might not want to attend, but.
You can always offer it still. And you have to remember that having sponsors for your event is win win for everybody. Especially if they are going to help promote it. So you can always offer, if you have an affiliate program in place, you can always offer a Affiliate link to your sponsors as well because the additional exposure is good for their brand It's good for your brand.
It's good for the participants. So You get a little bit more cash. They get more exposure. It's really just win win for everybody Highly recommend that you consider having some sponsors for your events and then the last way that you can monetize your summit is by creating that post summit Launch and I do want to start this off with a caveat that I was talking about at the beginning and that is if you have hundreds or thousands of people who have joined your email list.
For the summit, they have never heard of you before, whether they're joining you super, super, super cold from an ad, or maybe a little bit warmer from somebody else's email list, or a friend recommended the summit to them, they're still cold. And with buyer hesitancy as high as it is, and trust in the industry really, really low, and lots of economic challenges currently going on in our world, I just want to be sure that you are very, very aware of how challenging these post summit launches have been in the last three to six months for my clients.
So I'm not saying you shouldn't do it at all, but just remember that it does take three to six months minimum to be warming up most people these days. And so the ones that are going to buy after the summit are probably the ones that are already on your email list. You want to create a plan in your mind, maybe even like officially where the goal of the summit is to nurture, nurture, nurture, especially new people.
And the post summit launch, you're setting up your success and you're looking at your numbers. based on the pre registration number. So if you had a thousand people on your email list before you started registration for your summit, then that's the number that you want to create your post summit launch goals based on.
Like, let's just say, okay, I'm going to sell 5 percent of my list. So, what is that? Uh, 10, like 50? Is that 5%? Yeah. So making 50 sales, let's just say, based on your pre summit launch, like your pre summit email list. And so even if you get 2000, 3000 people onto your list and you've now like doubled or tripled your email size list, like that's amazing, but you don't want to change those goals.
You really do want to keep it based on. Before the registration, you really want to focus on the sales being made to the people who have been on your email list, who've been warmed up, who have been nurtured, who have a relationship with you already. And just make sure that you're scrubbing that email list, so anyone who's been inactive, I personally go with more than 90 days of inactivity.
You can pick whatever date, like, time frame that makes the most sense for you. But just regularly removing people who are no longer active from your list to ensure that they, the people who are on your list really, really want to be there. So the event is going to create a lot of hype and it's going to nurture your audience.
So it is a really great precursor to a launch. It also is typically longer than like a webinar and more intensive than a challenge. And so people really can become consumed by the summit. And if they have A really great time and are really enthralled by what you are creating and what you're providing.
It can be a really great time to do that launch and to sell to them. This is why it is so, so important that you run the email campaign campaign to increase registrations of your existing subscribers. So you don't want to ignore people who are already on your list. You want them to be participating in the summit.
You want to give them a reason to participate in the summit and make it really, really meaningful for those existing subscribers because they're the ones that are most likely going to take advantage. Of your offer after the summit and then. I also want you to plan three months after the summit to have another sort of live launch.
It doesn't need to be a full summit. It could be an email only promo, or it could be a live webinar, or something else, whatever way that makes the most sense for you to do another live promotion. It could be a flash sale of your program, or your membership, or whatever it is that you're selling. But at three months after the summit, those people who have joined your list will have A good amount of time, consuming your content, consuming your emails, getting to know you, and will hopefully, at least some of them, be ready to buy.
So if you do another event of some sort, three months down the road, you can capture some of those new registrants at that point. So You don't want to let the snowball, like you don't want to stop the snowball from rolling down the hill. You really want to use the momentum that the summit is going to create in your business and take advantage of it by having that second launch and potentially even like another one at six months down the road so that you're, you're capitalizing on the amazing results of the summit, even if immediately after the summit, a lot of those people, especially the brand new ones, might not have bought.
So, just to recap, the three ways that you can monetize your summit are by offering different ticket tiers with varying levels of access and using that extreme one to one VIP level to kinda anchor how great of a deal the cheaper ticket is. You want to consider securing sponsorships in the form of actual cash money, gifts, prizes, grab bag items from businesses, speakers, people in the industry that are aligned with the message and values of your business and of the summit, and then consider having a post summit launch of a product or a membership or a program, and then also having another smaller event three and or six months down the road to fully capitalize on those leads who have come on to your list
Thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll be back next week to wrap up this series and then in two weeks from now, I think it's two weeks from now. Yep. I have a really, really exciting episode on Taylor Swift's marketing genius that is going to be coming out and I'm, I'm obsessed already with it.
And, uh, It's still like two weeks away. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are looking to run Facebook ads for your summit, I have a couple dates open for end of March and in April. And so if you wanted to, you need to get that ball rolling quickly if your summit is coming up if you have a summit that is going to be happening in like May, June, or July.
Now is the time to be thinking about Facebook ads. So the link is in the description to book a free call and I would love to chat with you and I'll be back next week with the final part of this series. Thanks so much.
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