42: Skyrocket Online Course Sales with a Virtual Summit
Do you wonder if launching your online course with a summit is right for you? Do you have questions such as how do you find speakers if you aren't well known?
In this new podcast episode, join me and Krista Miller with Summit in a Box, where we discuss your burning summit related questions. Specifically, we cover:
How do you know if you're ready to host a virtual summit?
How to find speakers if you don't have a large audience on social and/or a small email list
How a summit can lead to a successful online course launch
TRANSCRIPT:
Today we're talking about how to Skyrocket your Online Course Sales with a Virtual Summit. I have a special guest with me today. I have Krista Miller with Summit in a Box and Krista helps entrepreneurs 3X, their monthly revenue through virtual summits without wondering where to start or what to do next. Her method is focused on strong connections, collaboration, and making a difference in the lives of everyone involved. The best part.....she makes it easy with every strategy, copy template, website, template, script, tech, tutorial, and resources you would ever need. Your summit prep just got a whole lot easier. And Krista, I can attest to everything you just said there, because I have used your Summit in a Box for one of my virtual summits, The Funnel Cure
It was so easy as I went through everything. So thank you very much for that. And you did such a great job with it too, but thank you so much for having me on I'm so excited to nerd out about summits with you today. I am super excited about our conversation. I've been meaning to do this for a while and have you on, so I'm so excited that we get to do this today. I have a ton of questions for you, but before I jump into them, would you tell the audience just a little bit about yourself, your journey and how you got to where you are today? Of course. Yeah. So I started back in 2015 doing WordPress development. I was a WordPress developer for brand and website designers. So they would make their pretty mockups cause I can't make anything that looks nice and send it to me now to make it into, you know, a beautiful website.
And it was fun. I enjoyed it and I still do it a little bit here and there just because I do love it, but it kinda got to the point where I was feeling a little stuck. Like I was getting clients when I needed them. I was making the money I needed to make for my family to be comfortable. But I like, I was like, what now? Like I'm not the type of person who can like hit a goal and then just stay there. It's like, okay, I need something else to work towards. And when I was trying to figure out what is it that's going to get me to that next level. What will get me to that next level of visibility? Maybe like grow my email list, I'd been stuck between four and 500 subscribers forever. Get me more clients. A virtual summit was the answer that kept coming to my mind over and over.
And I just kept pushing it away because I was like, I don't even have 500 people on my email list. I can't host a summit because they're going to laugh at me and that a big enough deal all this stuff. But eventually I decided to just do it. It took some prodding from a coach was like, fine. We're going to host the summit and see what happens. And my goal for this first summit, since I had a tiny audience was like $3,000 to $4,000. That was my goal. And I was too scared to say that that was my goal, that this is not going to happen. And instead that first summit tripled my email list and brought in $16,000. And I was like, Oh, like, this is actually a thing. I also got booked out for six months in advance with clients, which I totally didn't expect.
And I loved doing it. And then once I kept having speakers and attendees coming back to me being like, can you show me how to do that? I'm like, no, I can't show you how to do that. That was a lot of work. Go away, leave me alone. But after like six months, they wore me down and here we are now I teach other people how to plan and launch summits. And I'm so glad that I started small because I can show people, you know, who are in that place and not starting with huge audiences that it is possible and it just gets better and bigger and easier every single time. So my mission is to make people who are not yet influencers feel comfortable with this process, not feeling overwhelmed with it and knowing that they can do it.
I have to ask your first summit, what were your goals? I'm assuming that you were still focused on WordPress development. What was the goal of your first summit was to, was it to sell a course? Was it to sell your services? Tell me a little bit about that. What exactly did you want to do revenue wise or did you just want it to grow your business long term.
That's a great question. I actually missed a really big opportunity with this because I wasn't even thinking that far in advance that first time I was literally thinking, how am I going to grow my email list a little bit and how am I going to be more well known? So it was a big visibility thing for me in being able to collaborate with all these other speakers. So, you know, in a little bit of income was maybe on my mind, but it was mostly the list building portion of it. And I didn't even meet, like I told you, I said, I booked out my services for six months afterwards. That was an accident. I didn't even do that on purpose.
But to your point though, gaining visibility, growing your email list, those are very important marketing objectives. So I don't think you necessarily missed the mark. I just think that that's where you want to start quite frankly.
Yeah, exactly. And it was perfect for that. And now, now I see what else is possible. It's like, okay, now we can go all in with the list building and the visibility and making money in a couple of different ways growing a course or service through it too. So it's really cool.
So, let me piggyback on that. Let's delve into why someone might want to be ready to host a virtual summit or when would they be ready to host a virtual summit?
Yeah. So this is something that I get asked about quite a bit because people think that they're not ready. Like wherever they're at, they feel like they're not ready unless they're already this huge deal . To be ready for a summit basically all you need is to something you're selling successfully. Because what that tells me is that you know who your audience is and you know how to talk to them, you know, what they need and how to communicate it to them. Well, that's really all you need for a summit. You need to know who you're talking to and know what they need from you. And then you can create an amazing event that seriously changes their life or business kind of depending on who your audience is, but that's about it. You do not need a huge email list. I've have had students start from literally zero audience and host incredible summits. You don't need to be a big influencer or have the right connections. Like you don't even need a huge budget. There's nothing you need except to know your people and what they need from you.
So you know, I think that's a great point and you know, a lot of us starting out or even when I started out years ago some people get to that point, very quickly they know who their audience is. They know how they're going to serve them. So they might be able to jump right in. Some people might need a few months to kind of figure that out. But to your point, if they are selling something, if it's a service or an online course or, or something like that, you know, if they've sold it successfully, then they're ready to jump into this.
Yep, exactly. Like, and the only reason I say that you need that. And I know that holds some people back and I think it should, because I don't want you going through the work of putting on a summit for it to not work because the messaging is off. You know, so that's why I said that's such an important step. But there's really nothing else you need.
So a lot of people who might be listening to this right now might not have a big email list. You know, you didn't have a big email list. You know, I think when I did my first summit, I may have had a couple of a few thousand, which isn't, a lot in the grand scheme of things, but how do you find those speakers? If you don't have that large audience and you don't have a big email list or people that you can reach out to them,
That's a great question. And I like to explain this by giving an example of what I look at when I'm being pitched. So when I'm pitched for a summit, I'm not responding and being like, how big is your email list? I'm not going to this person social media feeds immediately to be like, are they a big enough deal to deserve me at their event or anything like that? I'm looking at what's in their pitch, who is this summit for? What's it about? Can I gain something from getting in front of this audience? And can they gain something from me? Can I provide something really valuable to this audience? And then, you know, I look at details of the pitch to see if I can meet the requirements, but whether or not this person is a big deal is not on my radar. If it sounds like a good fit for an event, and I am confident I can benefit through it, I will say, yes, I don't care if the person has zero people on their email list or not.
If it's the right fit, that's, that's all I care about. And then it gets easier for future summits. Because from there you will have that audience, whether it's on social media, your email list or whatever. So it really comes down to crafting your event the right way, having a specific audience for your summit, with a specific pain point you're trying to solve. So when you do reach out to those speakers, it's something where they're like, yes, I have to be a part of this. You know, this, these are my people. I can, I can help this audience. So that's the key, even if you aren't going one at a time. Well, some people look and say no, because of it probably you might get a few more nos than you would if you had a huge audience, but it's totally not something that should stop you.
So I want to keep digging into this a little bit more because what I like about what you just said is your main focus, whether it's for a summit that you're going to be speaking at, or a summit that you're running is you have put that customer at the center of that wheel. So you have made them the main focus not will I benefit or my business benefit, but is this an audience that I can serve? It's the customer that is the focus there. And I think if you always put that goal at the forefront, you'll never lose.
Oh my gosh, it's so true. And that's true for every single stage of planning your summit. There are a lot of people, maybe it's just natural to go into something like a summit and be thinking, how can I benefit from this? What am I going to get out of it? But you will get so much further if you go in from the very beginning thinking, how can I serve my attendees? How can I get them from point A to point B effectively? How can I make them make it fun for them to do that? And when that's what your focus is, everything else will just fall into place. And you will like, your results will just skyrocket from looking at it that way.
You know, I get, I get pitched for summits all the time, which I'm sure you do too. And you know, the pitches you have to have 5,000 people on your email list. When I get things like that, I'm like, you know, whether it's true or not, you know, because I do have that many, but it's just I feel like that particular person who's doing the pitch is, you know, making it all about them and not about their audience. And that just drives me crazy.
That is one of my biggest pet peeves. Like my skin is crawling right now. Just thinking about it. Like you come to me and at the beginning of your pitch, giving me all these compliments saying how much you love what I do inviting me to me to be a part of this incredible event. But then you have requirements for me and I've never heard of you before. Like why would I go through work to make a presentation for your summit when I know nothing about you and you're going to come at me and make demands of me. And I hate that so much. There's actually like a summit person who teaches this. So it's been happening more and more, but I always say no to those. And I'm at the point where now I do have those 5,000 people on my email list. Even now, if I see that it's just a hard pass because I don't want to be a part of something like that, where there is more focus on, you know, list grabbing and, and numbers and people being looked at as numbers instead of attendees worth helping. And it's just kind of gross all around.
So we have a lot of course creators who listen to this podcast. And what I want to talk about is how a virtual summit can lead to a successful course launch. What are your thoughts on that?
Oh my gosh, you guys. So using a summit, I get so lit up about this because using a summit to launch your course is such a huge opportunity. There's nothing that I've ever seen that can touch what a summit can do for your business. And especially leading up to a launch. And I say that because a summit is going to get your people excited, like you're hosting a summit, but has something to do with what you sell, right. It's probably not lined up perfectly, but the pain point of your summit should be pretty darn similar or exactly the same as the pain point that your product solves. So when you host that summit, you have a ton of people, really excited about this specific transformation and actively making progress and wanting to make progress. You get them excited through your summit.
You can get that first purchase out of the way with them through your All Access Pass which has a lower price point. I'm sure you guys know that when someone buys from you once, it's easier to get them to buy again, because they learned to trust you. They know that you're going to deliver. And after that, their natural next step is your product. So your summit has brought you thousands of new leads. You've warmed them up, got them excited in a short amount of time by providing a ton of value. And now they need, and they want what you have coming up next. And this can lead to absolutely huge course launches like, think about if you do a webinar launch, you know, webinars work well, but with that, it's just your audience. So you're, you can really only reach the people you already have access to.
Or of course you can run Facebook ads to it, which is great. But what if you have those ads and also 20 speakers or whatever it is bringing people to this summit, you have so many more people that now know, like, and trust you building into that launch. Your own audience will probably still convert like your own audience who is at the summit will probably still convert better people who just came to you a week ago. But now those people are on your list for next time too. So you're going to see a huge pay off right away, probably the biggest you've ever had. And you still have those people to continue, you know, warming up for when it's time for your next launch. And seriously, so much just pay off over and over and over with, with the leads with the sales and just with the connections you make, because it opens the door for opportunities as well. So if you do like doing JV webinars or anything like that, now you have all these, your speakers experts in their industry that you can collaborate with too, if you want to. So there's just so much opportunity with launching your courses through a summit. It's just the perfect lead into it.
I have several other questions for you, and we'll kind of, I'm gonna kind of unpack this for the audience a little bit and compare this a little bit to like a webinar launch or a five day challenge launch. So like in a webinar launch, as you mentioned, you're going to have your audience that you're inviting to, that you may even run some Facebook ads or Instagram ads to get people into that webinar. But with the summit, you have your audience, you might run some Facebook ads too, which I highly highly recommend. And then you're going to have all of the attendees that are coming from your speakers. So through affiliate marketing, right? So you have that much more that are coming into that funnel. And quite frankly, what I have found in working with a lot of online course creators, that's where they struggle, right. It's getting the people into the funnel because they might have a small audience. As you mentioned, they might run some Facebook ads, but that's not filling up their funnel as much as they would like, but having all of those speakers through that affiliate marketing helps tremendously.
It's so true. And I'm thinking back to when I was just getting started and we can kind of talk about it at that standpoint of someone who is just getting started. And I tried to launch a membership. I created to my audience of basically zero people. And I mean, it wasn't zero people. I got like 50 people signed up for the webinar and I was half a static. Cause I didn't think I'd get that many, but it's also like, you know, I wish I could do more than that. Well, my very first summit ever brought in between 1400 and 1500 people.
So let's walk them through a little bit more. So you have people coming through your summit, you're going to sell them the all access pass. I know that's the model that you teach. And I highly recommend it. It's one that I tried and that all access pass paid for all of my Facebook and Instagram ads, by the way, which was fabulous. So then you sell them the all access pass. When do you suggest that somebody promotes their online course during the summit, after the summit at the end of the summit? What is your recommendation there?
Great question. So I I'll just say first that I don't recommend pitching your offer during the summit itself. I do recommend talking about it. So if you're going to pitch after your summit, be talking about it throughout, make sure people know what this thing is. You know, you want to make it look pretty cool. And if you're going to be launching, let them know when it's coming. Something I like to do to build a little hype is like have prizes that I gave away during the summit. And my grand prize is a scholarship for my program. So it's giving me an excuse to talk about it. You know, in all of the videos and emails, leading up to it. And then I tell them also, you know, on for me and the summit I have coming up, it's going to be on Friday. You're going to hear all about this program at this class that I would love for you to go through.
So you're talking about it all throughout. You're not surprising them and springing it on them. If you do it that way, that's probably where you're going to get some pushback where they're like, well, I just signed up for this free thing. And now you're hitting me with this launch. You want to look from the very beginning as for when to launch the smaller, the amount of time you leave between your summit and launch the better. Because the more time you give them between the less they care and the less excited they are, a summit builds momentum like nothing else. And you want to capitalize on that moment, present them with your offer when they're ready for it and most excited about it. And when it can help them the most. So I recommend launching, like the last day of your summit is launch day.
Again, they know it's coming, but you're not giving them any time to cool down. A lot of times I hear people say, I just emailed them so much, you know, through my summit. And I don't want to be sending all these other emails that when you think of it, that way, you're thinking of it as like forcing something on them, rather than you are giving them something they need. Like you created this thing because it solves a problem. Why would you not put that in front of them when they can use it the most? So I like to see people launch right after their summit, if you don't feel comfortable doing it, you know, on the final day, I would say no more than a week later, two weeks, absolutely max. But even with that, you're going to lose some momentum in that process.
I think that's a great suggestion and something that I would recommend also, because it is hard, as you mentioned to keep people engaged and keep people excited. I mean, there are things you can do with Facebook ads and Instagram ads and, you know, to kind of keep that momentum going. But the sooner the better I know one of the things, what I did at the end of my summit now I did it. My summit ended on, I'm trying to think it's been a little while since I did, it ended on Thursday. I launched with a kind of a end of summit workshop or I presented the offer in and that worked pretty well. Okay. Well, any, anything else that you would recommend to them about launching a summit or selling online course with the summit?
Yeah, I guess if you're going to do both something else I hear from people is hosting a summit is a lot of work and launching a course is a lot of work. And now you want me to combine them. That sounds crazy. I'm like, well, when you put it that way, yes, it does sound crazy. But think of it as a small, like, think of the course launch as a small extension of your summit, this does not have to be a totally separate thing. So for the summit I have coming up the way it's going to be laid out as day five is like an implementation day with like live events and workshops and things like that. One of the sessions is going to be me delivering a ton of value, but then offering them my program at the end. So that's not a huge addition to what I was already doing for the summit.
We'll have an extra email sequence to have on the backend, probably some custom Facebook ads for people who watch that the class, but it doesn't have to be this huge thing because leading up to a course launch is a lot like leading up to a summit. So you've already done the work of getting people excited, doing the promotion, it's all built into the summit. So just know that it's not two totally separate, really crazy things to do. A lot of that work is combined.
Now, speaking of which you have a summit coming up, I know I'm a speaker in it. It's called sell with a summit. Can you tell us a little bit about that and the speakers that you have lined up? When is it just a little bit more details?
Oh my goodness. You guys, I'm so excited to talk to you about this. Yeah. So my cohost, Jen and I have a summit coming up, it's called Sell with a summit and this is the course creator edition. And our goal with the summit is to help you reach your biggest course launch ever with the virtual summit in 90 days, the summit is running from September 14th to 18th. Even if you're listening to this after the fact, still head over and check it out because I'm sure we'll, we'll have something for you there at, at that time. But we were released specific when we went through and planned the kinds of talks we want to have. We're taking you from point A to point B from starting your summit planning to launching your course after the summit. So, you know, one of the presentations is four key to a moneymaking virtual summit.
If you're someone who needs the basics of how a summit works and makes money, we have you covered there. And we have everything from summit tech to naming. And then we have a lot of presentations on how to position your course through your summit. So how are you going to use your time to get people excited so that when you launch your course, it feels really natural. And then kind of our third stage of presentations is how to get the most out of that course launch. So Destini you're talking about the summit fill up and convert formula, which I'm so excited for. We have presentations on using chatbots and sales page performance and using affiliates and email list and segmenting. We're taking you from point a to point B with these presentations. So you can kind of pick and choose which areas you need to focus on the most. It is going to be so much fun. You know, it runs Monday through Friday, the first four days are gonna have those presentations. And like I said, day five, that was an implementation day with extra workshops, coworking sessions, networking sessions, hot seat calls, and a masterclass. And it's going to be so much fun,
So excited for, and you guys have a really great lineup put together. I've been looking at the speakers and everything, all the presentations. And I know it's going to be extremely beneficial for all those course creators out there who want to launch their online course with the virtual summit.
That is right. Yeah. This is like a dream lineup, dream presentations, this rounded up so well, and I can't make it for you guys to see it.
And I will make sure that the link to sign up for the summit is in the show notes. So everybody can head on over there right now and go ahead and sign up and get your free pass for it. And course creators thank you so much for joining us today. If you have any questions about the summit that's coming up or Facebook and Instagram ads, please send me a DM on Instagram or reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm so happy that you are here today, and I hope you enjoyed this episode. Would love for you to rate and review the podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.