- I'm going to share with you
the same strategies that I coach
all of my coaching clients on at SaaS Academy
to use virtual summits
to absolutely crush their business growth.
(dramatic upbeat music)
Hey there, I'm Dan Martel,
serial entrepreneur, investor and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this episode, I'm gonna share with you
how to run a virtual summit that generates revenue
and influence for you in your SaaS business.
And be sure to stay till the end,
we're gonna tell you how to get access
to an exclusive resource.
It's literally the worksheet
with the one-page speaker invite template,
the offer designer,
the summit offers,
like literally everything you're gonna need
to absolutely crush your one-day virtual summit.
I'm gonna share with you how to get access to that.
But more importantly, today,
I want to talk about the five specific areas
you need to focus on
to make sure that your summit knocks it outta the park.
Let's get into it.
So if you're new to my work,
I've actually run dozens of virtual summits
that have produced tens of millions of dollars in revenue
and each one producing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And the reason why is because virtual summits,
if done right, allow you to build instant credibility
very fast to an audience
of ready to buy customers
for your SaaS product
that you can literally sell to on the summit.
So a lot of people don't realise this,
but using an event
to bring your potential buyers together
to listen to speakers, that not even you,
some of you guys are like, I'm not a really good speaker
and I don't have anything to say.
Fine, you don't need that to make this work.
So if you ever struggle, like how do I recruit speakers?
Or how do I design the summit?
Or what needs to go into this?
I'm going to share with you
the same strategies that I coach all of my coaching clients
on at SaaS Academy,
to use virtual summits
to absolutely crush their business growth.
So number one is credibility builder.
What I love about virtual summits
is the ability to go from nothing,
an unknown person, a nobody,
like you've never,
you might be new to the industry you're in,
to being one of the top thought leaders
or at least people that come to mind
when other folks think of the industry.
Doesn't matter if it's something hot,
like Web 3.0 that's going on right now, or HR Tech,
you can use virtual summits
to build really great credibility.
And the reason why is because you're leveraging
the other speakers notoriety for yourself.
The beauty of building a virtual summit
is reaching out to people in your industry
that are known for whatever area
of the industry they're in, from your perspective.
It could be an author of a book.
It could be somebody that's got a YouTube channel.
It could be a speaker that's been on other stages,
similar to the topic for your event.
And bringing them to your stage, your platform,
that you've created, that everybody understands,
this is built by, and you can insert your product name.
Then you get the credibility
that's associated with those people.
That to me, is a powerful idea.
So where do you find these speakers?
My three favourite place.
Authors of blogs,
so you can use medium
or maybe your industry has a specific vertical blog.
So who's writing content?
Who's producing videos on YouTube
around the topic that your virtual summit's gonna be about?
And, or, who are the authors, thought leaders in the space,
people that have written books.
All three categories of speakers
are great to build your initial hit list
of folks to reach out to.
Number two reason to start a summit
is the built-in audience.
Now, here's the kicker that most people don't realise
is the speakers you recruit,
you need to qualify them.
You need to ask them if they have an email list
that they can market their session to,
to let people in their world know
that they're speaking at your event.
And that is a big part
of what makes virtual summit so powerful,
as not only a credibility builder,
but as an audience builder,
because if, and I've spoken on many virtual summits
and I've had a tonne of speakers speak on my summits,
is asking them in the interview process,
it's like, I just want to ask
do you have an email marketing list
that you've used to market your past speak engagements to?
And how big is it?
'Cause some people have an email list,
but it's 50 people
and they haven't sent an email to the list in six months.
So you can ask those questions, right,
just to qualify them
because if you have 15 potential speakers
but you only have six spots, right,
it's a one-day summit.
Those are my favourite formats.
Then you can qualify those 15 people, maybe 80% say yes
but you can say like, you know,
we're really looking for speakers
that are able to introduce their strategies
and ideas to their own audience.
And we're gonna create a platform
where they can monetize that view, right?
And that's where it gets into the offer that I'll get into
but like qualifying the speaker
to make sure that they have an audience
that they can market their speaking slot to,
is what makes the virtual summit strategy,
also an email and audience building process
that works really well.
Number three is to reverse the offer.
So the way I think about it
is every summit has to have an offer
that is a hundred percent aligned to the summit.
So if you're doing a summit on losing 10 pounds,
then the offer should be a way to fast track that.
So to me, the idea is whatever the benefit of the summit is,
maybe it's get your first hundred customers,
maybe it's recruit your next three C level employees
or whatever, the offer for the summit,
usually, you know, if the tickets cost a hundred dollars,
maybe the offers like $500, right?
So five times the cost of the ticket
is a way for people on the things,
some people make the mistake, 'cause they're like,
well, if they're already at the thing, at my summit,
and they're learning all these strategies,
why would they pay more money to get the same outcome?
And the truth is,
is people that are at the thing
trying to learn about solving their problem
haven't solved it yet.
And if you create an offer,
that's got templates and best practises
and accountability and training,
kind of like an online, you know, group,
you know, maybe a mastermind
or a coaching programme or an online course,
they're gonna wanna pay to solve their problem.
A percentage of 'em are, anyway.
And that's the offer
that you can offer to your speakers to share that.
Usually it's 50%.
So if the speaker is speaking at your summit
and they promote the summit
and they're speaking slot to their audience,
to their email list,
and people sign up for a ticket to attend,
you give 'em 50%.
And if people buy the summit offer
at the end of the summit,
you give 'em 50%.
So they essentially get built-in affiliate structure
based on them selling the offer
that you sell at the summit.
And the easiest one, if you're like,
oh, I don't know what to sell.
The recordings is the first place, okay.
Selling recordings of your summit.
Actually, I've got a friend Chris doing that,
not too long, where you know, adding an upsell,
they're running a summit of the recordings
of the sessions to watch afterwards,
to share with their team
at 50% of the ticket price, is the offer.
So it's whatever, a hundred dollars to attend,
$50 for the recordings.
That's the offer.
It just increases the average order value
and it's a super simple way of doing it
but even better is
price something five times the price of your ticket,
make it something that you sell at the event
and do a sales presentation at the virtual summit
to get people to buy.
Number four, single focus.
So this comes back to deciding
what should the title of your summit be.
Where people typically make the mistake is going too wide.
They try to do something around health.
It's the health summit.
It's the SaaS summit.
It's the whatever summit.
And it's way better to focus
on one aspect of the problem, okay,
So instead of just like a growth summit,
we're gonna call it
the Facebook customer demand summit, right.
And make it very, very, very focused and specialised.
Then all of your speakers
are a hundred percent people that can speak to that thing.
It could be somebody that's all about Facebook videos,
Facebook ads,
Facebook copy,
Facebook community,
like literally all Facebook, everything,
that just nails the singular focus.
It cuts through the noise
and it brings your ideal perfect ready-to-buy prospects
to be able to sell your summit offer.
So that to me is, focus on one thing,
have five to seven speakers
speak on that one topic
and just absolutely create the value for your audience.
And that's how you have a winning summit
without stressing yourself out,
without trying to create a big sales event
or a big event team.
And just focusing all your energy
on that one specific problem your market is having.
So quick recap, the five advantages
and the five areas to focus on
when you build your virtual summit
is number one, credibility builder.
It is the fastest way to be nobody
to be super credible.
Speaker audience, you wanna leverage the speakers audience
to get distribution and sell tickets.
Three is reverse offer,
using the outcome of the summit as the offer.
So whatever you promise,
you want to sell them more of the same thing
at a low-level upsell just to the recordings.
And then single problem,
meaning don't make it about everything.
Focus on one specific aspect of the problem
and deliver all the speakers,
all the content, all the messaging and positioning
on that specific problem.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I wanna share with you an exclusive resource
called the virtual summit creator worksheet
and click the link below to download your copy.
It literally has the one-page speaker recruiter format,
the offer designer and examples of summit offers
that you can swipe and deploy
and use for your inspiration, your creativity.
Literally, just follow the steps.
I even have to whole worksheet to fill out the name
and the different offer types.
And it's all in this one worksheet.
Click the link below to download your copy.
And if you like this video,
be sure to click the like button,
subscribe to this channel.
Leave a comment, let me know,
what is the number one thing you took away
that's added the most value to your next summit.
And as per usual,
I wanna challenge you live a bigger life
and a bigger business
and I'll see you next Monday.
(upbeat music)