Virtual Summits are digital events that bring together industry professionals to deliver information on a given topic. They offer attendees the chance to hear from proven leaders, inspirational peers, and business professionals who can help them get from point A to point B without ever leaving their homes.
Versatile and highly impactful for attendees virtual summits curate the voices, stories, and specialties of leading industry experts to guide attendees through a transformation.
I know that last part sounds really mysterious but it’s true.
What Is A Virtual Summit?
A virtual summit is an online event that brings together speakers on a specific theme to share their unique knowledge and expertise with a wider audience.
Many virtual summits run for 3-5 days, but you can run a summit anywhere from 1 day to 30 days (or anywhere in between).
While there are lots of ways to set up your summit I like to encourage people who have never set up or run one in the past, to start with creating a free summit where attending the live event is free for anyone, but attendees can also purchase a paid upgrade to an all-access pass and get extended access to the content plus a variety of bonuses.
This is how I like to set up my events since it leads to many attendee registrations and gives people a chance to view the content without taking out their wallets. While many do eventually decide to upgrade to a paid ticket, they are doing so because of the value that is packed into it not because they have to.
Regardless of how you do it, a virtual summit done right can bring you value (both clients and cash) to help you grow your business indirectly for months or even years after it wraps up. So let’s take a moment to talk about the benefits of hosting a virtual summit in your business!
Benefits of Hosting Virtual Summits
There are many benefits to hosting a Virtual Summit, regardless of the size of your business, your audience, and the level of authority you currently have in your industry. In fact, virtual summits can be the start of scaling your business, building your brand, and growing an engaging community.
Many small business owners use virtual summits as part of their marketing strategy or their whole strategy- which makes perfect sense!
Virtual Summits are incredible at attracting large niche audiences. This means you have a concentrated group of people willing and eager to learn from you about the topic you’ve chosen. These attendees want information and they need the inspiration to reach a common goal. Your virtual summit should over-deliver on the promise to help them find this information to put into action.
If you can amaze your audience with the level of content and information you’re delivering in your virtual summit, you will have created a tight, targeted entrance point for them to connect with your brand, your business, and your products and services.
7 Benefits of Hosting Virtual Summits
In this blog, we will be exploring the 7 Benefits of Hosting a Virtual Summit in any niche. While there are many benefits to hosting a virtual summit, some are more specific to the event, the brand, and the host, which is why I’ve chosen these big-picture benefits to discuss in this post.
- Build Brand Awareness
- Grow an Engaged Community
- Expand Your Reach
- Build Your Industry Network
- Add Warm Leads to Email List
- Lower Out of Pocket Expenses
- Easily Launch New Products/Services
Build Brand Awareness
This is your chance to shine! So show up and show out. Show your audience that you know your stuff in your niche. Be authentic and make sure you deliver top-notch information in every session from every speaker. Sourcing the most up-to-date and accurate information from a variety of viewpoints is a great way to start deeper conversations about your topic.
Doing this will position you as the leading authority and attendees will remember your brand and your name. This is your event and they are your guests- treat them well, make your mark, and position your brand in a place where you can be the solution to their next step.
The more noise your event can generate the better brand positioning you’ll have later on. Great event marketing along with an incredible lineup of speakers and topics will almost guarantee your success.
Grow an Engaged Community
Virtual Summits are the perfect tool to grow an engaged community of people interested in your topic. Regardless of where they land on the spectrum of knowledge and know-how, these people have directly expressed a desire to learn more. Use your virtual summit as the base for growing your community. Your next step will be to keep it going throughout the year with fresh content and follow-up discussions.
Expand Your Reach
Reach an unlimited number of potential attendees with a virtual summit. Forget about the geographic limitations of in-person events that require you, your speakers, and your attendees to travel to one destination. Virtual Summits deliver the content completely online with no reason to leave your home or office to attend.
Opening your attendee reach up nationally and sometimes globally is a huge game-changer. You’ve just unlocked your customer base and once the event is over, you’ll have warm leads and hopefully a few new clients and customers.
Build Your Industry Network
Enjoy the opportunity to reach out and connect with professionals in your industry. Build connections and grow your network by hosting a virtual summit in your niche while helping people to solve problems and reach their goals.
The number of connections you can make with just one virtual summit is worth every minute you put into the planning. This single benefit can be huge in scaling your business to the next level.
Add Warm Leads to Email List
Speaking on connections, your virtual summit will supply your growing business with fresh warm leads, helping to grow your email list. And since we all know how important your email list is to the overall health of your business and your marketing strategy- we can all appreciate this summit hosting benefit!
Lower Out of Pocket Expenses
At least half the cost of in-person events, virtual summits can often deliver the entire event experience for far less. Keep your costs low and still deliver an incredible amount of value for your attendees with a virtual summit.
And with lower out-of-pocket costs, your tickets can obviously be much lower which makes your event instantly more accessible to different audiences. Many of my summits have experienced large ticket sale numbers based on always making the paid tickets as affordable as possible.
Easily Launch New Products/Services
In addition to helping people solve their problems and reach their goals, virtual summits are an amazing opportunity to launch new products and services to a warm audience. Depending on how many days your virtual summit is scheduled for, you’ll have spent possibly 3-5 days delivering information and inspiration with a focus on one specific topic or end result.
The end of your event, or sometimes shortly after, is the perfect opportunity to bring a new product or service to the market that can further help your attendees. Launch your new product/service and deliver the next step to attendees who are ready to get started now. Don’t leave them wanting more- keep delivering big value.
We’ve now successfully covered 7 benefits of hosting a virtual summit, which I hope you’ve found interesting. When I first started planning virtual summits I had no idea what to expect or how great they could be for so many different aspects of my business.
After my first virtual summit- I quickly found out!
I had what I like to call ‘the great awakening’. I realized how incredible virtual summits were for scaling your business, building authority, and connecting people to the information and resources they needed the most.
Some of this had to do with the virtual summit platform I chose. I use HeySummit to host my events. It’s an all-in-one platform that really makes it easy for anyone with or without tech skills to bring all the pieces together for an incredible event!
And while I didn’t mention probably the biggest benefit of virtual summits in my list above, it goes without saying that helping people solve a problem and reach a goal is hands down the best benefit of virtual summits- and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about after you host yours.
