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In today’s episode, I’m joined by Mara Riopel, a lead generation and sales expert and we talk about hosting summits (virtual events). You will learn what it is, why it’s worth to organise it, how to prepare it and what results (number of leads) you can expect after hosting your first summit.

One of the hardest things of online businesses is finding the right people for your offers and services. Mara has tried many lead generation strategies in the past with no or little results, until she started hosting summits. Thanks to summits she built her whole email list and her business really took off. Now, Mara teaches other ambitious moms who want six figure success and time for life how to host successful virtual events. 

“The beautiful thing about hosting your own events, is that eventually a lot of your speakers come full circle back and invite you on their podcast or summits and your visibility and reach start to grow organically which is awesome.”

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:

EPISODE SUMMARY:

What is a summit

Summit is an online event where few speakers (experts from different areas) teach on a specific topic. All speakers promote the event and recommend each other to their email lists for a bigger impact and visibility. It’s win-win situation for everyone.

Hosting summits helps to grow your email list quickly and it also establishes you as an authority in your space right away. This is because you are recommended by somebody they follow, know and trust and also, they hear you speaking.

“Some people run giant summits. I've tried that before and I didn't love it because I felt like the audience couldn't actually consume that much information and so it wasn't really a win for them.”

Mara suggests to run simple summits, with maximum of six speakers, half an hour each. She runs them live but you also can pre-record the sessions. Once she picks the topic, she invites a bunch of experts about that topic and she interviews them. Each speaker brings different angle or talks about a different aspect of that one topic.

How to pick a virtual event topic

Pick one topic that your audience or somebody that would be a potential client would really want to know about right now in their business.

The tech of hosting a summit

Mara likes to keep it as simple as possible. She runs the summit on Zoom and streams to her Facebook group but you can register and invite people to watch you directly on zoom.

You don’t need to be afraid of huge numbers of participants. From Mara’s experience you can expect from 50 to a hundred people at a time. It’s plenty already because in order to sell your services to those people you need to talk to them individually and build relationships.

“It takes a long time to find the right words to craft your message in a way to know exactly who you're talking to and what they want to hear and what helps them make a buying decision.”

By hosting a summit and other virtual events like masterclass, workshop or challenge you don't have to be perfect that way and you don't have to have it all figured out. You talk to people one by one and you learn and get to know their wants.

How to find the speakers

Mara starts her search in Facebook groups she follows, and asks the members for recommendations of experts on the chosen topic. You also could Google or search on Instagram.

Once she got the names, she contacts all the experts and invites to speak at her summit. A lot of the people would reach back and would ask for more information so she schedules a 15-minute speaker connection call to explain the promotional rules.

When looking for the speakers, remember to start with your mindset first to set yourself up for success. Before reaching out, make sure you actually believe that you would easily find six good speakers with really engaged audiences.

If you have a small audience yourself and you’re not confident about reaching out to speakers, Mara suggests, that you could say, something like: “I’m inviting six speakers with minimum list of a thousand or 2,500 of people, so you will be able to get in front of a couple hundred people just by showing up for 20 minutes or half an hour”. This kind of message is a kind of no-brainer for all the entrepreneurs.

“I always encourage the ladies that I work with to never be scared of who you're going to pull in and what they're going to make you look like.”

How long it takes to organise a summit

If it's your very first summit, Mara suggests to give yourself at least four to six weeks. It'll probably take you two to three weeks to find the speakers, because you do have to reach out and interview people and get things organized. And then you probably want, a good two weeks to prepare all your graphics, emails and promo packs for your speakers. And finally about 10 days to promote the event. The more summits you will host the easier and quicker it will become.

“I'll do it in three weeks because I have a lot of speakers in my kind of arsenal. I've hosted a lot of summits now. I think I'm up to like nine or 10 in the last year and a half.”

How many leads you can expect from one event?

“I haven't had any of my clients have less than 50 people. Brand new people come in on their list for each summit they posted that they can nurture into clients. But that's following the process and making sure that you're pulling in speakers who have engaged audiences for sure.”

You need to remember, that all the leads coming still need to be nurture and you need to communicate with them.

Mara always asks everybody for their Instagram handle, and she always asks a question about what they want to learn or what they're struggling with right now about that specific topic because that helps her either create other events or market to them afterwards very easily because she got their words.

“I actually like, to keep my events simple and small so that you can actually connect and actually build those relationships and find out what your people need.”

How to drive leads to your website?

When people register to a summit that need to give you their email address. Right after the summit contact the leads by email and ask about their take-aways from the events and offer a free resource (lead magnet) valuable for your new leads that they can download instantly from your website. This way they are already on your website and they can look around and get to know you better and your offer.

“Your website and your email list are the things that you actually control and own in the online world because you're just renting space on social media.”

Mara’s biggest piece of advice

“Focus on your lead gen first. Build an audience with the right people in it. Focus your energy there. If you don't have anyone who's watching you, then creating the best content in the world, having the best messaging and the best offers and the best coaching or services, it doesn't actually matter if nobody knows you exist.

Also, when you're generating leads and people are coming into your community, go talk to them because we need to be in contact with real people at all times so that we can market and sell to them.

Because marketing is all about giving people what they want or they think they want instead of what they need. You have to be able to sell them what they want in order to deliver what they need on the back end.”

If you would like to follow or chat to Mara, DM her on Instagram or Facebook @marariopel or go to her website www.marariopel.com

If you found this blog helpful, please feel free to share it with others. Thank you.

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