How to host a virtual summit that converts (2025 guide)

Hosting a virtual summit is one of the fastest ways to exponentially grow your email list, build authority, and generate sales online.

My students and I have collectively generated tens of millions in sales and millions of email subscribers using this exact strategy.

We’ve hosted online summits over 100 different markets and niches at any stage of business, ranging from harp music and play therapy to tennis coaching, SEO, and self-publishing.

I started from scratch with no product and no audience.

But online summits changed everything for me. They helped me grow an email list, launch six-figure offers, and build a profitable online business without relying on ads or social media.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to host a profitable virtual summit step-by-step. From choosing your topic and landing speakers to launching and monetizing your event.

Let’s dive in.

What is a virtual summit?

Before we dive in, let’s quickly cover what a virtual summit actually is.

A virtual summit is an online event where people sign up to access expert interviews or sessions — usually for free. It can be a one-day intensive, a short series, or a multi-day event depending on your goals.

Some hosts release sessions on a schedule and keep them live for 24–48 hours. Others keep everything unlocked or publish on YouTube to maximize reach.

The key is delivering real value and offering a smart way to monetize after someone registers (like an all-access pass / premium pass, bundle, membership or course).

If you want a full breakdown of what a virtual summit is and how it works, this guide covers it in depth.

Why should you host a virtual summit?

Virtual summits provide a range of advantages, making them one of the most powerful strategies for growing your online business.

Here are some of the key benefits:

• 📧 Rapid email list growth: Get thousands of targeted subscribers in weeks instead of years.
• 👑 Authority building: Position yourself alongside industry experts and gain instant credibility.
• 💰 Multiple revenue streams: Earn from premium passes, digital bundles, backend offers, sponsorships, affiliate marketing, software, and more.
• 🤝 Influencer relationships: Build genuine connections with industry leaders who become long-term partners.
• 💸 Cost-effectiveness: Reach a global audience for a fraction of in-person event costs.
• 🌍 Worldwide reach: Connect with attendees across continents without travel limitations.
• 📈 Infinite scalability: Serve 100 or 10,000 attendees with the same core effort.
• 🌴 Location freedom: Host your summit from anywhere in the world with internet access.
• ⚡ Format flexibility: Choose live, recorded, or hybrid formats that match your goals.
• 🎯 Lead qualification: Attract highly engaged prospects who are ready to buy.
• ♾️ Evergreen potential: Content continues generating leads and sales long after the event.
• 🎬 Content repurposing: Turn one summit into a year’s worth of marketing content.
• 📦 Instant product creation: Turn your summit into a sellable all-access pass or bundle, even if you don’t have an existing product.
• 🏆 Personal brand building: Build a powerful online brand and get your name out there in your industry.
• ❤️ True fans: Build your core group of 1000 true fans who become lifelong customers.
• 🔗 Networking opportunities: Create valuable connections between attendees and speakers.

These benefits make virtual summits an excellent choice for creators and entrepreneurs.

They help you rapidly grow your audience, establish authority, and generate revenue without relying on ads or social media.

How to host a virtual summit in 7 steps

Ready to host your first (or next) profitable virtual summit?

Here’s my proven 7-step process that’s helped thousands of students generate millions of email subscribers and tens of millions in sales.

Let’s break down the full system step-by-step:

1. Plan your profitable summit
2. Create your irresistible offer
3. Connect & reach out to influencers
4. Build your virtual summit funnel
5. Record summit expert sessions
6. Launch your virtual summit
7. Scale your online summit success

Each step includes the specific tools and strategies you need to succeed with your summit.

Let’s dive into step one.

1. Plan your profitable summit

Your summit foundation will either make or break your summit. Even if you think you already know the focus of your summit and how to run it, DO NOT skip this step.

Make sure that you spend time choosing the right topic and working out the perfect positioning to attract your ideal customers and get them begging to be able to purchase for you.

When you get the topic and positioning right, launching and selling your summit is a piece of cake.

Define your profitable summit topic

The success of your summit really hinges on one thing.

Nail it, and the rest of the process will fall into place without much effort.

The key is to choose a profitable topic for your summit and position it in a way that attracts the right people to your summit.

When choosing your topic, think about your:

• Passions, interests and hobbies
• Current skills and experience
• Audience and their willingness to pay for the solution your summit brings

It’s also important to consider what field you want to be known as the go-to expert in.

A summit can be the perfect medium to establish yourself as an authority in a new field, so it’s best to look towards where you want to go, not where you’ve come from.

7 criteria for a great niche

Once you’ve got a few good ideas, check them against these 7 criteria for a great summit niche to ensure that you have a good, profitable summit topic.  

• Do you love or have a big interest in it?
• Are other people selling in that space?
• Are there other popular publications in that niche?
• Does it meet your personal moral or ethical standards?
• Can you think of at least 3 things to sell?
• Can you think of sub-niches of the larger niche?
• Are there loyal and passionate customers?

Narrow down your niche until it hurts!

Finally, go specific. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is going too broad.

A summit for everyone is really for no one, so my advice is to make it as specific as possible.

This is perfect because you can target very specific needs, wants and pain points and really resonate with your market to increase conversions.

There is also less competition in very niche markets so it’s much easier to become the go-to authority.

Let’s look at some examples of nice specific summit niches.

If you’re thinking about creating the “Online Business Summit” turn it into something more specific like “List Building School” or “European Private Label Summit.”

Rather than the “Parenting Summit” come up with a unique take on it, such as “Positive Parenting Conference” or “Parenting Teens Summit.”

A great example of this is VSM Graduate, Steph Anne. 

She liked the idea of online summits but felt like the market in the health niche was already saturated: 

She really narrowed down her niche and figured out exactly who she wanted to attract, and who she didn’t. 

She went ahead and hosted the Women’s Strength Summit and got some incredible results. Check out this video case study below:

Research your summit niche

Now that you’ve chosen a good theme for your summit, it’s time to go deeper and research your niche to test your idea and make sure that you are setting yourself up for success.

It’s essential that you do the research to validate your idea FIRST. Research properly NOW, to avoid stress for yourself LATER.

So, how can you research your summit niche to make sure you’re on the right track?

Search Google: “your niche + summit”

Look for clues from other summits about the name, hook, number of speakers, design, language for copy, sponsorships and pricing models.

For the best results, start your search as narrow as possible and get broader if you can’t find anything.

Get feedback from real people

Another great way to research your summit niche is to ask real people in your target market if your summit is something they need and would pay money for.

This is easy is you already have an existing audience. Simply create a survey and send them then link to fill it out.

But you can also do this even if you’re starting from scratch and don’t have an audience yet…

Reach out and ask people that you know individually. Send them a text or message them on Facebook — it doesn’t matter how, the key is to reach out to people who fit into your target audience and ask them whether they’d be interested in signing up for a summit on your chosen topic.

Define your ideal customer avatar

Think about your ideal customer avatar – who it is that you are appealing to with your summit.

If you can clearly define your audience, it’s much easier to position your summit in a unique way to make it stand out from others in your niche.

You want to get inside the mind of potential summit attendees so that you understand how they think and know their wants, needs, pains and desires. If you recognize how THEY describe the problems then have, you can leverage this in your messaging later on.

If you get the research right, they’ll be thinking:

“WOW, they’re reading my mind. This is EXACTLY what I need.”

Use their language to get your target audience to relate to your message.

Position your summit for success

The way you position your summit makes a big difference for its success.

Your positioning determines how your audience sees your virtual summit and how it is perceived in the marketplace.

Even in a crowded market, your summit will stand out if you have a unique spin or hook. In fact, your hook is usually more important than the name of your summit for drawing your audience it.

When you get your summit positioning right, when you ideal customers land on your page they will think: “This is exactly what I want! I’m going to sign up for the summit and purchase the All-Access Pass because I want lifetime access to everything… it’s a total steal!”

You can make your online summit stand out by:

• Doing something that hasn’t been done before
• Choosing unique speakers
• Covering a new angle on your topic
• Including different mediums or structures (e.g. live masterclasses, presentations or panels) 
• Incorporating an element of charity

It’s also essential to have a good website so that your summit looks clean and professional. First impressions go a long way!

Virtual Summit Mastery students get access to the VSM Website Template which has been professional designed by my team. This could cost you $5,000 if you had it done yourself, but I include it for my students so that they can get there summit out there — and make it look good — as efficiently as possible.

3 Rookie positioning mistakes to avoid

Here are a few mistakes I’ve seen people make when it comes to positioning your summit:

• Too Clever or Cute: Avoid puns or confusing acronyms that might not be understood.
• Too Long: The name should be memorable, descriptive and easy to spell. Keep it short.
• Already Trademarked: If in doubt, check whether you can legally use certain words in your branding BEFORE you launch your summit.

Create a plan for your summit

Finally, you should create a plan for your summit to decide the details of your summit and work out a timeline for getting everything done.

Once you are clear about what you need to do, it’s much easier to take action and make your summit become a reality.

My Virtual Summit Mastery students get access to the complete VSM Action Plan Checklist with the specific steps that need to be taken and timeframes to get everything done. This takes the risk of failure out of the equation — if you follow the plan step-by-step you will get everything that needs to be done completed on time.

Plan your summit profit strategy:

It’s important to think about how you are going to PROFIT from your summit, right from the very start of the planning process.

You can generate revenue before, during and after you launch with:

• Repurposed content
• All-Access pass sales
• Affiliate commissions
• Software deals
• Sponsorships 
• Software deals
• Backend offers
• Paid speaking gigs

2. Connect & reach out to influencers

You can’t host a virtual summit without experts in your niche sharing their knowledge with your summit attendees. That’s what makes a summit so valuable for your audience!

Influencers are the most important part of the entire summit model.  

Why influencers / experts are so important for summit success:

• Quality Content: Massive value to you and your summit attendees by sharing their best content as a speaker. 
• Promotion: Get your summit in front of more people to rapidly grow your audience when they share the summit with their audience.
• Better Return On Investment: Partnerships with influencers are both less expensive and more effective than traditional advertising.
• The “Oprah Effect”: Be associated as a trusted expert simply because the influencer has introduced you to their audience. 
• Ongoing Benefits: Building authentic relationship with influencers in your niche will continue to produce opportunities into the future. 

But you’re probably wondering something…

Sure, you know that influencers can help you to succeed.

But how are you supposed to get speakers on board for your summit if you’re new and don’t know anyone in your field just yet?

In this section, we’re going to go over the exact steps to build AUTHENTIC relationships with influencers that LAST.

We’ll cover how to find influencers, who you should focus your efforts on, what you can do to help THEM, the best ways to ask them to help YOU and how to continue the relationship long after your summit is over.

There’s a replicable process for this to make it a lot easier on you so that you can reach more people and build better relationships with influencers.

Are you ready for this? Let’s do it!

Identify influencers in your niche

You can start by familiarizing yourself with the people in your niche that you’d like to connect with. Look for people who are already established by checking out:

• Podcast hosts or guests
• Speakers on other summits
• Online product creators
• Bloggers or authors

Brainstorm as many possible people as you can who could be a speaker for your summit – shoot for 50-100 names for your initial list.

I call this my Dream 100 List.

Don’t worry about getting it perfect. This is just to get ideas – you can go back afterwards to categorize them and work out which ones are the best fit for your summit and audience.

I recommend creating a spreadsheet of the influencers that you find so that you can keep track of everyone. Here’s a template that I use when reaching out to influencers:

Choose the right speakers and partners

Influencer outreach is a lot of work and you’ll soon find that it can suck up a lot of your time… if you’re not doing it right.

The trick is to be very specific about who you focus your attentions on. Work out which connections will be the most valuable and give you the best return on investment (ROI).

How can you know which influencers are the “Real Deal”?

There are a few really important things to consider when it comes to evaluating influencers.

First, look at their audience.

What type of people are they attracting?

Do they have a large audience?

How ENGAGED is their audience with them?

How do they respond to their posts?

Next, look at their message.

What image do they portray from their website or social media profiles?

What do they stand for?

Who do they connect and partner with?

Finally, look for alignment.

The best partnerships will be with people who have similar values to you.

Ideally, you should have the same target audience but different product offerings so that you can refer people to each other without competing on the same thing.

Focus on connecting the influencers who are the best fit for YOUR summit.

• Are they a good fit for my audience and summit topic?
• Will they attract the right people?
• Will they help my primary goal?

Go back to your spreadsheet of influencers and start to refine your list based on who is most aligned with your message and will bring you the best ROI.

Connect and add value to influencers

If possible, relationship building should begin ahead of time.I’d recommend 3-6 months before the launch of your summit, but if you’re planning on launching before then you can still make it work (as the relationship building process can happen as you’re creating your summit).

You can have  everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

Zig Ziglar

When trying to build authentic and lasting relationships with the people in your niche, GIVE before you ASK.

There are many things that you can do to provide value to influencers, such as:

• Giving them a great case study, review, or testimonial
• Commenting on their blog or social media posts
• Sharing their content on your blog or social media
• Introducing them to someone THEY want to meet!
• Promoting their work wherever you can (it works even if you don’t have a big audience “yet”)

Another great way is to catch people at in-person events or conferences.

A nice example of connecting with some of the bigger names on your list is Chandler Bolt, who wanted to get in touch with Michael Hyatt for his Self-Publishing School Success Summit.

He knew that he was planning to be at an upcoming event with him, so reached out to his personal network to see if anyone knew him to introduce him.

Here’s a look at his Facebook post reaching out to his personal network for an introduction so that he could shout him dinner.

It’s so important to go out there and let people know what you are looking for so that they are able to help you.

They can’t help you if you don’t ask!

You’ve worked out who you want to speak on your summit, and you’ve started reaching out and adding value to their work.

Now comes the tricky part…

Make The ask the right way

How can you get them to help you and and say YES to speaking on your summit?

It’s totally normal to feel uncomfortable or even a little scared reaching out to people to ask for something.

Rejection isn’t fun. But in the end, what’s the worst that can happen.

Just like asking that cute girl out in high school, the actual worst-case scenario probably isn’t as bad as you think. They’ll probably just say no.

Luckily, there are plenty of other people that you can ask! 😉

That said, there are a few tricks that you can use to help increase your chances of getting YES responses, even from the big names in your field.

My favourite way to connect with high-level influencers in your niche is to use the proven Ladder Strategy (which I go over in even more detail in my premium flagship program Virtual Summit Mastery).

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Categorize your speakers

Categorize each influencer on your Dream 100 List according to how well known they are as either:

• Up-and-Comer: New or unknown, small but engaged email list, eager to get their name out
• Trusted Authority: Known expert, solid following, looking to connect and grow
• A-Lister: Well known name, huge following, tough to get but offers credibility

It’s best to get a mix of speaker types, with some up-and-comers, some trusted authorities and some A-listers. Trusted authorities often have the most responsive audiences.

Above you can see some of the incredible List Building School experts I featured on the summit.

Step 2: Start at the bottom

When you start reaching out to people, go for the low hanging fruit first.

If you know anyone personally, ask them. If you have a connection with them, they are more likely to respond and be willing to help.

If you can get an introduction to an influencer by someone you know, reach out to ask if they’d could bring you two together.

Once you’ve exhausted your personal connections, it’s time to start some cold outreach to people that you don’t know.

With the Ladder Strategy, you start at the bottom – the people with smaller audiences and followings – and work your way up.

Go back to the list of people and how you categorized them.

The up-and-comers and trusted authorities are usually easier to get YES’s from because they are focused on growth and want more publicity.

Start with these people to get a few names and then you can use these as social proof when you ask more people.

Step 3: Work your way up

Once you’ve got some confirmed speakers, other people will be more likely to want to take part in your summit too.

You can name drop the people who have already said yes as a way to increase credibility and get more YES responses from other influencers in your niche.

Keep working your way up the ladder until you get your dream line up and the opportunity to interview some of the biggest names in your niche for your summit.

Tips for making the ask:

• Keep it short and simple so that it’s easier for them to say yes.
• Personalize your invitation to the speaker (one size doesn’t fit all!)
• Add your own flair and personality in the invitation to make it stand out.

BONUS: If you really want to stand out,  record a personalized video invitation  with details about the event and why you’d like THEM to be involved, upload it to YouTube and send them the link with your invitation!

The key to getting speakers to say YES is to position the offer in a way that benefits them.

Make sure that you understand their business, audience and needs, so that you can show them how being a part of your summit will help them!

Here’s an email that I sent when I invited someone to speak at List Building School:

The summit speaker relationship should be a win-win-win situation for everyone – the speaker, the audience and you.

Here are some ways that speakers can benefit you might like to include in your invitation:

• Exposure to thousands of people as a speaker
• Opportunity to share their message with more people
• Email list growth by providing a freebie / lead magnet you include for their summit session

One of my Virtual Summit Mastery students, Caitlin Pyle, did an AMAZING job of rewarding her speakers and making it a real win for them. 

She had a goal to  help her speakers to grow THEIR lists (at the same time as growing her own!) and it’s safe to say that it was a massive success: 

Here’s what a few of her speakers and partners said about her Work At Home School summit: 

She got 60,000 new email subscribers for her Work-At-Home School Summit in just two weeks, largely because she focused on making it a MASSIVE WIN for her speakers and partners to participate in the summit.

This is a great example of a beneficial partnership that helps both sides.

It can be scary, but the only way you’ll get an answer is to ask!

You can watch Caitlin’s VSM Case Study below:

Follow up with speakers

Your influencer outreach doesn’t end with asking them to speaker on your summit.

In fact, you’re still missing the most important part: FOLLOW UP.

As you start reaching out to people, you’ll notice varied responses.

• Some people will say YES right away (SCORE!!)
• Some people will tell you it’s not right for them (right now… remember that it’s always a no for now, not forever!)
• Some people will never get back to you and you just won’t hear from them.

Whatever their response is, you should make sure to have a solid follow up strategy to get the most value out of each connection.

Here’s what you should do in each situation.

If they say YES, you should:

Follow up with more details about your summit and arrange to have a pre-call to go over the details before the actual interview.

This is a great opportunity to connect with them, see if they are really a good fit for your summit and discuss topics for their interview.

You’ll then need to schedule a time for a call. From experience, I know that this can get messy, especially if you have a lot of speakers (I had 88 speakers for my first virtual summit!)

Having a good scheduling tool to keep things organized can be a game changer – I use ScheduleOnce for this and it works a treat. Calendly is another solid option you can use (which I used before).

If they say no, you should:

Remember that it’s not a personal thing… most likely it’s just bad timing.

Most importantly, it’s a no for NOW and not forever.

So make sure you end things on a positive note: thank them for their response, keep adding value, and leave the line of communication open.

Influencer outreach and relationship building is a marathon, not a sprint.

If they don’t respond, you should:

Follow up with them until you get a response – either yes or no!

Sometimes people are busy and they just don’t have time to respond.

But remind them, and you might just get a yes. Either way, you’ll never know unless you follow up.

There are some great tools to help you with this such as Boomerang, FollowUp and Rebump.

Each of these allow you to automatically schedule follow up emails if you don’t get a response after a certain timeframe (I usually allow about a week for people to get back to me before sending a reminder)

3. Build your virtual summit funnel

Now it’s time to get into the tech side of things and create the website for your summit.

This can be daunting for a lot of people, especially if you don’t think of yourself as a “techie” person.

But rest assured, it’s not as hard as it looks. And I’m going to walk you through it step-by-step so that anyone can do it.

The summit funnel

Firstly, you should make sure that you are 100% clear about what your summit funnel looks like – that is, the journey that your summit attendees will make from the moment they hear about your online summit to the time they sign up and decide to purchase lifetime access.

The summit Funnel I’ve developed over the last few years looks like this in a nutshell:

Pre-summit phase

The summit phase

Post-summit phase

When creating your summit website, it’s important to think about which pages you need to create to get everything working smoothly.

In particular, you need to make sure all the pages needed to opt in and lead people into buying the All-Access Pass are ready to go.

Here’s a look at what the customer journey will look like when they land on your website:

1. They land on your summit registration page and decide to opt in to get free access to all of the speaker sessions.
2. After they opt in, they are redirected to your offer page, which welcomes them to the summit and gives them a limited-time offer on the All-Access Pass.
3. If they decide not to purchase just yet, they will still have an opportunity to upgrade on the normal sales page throughout the summit.

All of the other pages on your website will have one goal in addition to providing value to your audience: to direct people back to your sales page and convert them into paying customers.

You will need to create all of the pages to set up your high converting VSM Summit Funnel before you can start promoting the event and getting people to sign up.

When you’re ready to launch, you’ll also need to have the sessions page and a page for each speaker session ready to go live.

There are also some other pages that you will probably need to create such as the privacy policy, terms and conditions, disclaimers, contact and affiliate pages.

This can be daunting for a lot of people but it’s not too bad if you have a solid plan in place and know exactly what you need to create.

In my premium implementation program, Virtual Summit Mastery, we give you exact templates for all the pages so that you just need to tweak the copy and branding to create your summit website in the quickest way possible, without sacrificing on quality design (and you’ll save a lot of money as well).

When reaching cold audiences, branding and design is incredibly important.

People make a decision about whether they can trust you or not is a split second, and design plays a huge role in that. 

So make sure you prioritize the look of your summit website to make sure it’s all cohesive and well-branded. 

How to create your summit registration page

Your summit registration is the main point of entry for your summit.

It’s most likely the page that will see the most traffic and will make or break the success of you summit depending on how well it converts.

The #1 aim of your summit registration page is to convert website visitors into email subscribers by getting them to register for your summit.

How can you increase the conversion rate of your summit registration page?

Here’s what you should include on the page:

• Your summit logo / name, a catchy hook, dates and a very clear call to action to register above the fold. Including share buttons so that people can spread the love (and see how many other people have shared it) is also important. 
• What is the event about? Make it clear what people can expect from the event. 
• Why people should attend? There’s a lot of noise out there – why is your summit different?
• What will people get out of it? Show what people will learn and how they will benefit from attending. No need to write a lot here – just dot points are fine! 
• Who’s speaking? Brag about the big names that you’ve confirmed to speak on the event and what topics they’ll be covering. This is also a good opportunity to establish credibility by showing the logos of places your speakers have been featured. 
• What’s the schedule? Have a clear outline of the event with dates and when each session is scheduled so that people can mark their calendar. 
• Why can people trust you? Include testimonials for the summit or your other past products for social proof. 
• Why should they register? Give people reasons they should sign up to banish any doubts they may have and show them the value of attending the event. 
• Who’s the host? Include some information about you and why you are hosting the event. 
• How can people register? Remember that the main aim of the registration page is to get people to opt in for the summit, so the emphasis should be on your call-to-action to register. Make this clear and provide several opportunities for people to sign up throughout the page. 

Here’s a look at the registration page that I used for List Building School: 

And here are some examples of VSM graduates who saw some great results and opt in rates for their registration page with their summits: 

VSM Graduate Steph Gaudreau hosted the Women’s Strength Summit with this high-converting landing page:

Here is the landing page for the European Private Label Summit by VSM Graduate, Augustus Kligys:

How to create your summit playbook page

Your summit registration page isn’t the only entry point to your virtual summit funnel.

In fact, you’d be missing out on potential traffic and conversion opportunities if you left it at just that.

Another important part of the VSM Summit Funnel is the Playbook page.

This is an alternative opt in for the summit that promotes a PDF download that accompanies your summit.

The download can be anything you like that would appeal to your target audience and fits the summit theme.

The most effective thing that works across most niches is a Playbook that covers the summit sessions and the biggest action points.

Your summit playbook page should include:

• Your summit logo / name, a catchy hook, dates and a very clear call to action to download the Playbook PDF above the fold. Social share buttons so that people can spread the love (and see how many other people have shared it) is also important. 
• Who’s in the playbook? Show off your confirmed speaker and describe the topics they’ll cover. You can also establish credibility with the logos of places your speakers have been featured. 
• How can people register? Make the call-to-action to download the Playbook and register for the summit clear so that it’s easy for people to sign up. 

Here’s a peek into what the playbook page of the VSM website template looks like:

How to create your summit opt In forms

Once you’ve got your summit registration and playbook pages ready to go, you’ll need to add in opt in form so that people can actually opt in (and be added to your email list) when they click the button to sign up.

What should you include on the opt in form. I’d recommend:

• Your summit name and hook
• Form for people to enter their name and email address
• Button to submit details
• Disclaimer with link to your privacy policy (make sure your opt in form is GDPR compliant!) 

If you’re using WordPress, I recommend using ThriveLeads or OptinMonster to create high-converting opt in forms that allow you to easily test things to keep improving your conversion rate. Here’s an example of the opt in form for the registration page included in the VSM Website Template for my Virtual Summit Mastery Students: 

And here’s what the opt in form for the playbook page looks like:

Advanced Tip: If you want to segment your audience into groups so that you can target your messaging specifically to them and increase your conversion rates, you can do this on your opt-in forms. For example, you might segment people into groups based on targeted interests or the experience level of your audience. Once you have this information, you can use it to send them targeted offers that they might be interested in 😉

Your summit offer page and sales page

The offer page and sales page of your summit are the most important pages in the entire VSM Website Funnel when it comes to generating revenue from your summit.

The goal of these pages is to communicate the value of the All-Access Pass so that people will want to upgrade and become a paid customer.

The main difference between the offer page and the sales page is the special discount on the offer page that people can only access once after they first register.

This works with a tool called  Deadline Funnel, which tracks the email address AND IP address of each visitor so that people can only access the offer once (even if they try to sign up again with another email address!)

You can read my in-depth Deadline Funnel review here.

This creates real urgency for people to upgrade on the offer page, which drives up the conversion rate quite a lot. (I’ve seen this work time and time again when VSM students add it to their page!)

Your offer and sales pages should include:

• Your summit logo / name, a catchy hook, dates and a very clear call to upgrade to the All-Access Pass. 
• What included when people upgrade? Show the value of everything that is included in the pass so that they can see what a great deal it is. 
• Why can people trust you? Include testimonials for the All-Access Pass or your other past products for social proof. 
• How will the pass help them? Go over the benefits of what’s include and recap the value of your offer. 
• Why should they focus on your topic? Make sure you communicate the importance of your summit topic to validate their decision to pay for lifetime access. 
• Who’s speaking? List the your confirmed speakers and topics they’ll be covering, along with where they’ve been featured to establish credibility. 
• Guarantee to take the risk off of them, increase trust in your brand and improve your conversion rate. 
• Who’s the host? Include some information about you and why you are hosting the event. 
• How can they upgrade? The main aim of the offer page and sales page is to get people to upgrade to the All-Access Pass, so the emphasis should be on your call-to-action to checkout. Make this clear and provide several opportunities for people to go to the checkout page.

Here’s a peek at the top of the sales page included in the VSM Summit Website Template:

VSM Graduate Steph Gaudreau hosted the Women’s Strength Summit with this high-converting sales page:

Your checkout page

Finally, you’ll need to create a checkout page so that people have a way to purchase the All-Access Pass and become a customer.

I’d recommend using a shopping cart to do this as it makes the whole process way smoother and easier for you. My favorite platform to create checkout forms is ThriveCart because it’s insanely user friendly – it literally only takes about 10 minutes to set up a new product and checkout page.

You can take a look at my ultimate review of ThriveCart here.

Here’s an example of the checkout page for List Building School that we built with ThriveCart:

It’s got all the elements it needs to keep your conversion rate high:

• Summit branding and guarantee icons to increase trust
• Clearly shows what people are getting when they purchase
• Testimonials for social proof to close the sale
• Simple and easy for the customer to complete

What other pages will you need? 

Those are the most important pages that you’ll need to create to set up your Summit Funnel to start bringing in leads and making sales, but there are still some more pages that you’ll need to create.

These include your:

• Affiliate page
• Sessions page
• Speaker pages (one for each session) 
• Thank you for purchase page
• Live hangout page for Kickoff/Finale
• Support page
• 404 page
• Privacy policy page
• Terms & conditions page
• Disclaimer page
• Affiliate terms page
• Waitlist page
• Waitlist thank you page

In my premium implementation program, Virtual Summit Mastery, we give you exact templates for all the pages so that you just need to tweak the copy and branding to create your summit website in the quickest way possible, without sacrificing on quality design (and you’ll save a lot of money as well).

How to set up a members site for your all-access pass customers

The final piece of your summit website is creating your member’s area so that your All-Access Pass customer can access all of the sessions and the bonuses included in your offer.

There are lots of ways to set this up, depending on what you want to do – the best option for you might be different if you have other products you’d like to upsell people to, for example.

For most people hosting their first virtual summit, I recommend using a membership platform like Teachable or Thinkific to host the content for the pass for a few reasons: 

• Simple and easy to use — for you AND your customers
• You don’t have to worry about design
• All hosting for your website and videos is included
• By far the FASTEST way to set it up (and I’m all about speed of implementation!) 

You can check out my ultimate review for Te

4. Record your summit expert sessions

Next, it’s time to record the interviews with your speakers to create the content for your summit.

You’ve already set the foundation by connecting with influencers in your niche in Step 2 and got them to say YES.

Now it’s time to record the sessions and get your speakers to give as much value as possible to your audience.

In this step, we’ll go over everything that you need to record your summit sessions, including how to prepare for the sessions, set up your home recording studio, do epic interviews, edit the videos and upload them to your website.

Prepare for your summit sessions

Before you can record, you should research your speaker to understand who they are and what they stand for so that you can target your questions to bring out the best answers.

This is an incredibly important step to make the most of the time that you have with each speaker and give the most value to your audience.

Also, speakers really appreciate it when you take time to research them, and will be more likely to share your summit with their audience when you get to launch time! 😉

So what should you do to prepare?

I typically spend 30 minutes to 4 hours researching each speaker for my summits, depending on how well I know them already. I recommend that you:

• Google their name
• Check out their website (make sure you read their About page!)
• Sign up for their email list
• Watch or listen to other interviews that they’ve done
• Look at other projects they are working on
• ​Checkout their social media profiles

As you do this, you’ll start to get a good idea of who they are, what they stand for and what sort of topics or questions they would answer well.

For each session, come up with a clear goal of what you want your audience to achieve. Sharing this with your speaker can go a long way to stay on track and make the session more valuable too.

The final step to prepare for your interviews is to create an outline of what you want to cover, including the topics that you want to touch on and some specific questions.

In my Virtual Summit Mastery program, I provide students with a fill-in-the-blank “cheat sheet” template that they can edit for each speaker.

This helps to make sure that all the important points are in one place and you can refer to it when you record the session to stay on track.

Set up your professional recording studio

Now is also the time to think about the tools that you’ll use to record the sessions. Which software, camera, audio and lighting will you use?

In my premium flagship program, Virtual Summit Mastery program, I have three levels of recommendations for your recording studio setup, depending on where you’re at in your business.

Why?

Because I don’t think you really need top-of-the-line equipment to succeed for your first summit – you just need decent quality (beyond your laptop camera and mic!) to get started and you can work your way up as you grow. 

This is how I did it when I was starting out. Check out how my set up has changed from the beginning to now: 

My set up First starting out

image goes here

Current set up

Rest assured, you don’t have to break the bank.

In fact, for your first summit (where most of my VSM students start out) this is what I would recommend:

Web Cam: Logitech C922x / C920 / C930

This Logitech webcam will make a huge difference to your video quality (any of these models will be fine). It’s such a step up from the built-in webcam on your laptop, Whatever you do PLEASE do not use the built-in webcam on your laptop… it’s so bad in comparison, and your quality will not be as good as it could have been.

Microphone: Audio Technica ATR 2100

This is a great microphone to record good quality virtual summit sessions. It’s pleasure to use, increases your sound quality to make your videos seem a lot more professional, and is great value for money at the beginner level. This was what I used when I started and I still use it from time to time.

Lighting: LE Dimmable LED Desk Lamp

Without some “decent” lighting your video interviews won’t look very good. (I’m speaking from experience here, as I learned this over time… but at least you don’t have to make the same mistakes I made.) Once again, there are more professional lighting sets that you can upgrade to later but at the very least get started with a dimmable LED desk lamp like this one.

Then you can use Zoom, YouTube Live (Google Hangouts On Air) or Skype + Ecamm Call Recorder (Mac only) to record the interviews with influencers for your summit sessions. 

Keep it simple and don’t overcomplicate the tech! 

Level 2 and level 3 (available inside my VSM Implementation Program) take it up a notch for a higher quality recording.

We also give you step-by-step over-the-shoulder tutorials on how to set all your tech up, so don’t worry if you don’t know how this works right now (it’s really easy, and it’s very affordable with a level 1 setup).

Conduct summit sessions with your speakers

The actual interview is probably the easiest part if you’ve done your preparation and research well.

You just need to get on the call with your speakers and have fun bringing out the best in your guest.

Both you and your guest might be a bit nervous, so spend a few minutes on the call before you start recording to have a “Pre-Interview Chat”, as I call it inside my Virtual Summit Mastery program.

You could do a bit of small talk, give them any extra details about the summit or session, check that you have their name and bio right, check the internet and audio is working well, answer any questions that they have, and hit record!

Top tips for epic interviews:

• ​Tip #1: Get your introductions right!

  Make sure and double check that you know how to pronounce the speaker’s name and you have their bio correct. (Hint. Ask THEM how they want to be introduced to do it right!)

• Tip #2: Remember that your summit attendees are there to get RESULTS. The best way that you can help them to do this is to direct the interviews to bring out actionable tips that they can implement right away. Get your speakers to share their very best content to provide even more value!

• Tip #3: Ask authentic and natural questions that YOU are curious about. What is it about them that interests you? Their accomplishments, lifestyle, work, recent projects, expertise, story… Or something else entirely?! Ask questions that you want to know the answers to so that it is more engaging. 
• Tip #4: Dig deep into the core of one topic (DON’T skim the surface!)Anyone can do a standard interview, but the interviews for you summit are going to be outstanding. Avoid trying to cover everything but now really getting into the nitty gritty of anything. You audience is there to learn the secrets of your speakers, so help bring them out!
• Tip #5: Be prepared for awkward silences or mental blanks. Remember that it’s normal to have some awkward silences and blanks in the conversation. Don’t worry. But you CAN be prepared. It can help to have a “cheat sheet” of questions in front of you when you do the interview and have a couple of fall-back questions in case you need them. 

In the end, sometime you just need to DO it.

Check out these wins from VSM Graduates who broke through the anxiety to record epic interviews for their summits (and got great feedback!): 

Finally, be prepared for speakers to reschedule – these things happen and the best thing that you can do is to be flexible and set up backup times when needed.

Edit your session videos

After the interview, you may want to tweak a few things to make the final session look a little more professional. This also helps to take the pressure off during the interview, because you know that you can cut parts that didn’t turn out well.

I recommend Screenflow for video editing if you have a Mac and Camtasia if you have a PC.

Both of these options are very easy to use to edit videos yourself, or you can outsource this if video editing isn’t your thing and hire someone on Fiverr or Upwork to do this, even on a pretty tight budget.

Remember, there’s no need to “over-edit”… sometimes simple is best!

You can also add “bumpers” – short intros and outros before and after the video – to brand the videos and make it look more professional.

It’s possible to do this with the video editors I mentioned above but even faster with a service like Splasheo or Video Bumper Factory.

Upload your session videos

The final stage is taking the edited session and uploading it so that you can embed the videos on the summit pages that you created in Step 3.

I recommend using Vimeo Pro to host all of the videos for your summit.

While it’s possible to set it up on YouTube for free, Vimeo allows you to easily restrict the privacy of the videos so that people can only view the videos on your summit website. You also get access to some cool stats to help you improve your summit in the future!

Once you’ve uploaded the videos to Vimeo, all you need to do is choose the right privacy settings (domain level privacy) and grab the link to embed it onto your summit pages (the speaker page for the live summit and in the All-Access Pass members area).

This is very easy to do if you are using a page builder like Thrive Architect. You just need to grab the video code and enter it into the URL source when you add a video element and it does it all for you!

Here’s what this looks like in the member’s area of my List Building School Summit:

Note. If you’re using a course platform to host your All-Access Pass like Teachable or Thinkific, you can upload directly to the platform without needing Vimeo (although you’ll still need to host your free videos on Vimeo or YouTube.)

5. Deliver your online summit

You’ve already done most of hard work to create your summit – now you just need to pull all the pieces together to deliver a brilliant experience to your audience.

You will need to work out how you will communicate with your summit attendees and write out all of the emails ahead of time and schedule them to be sent each day.

You can also schedule social media posts in advance – you’ll be focused on other things during the actual launch!

To automate the sending of your emails, you will need to use a tool like ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit.

Read my in-depth ConvertKit review here.

I personally use ActiveCampaign for my business and love it, but ConvertKit is a good option for people just starting out as well because it’s so simple to use. I recommend signing up for a free trial of both to see which one suits you best.

In my premium flagship program, Virtual Summit Mastery, we give you the entire email automation in ActiveCampaign so you can import it to your account with one click of a button. And if you plan to use ConvertKit, we have a step-by-step walkthrough of how to set it up and import it to your account as well.

Your summit email funnel

The summit funnel that we looked at in Step 3 to create your summit website comes into play once again here. I’ve developed this over the last few years after my experience helping hundreds of VSM students host successful virtual summits.

Here’s what it looks like in a nutshell:

Pre-summit phase

The summit phase

Post-summit phase

This time the focus is on the communication your audience for your summit throughout the three key phases of the funnel:

1. Pre-summit phase: Emails to your audience to promote the summit and to your summit attendees before the event starts.
2. The summit phase: The emails that you send to your summit attendees during the event.
3. Post summit phase: The emails that you send to your new and engaged email list after your summit.

We’ll take closer look at each of the three phases – and what you need to do to deliver your summit with ease – now.

The pre-summit phase

Before your summit, the first thing to think about is how people will find your summit. We’ll go deeper into the promotion of your summit in the next step (launch time!) but I want touch on this here.

There are many ways that people can find out about your summit including:

• Email from you (if they are on your list already)
• Social media
• Partners and affiliates
• Publicity 
• Advertising

As far as promoting to your own audience, it’s very effective to post email updates to your audience and keep them involved throughout the whole process.

Email your list before the summit to create excitement and build momentum before you launch.

You can send:

• List of confirmed speakers
• Requests for ideas of speakers and topics
• Updates on your progress
• Questions to get engagement and feedback

The idea is to make them feel involved in the process and to build up excitement about the event.

Here’s an email that I wrote to my audience a few months before launching List Building School, when I was still in the middle of the creation process: 

Pre-launch email Sequence + push for all-access pass (ppgrade)

Next, you’ll need to set up an automated email sequence that is delivered whenever anyone registers for your virtual summit, what I call the “Pre-Launch Email Sequence”.

This is important because it confirms their registration and welcomes them to your summit, but also because it is the perfect opportunity to tell them more about how they can upgrade to the All-Access Pass.

I’d recommend writing 3-5 emails for your pre-launch email sequence to welcome them, give them a quick win, establish trust and a push to upgrade.

This sequence is a great opportunity to build rapport and engagement and, ultimately, convert new email subscribers into paid customers.

Live kickoff hangout reminder emails

If you are doing a Live Kick Off at the start of your summit (and I recommend you do — it’s a great tool to boost engagement and conversions!), you’ll also need to set up a reminder email sequence so that people know when it’s happening.

This only needs to be 2-3 emails a few days before and the day of the event to get people involved.

The most important email is the reminder 15 minutes before the event asking people to join you now!

The summit phase

During your summit launch and promotion, you will most likely be communicating with your audience a lot more often that you usually do.

And that’s okay! There’s a lot going on with new content being released every day, so they need to hear from your frequently.

At the very least, once a day, but it might be more often if you have live sessions throughout your summit or have price increase or expiring bonuses for your All-Access Pass offer.

In my premium Virtual Summit Mastery Implementation program,  we provide students with automation templates that they can import directly into their ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign account with one click. 

Here’s what the beginning of the automation for a 5-day summit looks like: 

This automation makes it insanely easy for you. Here’s what one VSM student had to say about it when they started to use it for their summit: 

The daily emails are probably the easiest to write because they naturally have value by providing the links to the summit sessions.

The most important thing is to introduce each speaker and topic in a way that gets people out of their email inbox and onto your summit website.

This is also a great chance to include testimonials about the summit as social proof, especially as people start commenting on particular sessions.

Remember to test different subject lines to see what works best for YOUR audience.

Dropping the big names in the email subject or focusing on topic of the most actionable session might be most effective. Test and tweak!

The post-summit phase

The final post-summit phase of communication in the VSM Summit Funnel has three main functions:

1. Give people a final push to upgrade to your All-Access Pass
2. Ask people to give you feedback via a survey
3. Push people into your backend funnel to sell other products

Let’s start with the post-summit strategy that always helps to bring in extra All-Access Pass sales… your Encore.

Your summit encore

Here’s how a summit encore works:

At the end of the summit, after all the sessions have closed you reopen the entire summit (ALL of the sessions) for a limited time, usually 24-48 hours.

During this time, people can catch up on any sessions that they missed, and also upgrade to the All-Access Pass before the cart closes.

It’s the final opportunity for people to jump in and get the pass if they loved what they saw.

The post-summit email sequence for your encore period is pretty simple.

You’ll probably need to send out 3-5 emails to let people know that the conference is back open, how to access the sessions and how they can get the All-Access Pass.

This is really the final sales push for the conference, with natural urgency built-in.

Get feedback on your summit

Once you’ve finished your summit, it’s really important to review everything that you’ve done and get feedback from your audience.

The insights that you get from this are super valuable because they can help you to tweak your messaging to help make more sales in the future, especially if you turn your summit evergreen… We’ll cover more about this later on this guide 😉

It can also help you to understand more about your new audience and what direction to take next in your business.

The easiest way to get feedback from your summit attendees is to send them an email with a link to a survey. This is simple and an effective way to get a lot of feedback.

When you do this, it’s helpful to create two separate surveys, one for buyers and one for non-buyers. This way, you can tweak the questions a bit for each group and get the answers that you need.

For example, you can ask non-buyers why they didn’t upgrade, but that wouldn’t make sense for your paid customers. Instead, you might ask them what was the tipping point that made them decide to upgrade.

Engage new customers with a nurture sequence

One of the best parts of hosting a virtual summit is the new and engaged subscribers who become paid customers of your business… once they’ve got their credit card out one time, they’re more likely to do it again in the future 😉

A customer nurture sequence is a great way to use that initial step and introduce your new customers to warm them up to your brand with a series of emails to build trust.

At the very least, you send one automated email to welcome buyers with information on how to access the paid summit content… but you can do so much more to reap more benefits!

A good nurture sequence turns buyers into lifetime customers.

What you put in your customer nurture sequence really depends on your business and the next steps that you want people to take.

What to put in your customer nurture sequence:

• Link to cornerstone content pieces on your website
• Show other interviews you’ve done before
• Give quick tips or tricks to help them succeed
• Share helpful resources with them
• Introduce them to other products
• Get feedback from them (link to your paid customers survey in the sequence)

Deliver your summit

So what about during your summit? What will you be doing then?

Each day, you’ll also need to check that the right sessions were released and remove any expired sessions (which can be done automatically once it’s set up so you don’t have to worry about it during the summit).

Make sure you’re prepared for some support requests as well – the huge boost in traffic that your summit brings also carries lots of questions that you (or someone on your team) will need to answer.

How to deliver your all-access pass

If people are going to buy your All-Access Pass, you’ll need to set up something to process payments and give them lifetime access to the sessions and bonuses.

As far as giving access to the content, the simplest option is a course platform such as Teachable or Thinkific. This will allow you to get up and running a lot faster than if you tried to do it all yourself or hire a custom developer.

While these platforms have their own integrated shopping carts, I recommend using a dedicated shopping cart like ThriveCart to sell your All-Access Pass and accept payments, no matter which platform you want to use.

Why? It’s simple, you can sell all your products on it in the future (think beyond the summit!) and it’s got MUCH better functionality if you want to get affiliates on board to promote your summit.

Once you’ve added the content to your members area and set up a product in your shopping cart, it’s as simple as connect the two together so that they get access when they complete payment.

6. Launch your virtual summit

Now that you’ve got all of the moving pieces together, it’s time to bring people to your summit so that they can benefit from the information that your speakers are going to share!

Treat your summit launch like you would any other launch to build excitement and buzz in the lead up to the event.

Provide real value to your audience to get even more anticipation for the event – you can use a playbook, checklist or videos to help you do this.

Your summit launch plan

One of the hardest things about runs a great launch is know what to do and when.

There are some many different ways to promote a summit and what works for one summit might not do as well for another one in a different market.

The key is to know your audience and where they are likely to hang out online so that you can go to them.

Focus all your time and energy on a few channels REALLY well, instead of trying to do everything all at once.

Choosing your focus and dominating in the space will make your promotion stand out.

The other tricky thing is timing. You need enough time to gain traction and get momentum building, but if the launch goes on too long you might run out of steam and the attendees that you have will lose interest.

Here’s a rough timeline of what I’ve found works best and it’s what I recommend to my Virtual Summit Mastery students.

Around 3-4 weeks before your summit kickoff, you should start promoting the event yourself. This could be things like emailing your current audience, starting paid advertising, posing on social media, publishing guest posts or podcasts and being active in online communities.

About 2 weeks before the event, your affiliates can start promoting. This allows you to start building up momentum first, but still gives them enough time to promote on their schedule.

Remember that you don’t have to do everything… In fact, it’s best NOT to!

The 80:20 rule applies here, which means that 80% of the results come from 20% of your efforts.

So focus on the 20% of activities that are really going to make a difference… doing a select few things really well will get the best results!

Take VSM Graduate, Jared Decamp, who hosted the Learn Microsoft One Note Conference.

He knew his audience tended to hang out on Twitter, so that’s where he focused is marketing efforts.

Twitter probably wouldn’t be the best place to promote for most virtual summits but Jared got more traction there because he knew his audience and where he would get the best response. 

Promote to your own audience

As I mentioned in the timeline, promotion to your own audience should start about 3-4 weeks before your summit kicks off.

Even if you don’t think you have an audience yet, I can almost guarantee you do… If you know someone who would be interested in your summit personally, that’s enough.

Your personal network can be more valuable than you think!

Start by asking people you know in person to register manually. Sending a few messages could get you your first 100+ summit attendees, especially if they share the event with their friends too!

If you do have an email list already, use this. You can send out update emails throughout the entire creation process, but once you get closer to the summit the real promotion starts and you can send them the link to register for the summit.

You can also:

• Post on social media
• Write a post on your blog
• Mention it on your podcast
• Bring it up on online forums

Wherever and whenever you have contact with your target audience, bring the summit into the conversation!

Share your summit on social media

There is a lot you can do on social media to get your summit seen and heard by your target audience. You can share on:

• Facebook page
• Facebook group
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• X (Twitter)
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

For starters, make sure that your cover images are all updated to promote your summit — this includes your personal page, your fan page and any groups you manage. Add a link to your summit in the comments of each image, and to your about bio too.

Here’s what VSM Graduate, Steph Gaudreau’s personal page looked like during her launch of the Women’s Strength Summit.

No one could miss what she was working on! Post about your summit. You should have AT LEAST on post about the summit for each profile. If you don’t share it, people won’t see it! 

Here’s a couple of posts that I used to share my List Building School virtual summit on social media:

But it doesn’t have to be complicated!

Just a simple post like this one the VSM Graduate Mitch Asser shared for his Healthy Gut Experts Summit can work wonders: 

Video posts are also super effective right now.

Mitch did a ton of video posts to promote the Detox Dialogues Summit, which helped to increase the visibility of the summit.  

There’s a lot to think about and the posting schedule can quickly get overwhelming. There are a few tools that can help you to schedule everything out and keep it all organized and stress-free.

For example, you could use the native scheduler on Facebook, or a social media scheduling tool like Buffer, Hootsuite or MeetEdgar.

Finally, make sure that you include buttons to share your summit on your website so that it is EASY for people to share it!

Crush your virtual summit affiliate launch

A virtual summit is positioned perfect for an epic affiliate launch.

You already have contact with influencers in your niche who have helped you to create the content as speakers, and they can share the summit with their audience. You can also ask non-speaker partners to participate as affiliates too.

Affiliate partners (your speakers and non-speaker affiliates) should start promoting around 2 weeks before the summit starts.

Note: This promo calendar was what we used for List Building School 1.0 and as you can see the summit ran for a bit longer than we do now. We have restructured a few things now that we rolled out Virtual Summit Mastery 3.0, and normally recommend our students start with a 4-7 day summit.

Make sure that you are super clear in your communication with affiliates. Get in touch with them early so they know what to do, and keep them engaged throughout the launch.

A good way to increase the promotion done by your speakers and partners is to make it super EASY for them. You can give them:

• Swipe copy for emails
• Swipe copy for social media posts
• Promo graphics for social media 
• Anything else you can think of that might help! 

You can create individual images for each speaker so that they can promote their session to their audience, too.

Here’s an example of the promo image my team created for Selena Soo for List Building School: 

Also, keep in contact with them throughout the launch to encourage them as they start to get the word out and sales come in. Sometimes they just need a simple reminder! 😉

With these tactics, I got some of the biggest names in my industry to share List Building School summit when it launched so that thousands of people heard about my event. 

Here’s an email the ConvertKit sent out to their entire list about List Building School: 

ConvertKit’s email promotion for one of my recent summits 🙂

The founder of ConvertKit, Nathan Barry, also shared the summit with his personal email list and the online course platform, Thinkific, shared it with their entire audience, too. 

I also had some other really big players in the online marketing niche share List Building School, too. Both Melyssa Griffen and Ryan Levesque share the summit with their audiences, which was well over 100,000 people just between the two of them!

Get publicity for your summit

A great way to get noticed so that people in your industry are all talking about your event is to get featured on blogs, podcasts and other publications in your industry.

Step 1: Find and research places your want to be featured.

You summit could be featured on blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and other publications in your industry.

Start by making a list of places that you’d love to be featured in and then begin to go through your list to read their content and get familiar with their style and structure. This will help you to understand what type of content they publish so you can tailor your pitch to them.

Step 2: Identify a contact and send your pitch.

You can often find the editor, producer, owner or who is in charge of finding content for a publication on the About Us or Contact page of their website.

If you have time, try to build a genuine relationship with them in the lead up to your summit – offer THEM value if you can – so that they are more likely to accept when you send them your offer.

Then ask! It helps to have a unique take on why your summit is newsworthy and why their audience would find it helpful. Be clear on this and communicate it when you reach out.

Step 3: Follow up and arrange the details.

Make sure you follow up with them until you get a response – either yes or no – similar to your influencer outreach.

When they do get back to you, you can give them more details and work out the particulars of the arrangement so that it suits both of you.

A great example of publicity done right is the Appreneur Summit, hosted by VSM Graduate Charlyn Keating.

Paid advertising for your summit

When people think paid advertising, they tend to think of Facebook Ads and Google Adwords straight away… but there are many more options for paid advertising.

You can use ads on Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more. Once again, think about where YOUR audience is and allocate your budget there.

The cool thing about these online advertising platforms is the initial cost is very low – you can start with a few ads at $10 a day and see how they go and build from there.

Here’s a couple of Facebook Ad examples that I used to promote my virtual summit, List Building School: 

I’m not going to go into all the details of paid advertising here — that could be an ultimate guide on its own!) but I’ll give you a few quick tips to help you get the most bang for your buck.

1. Set up pixels on your website to track conversions so you can target the right people
2. Create several versions of text and graphics to split test what works best.
3. Have only ONE specific call to action for each ad.
4. Start with a small budget and build up your ad spend as you see results.

The real key to advertisements that convert is to TEST. 

Try a few different ads and audience and watch what happens. Test, test, test.

7. Scale your online summit success

After all that work you put in to create and deliver your summit, the first thing that you should do is take a moment to relax and enjoy your success and of course personally thank your speakers and partners who participated…

But soon it’ll be time to use your momentum to keep growing beyond your summit!

Overdeliver to you rcustomers

If you treat them right, your new paid customers have the potential to become lifelong customers of your business.

In fact, this should be your eventual aim… you virtual summit is a tool to fuel more business growth!

Think about some of the best experiences you have had as a customer and try to replicate that in the way you deliver the All-Access Pass.

Go for the WOW and surprise people by giving them extra bonuses that they weren’t expecting.

Ways to overdeliver to your community:

• Host a private community for buyers
• Run additional Q&A sessions
• Organize special offers for related products or services
• Offer a credit equal to the purchase price for backend products
• Provide outstanding support and respond quickly to help

Set up a powerful backend funnel

All-Access Pass sales are great… but the real money is made in your backend funnel.

Make the most of the engaged subscribers that you picked up during the summit and introduce them to other offers on the backend.

If you already have other products that are related to your summit, you can promote these on the backend.

If you don’t have any of your own products yet, consider launching a pilot version of a new course, coaching program or membership site to your summit attendees.

Another great strategy is to promote an affiliate product that is well-aligned with your summit.

It’s also a good idea ask for feedback from your summit attendees soon after the event.

Turn your summit Into an evergreen lead and revenue generating machine

Next, think about how you can turn the work you’ve already done into a passive source of income for your business.

One option is to turn your summit evergreen.

Done right, this can turn your summit into an automatic lead and revenue generating machine that works continuously — even as you turn your attention to new projects in the future!

That’s exactly what VSM student Stephen Esketzis who is the host of the Sales Funnel Success Summit did:

Students of my premium Virtual Summit Mastery Implementation Program get access to the VSM Evergreen Method, which walks them through the process to turn a successful “live” summit into an evergreen version step-by-step (we even provide you with the entire email automation in ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit completely done-for-you so you can import it with one click of a button).

How to repurpose summit video content

You can also repurpose your summit content (also called the VSM Multiplier Method).

You can release part of the summit content to grow your business and  brand even more. 

You could repurpose the content into:

• Podcast episodes
• Youtube videos
• Blog posts
• Guest posts
• Emails
• Infographics
• Webinars
• Slideshare presentations
• Social media posts
• Books

The options are limitless!

This is such as valuable strategy, I created a complete training on this for my Virtual Summit Mastery students, called the VSM Content Multiplier Method. 

This step-by-step process takes you through each of the steps that need to be taken to convert one summit session in into multiple different content forms, amplifying the impact that it has. 

The best part that if you build a solid team it requires very little direction from you. 

Ongoing partnerships with Influencers

The relationships you form when creating a summit are extremely valuable, so make sure you continue to build them and look for opportunities for growth. 

As a bare minimum, send personalized thank you notes to your speakers but there are many other ways that you can offer more value to influencers such as: 

• Introduce people that you know
• Support and promote their work
• Speak at live events or masterminds
• Promote their content or give them exposure

Once you have a strong network of influencers, you just need to keep an eye out for opportunities that you can make the most of. 

A nice example of this is a workshop I did with Regina Anaejionu of ByRegina.com a while after she spoke on my first virtual summit. 

She had a big and engaged audience and I had a unique skillset that her audience would find useful – it was a good opportunity for both of us. 

Here’s the email conversation from when I reached out about the workshop: 

And after a bit more back and forth, we put together an amazing free workshop for her audience, which looked like this: 

Relaunch your summit

Your first summit launch is a learning curve, but you don’t have to start again from scratch. 

​Relaunching a summit allows you to make the most of the LIVE energy and momentum.

For your next launch, you can also reach out to more speakers to record additional sessions. This works really well because it: 

• Increase excitement and anticipation about new summit
• Continue building relationships with influencers in your niche
• Add more value to your all access pass offer
• Give you more leverage to promote with more affiliates

You could even bring on new sp

17 virtual summit mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Why Most People Who Try Virtual Summits Struggle & Fail

Mistake #1: The wrong process

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• Create and follow a proven blueprint

Mistake #2: The wrong topic

Choosing the wrong summit topic….

• A virtual summit for everyone is really for nobody.
• Go specific rather than broad and general. Narrow down your niche until it hurts!
• Niching down allows you to target the needs and desires of your audience more specifically. You will also be able to get more opt-ins and sales, and it helps you position yourself as the go-to expert in your industry much faster than if you go more broad.
• Your marketing efforts will be more effective and you’ll be able to communicate more clearly once you define your niche.
• For example, instead of creating a more broad and general “online marketing summit”, I would recommend that you go even more niche, and create a “Video Marketing Summit” or “List Building Summit”. If you’re in the health niche, rather than putting together a general “health summit”, you can put together something more specific like “Home Yoga Summit” or “Paleo Summit”.

If you’re in the health niche, rather than putting together a general “health summit”, you can put together something more specific like “Home Yoga Summit” or like my student Steph did (who were very skeptical about summits and joining VSM at first), she created the Women’s Strength Summit, which turned into a big success with almost 20,000 opt-ins and over $50,000 in sales.

Remember: Focus on finding your ‘“Sweet Spot” and go back to watch video #1 to learn the 5 steps to coming up with your profitable virtual summit theme.

Virtual summits work in literally any niche, and in Virtual Summit Mastery I have a list of 100(!) successful summits in different niches that you can model and steal the ideas from.

Takeaway: You’ll typically be way more successful if you create a summit that focuses on a specific topic, rather than a broad one.

Mistake #3: The wrong positioning / hook

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Mistake #4: The wrong offer

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Mistake #5: The wrong speakers

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Mistake #6: The wrong launch plan

A successful launch needs a well-crafted strategy. AI tools can guide your launch process, automating tasks, optimizing your marketing efforts, and ensuring everything goes off without a hitch.

Mistake #7: The wrong tools

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Mistake #8: The wrong content

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Mistake #9: The wrong summit funnel

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Mistake #10: The wrong summit agenda

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Mistake #11: The wrong summit promotion strategy

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Mistake #12: The wrong communication

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Mistake #13: The wrong delivery

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Mistake #14: The wrong recording setup

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Mistake #15: The wrong timing

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Mistake #16: The wrong summit length

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Mistake #17: The wrong summit bonuses and incentives

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Mistake #18: The wrong tracking

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Mistake #19: The wrong follow-up

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Mistake #20: The wrong goals

Setting unrealistic or unfocused goals can set you up for failure. AI can help you set, track, and achieve SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) that lead to summit success.

• Your goals should not just be SMART, but fulfilling.
• Include the success of your attendees in your goals.
• Think long-term. Don’t chase quick rewards or five minutes of fame.

Mistake #21: The wrong value proposition

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FAQs on hosting online summits

Below you’ll find answers to a few questions people ask about how to host profitable online summits.

Ready to launch your virtual summit?

You don’t need a big audience, a product, or ads to launch a successful summit.

I’ve done it. So have my students… in markets you wouldn’t believe.

All you need is the right topic, a few experts, and a proven summit strategy that works.

If you want to go deeper, I share everything inside Virtual Summit OS.

That’s where you’ll find the full system, trainings, and done-for-you templates that have helped my students generate millions of qualified leads and $10’s of millions in sales.

Got questions or want to share your summit idea?

Feel free to DM me on X or Instagram — I’d love to hear from you.