Looking for a new way to bring awareness to your business, build relationships with others in your industry and gain tons of exposure and visibility? Try launching a virtual summit!

If you’ve never seen or attended a virtual summit, it’s basically an online summit or conference. The host coordinates multiple experts, interviews them, and puts together the event which runs for a certain period of time.

Reasons to Create a Virtual Summit

Why would you want to host a virtual summit? Well, there are a number of reasons.

1. As the coordinator, you are seen as an expert
2. You can grow your email list and your audience. As your interviewees also share your summit, you get yourself introduced to a bunch of new people.
3. You can earn some revenue. Most coordinators will put the interviews online for free for the first day or so, and charge a fee for continued all-access past the live summit.
4. Form relationships with other influencers that invite to your summit. These relationships can last way beyond the summit.
5. Get tons of exposure and visibility for your business.

Planning and Launching Your Virtual Summit

Now that you know why, let’s look at a little of the how.

Step 1: Plan your details

First step, the details. Determine your dates and the price of your all-access pass if you plan to have one. Keep your summit to about a week, with multiple interviews shown on each day. If it’s too long, your attendees might start to lose interest and not have time to tune in each day.

Some summits are conducted live, with the opportunity for attendees to ask the experts questions. You could also pre-record your interviews and package them together for the live summit. Decide on a method that works best for you and your intended audience.

You will need a name for your summit, as well as any branding elements.  Also, plan your content. What is your summit going to be about? This is likely centered on your niche, because you want to be seen as the expert in your industry.

Lastly, make sure you have your technology set before you start inviting speakers. You can easily record your interviews using software like Zoom or Google Hangouts on Air, provided you have a decent microphone and webcam. Also, you should have a way to capture emails and a payment processor.

Step 2: Get your experts on board

Next up, inviting your guest speakers. Reach out to influencers in your industry who are knowledgeable in the topic you picked. Depending on the amount of days you plan, you should have anywhere from 3-6 interviews each day. Explain to your prospects what you have to offer and why participating in your virtual summit could benefit them. Make plans to record your interviews within the next couple of weeks.

Step 3: Set up your landing pages and sales funnels

Time to get prepared. Set up your landing page with optin for the summit, your upsell page for the all-access pass, any order pages, etc. You may also want to set up thank you pages where people who sign up can easily share you summit with others.

Step 4: Start recording

By now your recording dates should be up, so start conducting your interviews.

Email your experts ahead of time with some questions you will be asking them so they can be prepared. Get their bios as well, so you can properly introduce them. Keep interviews to about 30 minutes to an hour.

Step 5: Launching the summit

When the date comes, launch your virtual summit. Start promos about 3-4 weeks before, really going hard on the promos the week prior. Schedule emails to your list, as well as social media posts.
If you do have an upsell option, you may also consider offering your experts an opportunity to earn an affiliate commission, with their own affiliate landing page. Give them graphics and suggestions copy as well.

Once the summit goes live, stay on top of emails or any issues that your attendees come across. Also, make sure to thank your experts for helping make the summit a success. You want to continue these relationships long after the summit is over.

While it can be quite a bit of work, a virtual summit is a great way to get exposure, traffic and make the right connections for your business.