The Daily Actions That Keep My Summit Numbers Climbing
Have you ever wondered what a summit promo period actually looks like behind the scenes? Not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day of watching numbers come in, deciding what to tweak, and figuring out whether to panic or keep going?
I'm pulling back the curtain on my own summit promo period in this episode that I recorded one week into promoting the third run of our Membership Momentum Summit. I'll walk you through the exact numbers I was seeing, the daily and weekly actions I took to keep registrations climbing, and how one small data-driven tweak took our All Access Pass conversion rate from 3% to 11%.
If you've ever stared at your own summit numbers wondering if they mean something's wrong, this one's for you.
Listen to the episode
The numbers didn't come in hot - and that's okay
As of recording this episode, we were one week into our summit promotion, speakers were three days into promoting, and we were sitting at 452 registered attendees. My goal for this summit was 2,000 attendees, so we weren't even a quarter of the way there yet.
If you're a first-time host looking at a number like that, I get why your instinct might be to panic. But I know what's normal for my niche right now, and this is it.
Summits used to open with a bang! I had one summit back in 2022, my biggest to date, where we hit 100 all-access pass sales within the first few DAYS of promotion. Those days are mostly gone. Now speakers wait longer to promote. Attendees wait longer to register. Most of my registrations show up right before the summit starts, not in week one of promotion. So a slower start isn't a red flag anymore - it's just how it works now.
I'm not panicking, but I'm also not sitting still
Not panicking doesn't mean doing nothing. Here's what I'm actually doing on a daily and weekly basis to keep those numbers climbing:
Reviewing conversion data three to four times a week. I'm tracking how many people who land on our registration page actually register, and how many of those people go on to buy the all-access pass. I compare those numbers to our benchmarks from last year and to the goals we want to hit this year, and I decide if anything needs to change.
Watching usage data, not just conversion numbers. We use Microsoft Clarity to see exactly how people are moving through our pages: where they stop, where they highlight, where they click, and where they bounce. This is one of my favorite tools we use with our Accelerator clients too. I'm able to turn a confusing heatmap into a clear list of what to fix!
Making small updates on a rhythm, not randomly. I look at the data Monday and Tuesday, then make a final round of updates on Thursday. That gives the changes enough time to actually collect traffic before I look again and decide whether to keep them or revert. I tend to test bigger changes on our organic registration page first, since there's less riding on it than on our Facebook ads page. If something works there, it moves to the ads version of the registration page next.
Watching our Facebook ad return closely. Last year, this summit brought in $16,000 in all-access pass sales, so this year we budgeted $16,000 for ads, a 9X increase on last year's spend. When I realized last year that if we'd quadrupled our ad spend last year, we might have had a $400K summit, I had a real head-on-desk moment. We're not making that mistake again! We came in with a solid budget from day one and we're watching it daily. Elli, who runs ads for our team and several of our Accelerator clients, can see that even at less than a 1X return through the all-access pass alone, we make it back on the program launch. Last year, out of every 100 people who registered through ads, one joined a program like Summit in a Box® or the Launch With a Summit Accelerator® on the back end. That's the kind of data that tells us it's smart to keep spending.
Taking one visible action every day to remind my audience the summit is happening. Beyond our scheduled promotional emails, each day I'm doing something extra: sending value-add emails that weave in the summit, nudging our team to post more in our Facebook group, posting to Instagram stories, making sure a feed post goes out, etc.. I'm not doing all of it every single day - I'm just making sure at least ONE thing happens daily.
Keeping my speakers in the loop. I'm making sure they have what they need to keep sharing and that they know how much they matter to the outcome of this summit.
It's already working!
When we checked our Facebook ad data for the first time, we found our all-access pass was only converting at 3%. We made changes to both the registration page and the sales page, and by the time we checked again, that number was up to 11%, with some days converting over 25%. That kind of jump doesn't happen by accident! It happens because we're paying attention and making changes in real time.
What this means for you
If you're in the early days of your own summit promotion and the numbers feel small, that's data, not a verdict. It's not telling you whether your summit is good or whether you're succeeding or failing. It's just telling you what's happening right now, so you can decide what to do next.
Resources
- Episode 45: How to Simplify Social Media as an Introvert
- Episode 91: Estimate, Analyze, + Improve Your Virtual Summit Conversion Rates
- Episode 125: Your Speakers' Role in Promotion and Pressuring Them to Promote
- Episode 135: How to Make it EASY for Speakers to Promote Your Virtual Summit
- Episode 236: Why No One Signed Up for Your Virtual Summit
- Summit Host Hangout® Facebook group
- Launch with a Summit Accelerator®
- 6-Figure Summits Workshop Bundle
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