Why We're Hosting a Paid Conference Instead of a Free Summit
After 185 episodes talking about how powerful free virtual summits are, I've got something a little different for you. This week, I’m going to surprise everyone and talk about why we are hosting our first PAID conference.
Up to this point, I’ve hosted 7 free summits and honestly never really thought I’d give paid events another try. But here we are, and we’ll see how it goes.
I’ve seen what happens when I try something new, people wonder, ask questions, and even get a little spicy with me…which I always find interesting. So I figured I’d try to get ahead of it all and give myself one easy place to send all those questions to. So let's dive in!
We’re going to cover…
- Why I’m hosting a paid conference as someone who preaches the power of free summits
- What my goals are with it
- Who I think they’re a good fit for
- What our conference is about and how you can join us!
Why I love FREE summits
Free summits are so powerful!
I could go on and on for days about why free summits are so great, but my top reasons are because they…
- bring together a group of experts with a similar audience
- put together an incredible event that benefits both you and them
- multiply your reach many times over, thanks to your speakers
- grow your list by thousands
- help that new audience quickly gain trust by providing a ton of value
- make revenue through all-access pass sales
- lead right into a signature offer launch
And they do all of these things ALL AT ONCE!
If I love them so much…why are we doing a paid conference?
Why we’re doing a paid conference
There are two main reasons I’ve decided to do a paid conference.
We need to do a bigger launch event to reengage our audience as well as get new audience members, and the time frame I had didn’t allow for a free summit.
I like a good 90 days to plan for my virtual summits and by the time we got everything stabilized in after launching the Launch with a Summit Accelerator in late June, the soonest I could get a summit out, without putting too much pressure on my team, was September. And if this year is anything like the last couple of years, there will be so many events in September and October that it will be hard to stand out.
I don’t want to get caught up in that noise.
I was brainstorming what we could do to provide a ton of value and attract new Accelerator clients. We’ve done a couple of webinars over the last couple of months, and I wasn’t really feeling a new 5-day challenge. I wanted to build momentum and nurture connections while creating community with our audience, and a virtual conference is where we landed.
And it’s really as simple as that!
It’s what we had time for that sounded fun to me. I’m also excited about the opportunity to try a strategy that gets talked about a lot. I’m constantly coaching people on why a paid conference probably isn’t what they should be doing so now I’ll have actual experience to pull from.
I think we’re in an okay place to host a paid conference because…
- we have a decent-sized audience
- we have lots of selling experience
- we have dedicated clients, students, and affiliates
- we have money for paid ads to expand our reach, which would normally be done for free by speakers in a normal summit
- we have higher-ticket programs that can take the place of the revenue we’d usually generate from an all-access pass and offset ad costs
…but there’s only one way to find out!
My goals for the conference
Whenever you host any type of event online, you need to go into it with some type of goal. Because I’m used to hosting free summits, and I really don't know what to expect from this event, I've had a hard time setting numeric goals, although I have shared some with our team.
Overall, my biggest goals are to deliver awesome content and have fun!
But some of my other goals are to:
- offer a low-cost, accessible opportunity for people to learn from us
- have something that I can pull from to create content for a new low-ticket offer
- get a revenue boost in a shorter timeframe
- avoid hosting a summit in September and October
- have actual experience with this strategy that I can share
Who I think paid conferences are a good fit for
Again, I still need to host this thing before you want to place too much weight on what I’m about to say, but I think paid conferences can be a good fit if you have…
- a fairly large existing audience
- dedicated, successful affiliates
- thousands of dollars for paid ads
- a very proven offer to sell that’s at least a couple thousand dollars
- a very niched audience and topic
- clients or customers who are complete raving fans and willing to go hard for you
If you don’t have all those things, it’s going to be hard to see success with a paid conference. We do have them, and I still don’t know what to expect!
Another big thing to consider: You don't want to host a paid event if your primary goal is list growth. My goal is 100 ticket sales, and I honestly don’t know if we can hit that. (If I was hosting a summit, my goal would be 1500+!)
We’ve seen so many people attempt paid events and wonder why it didn’t work…when they just weren’t ready to be doing it or the goals they had didn’t align with it.
So we shall see!
If it goes well, will I teach about paid conferences?
I know someone will ask if I'm going to start teaching paid conferences, so I'll go ahead and address it:
No, because I’m using someone else’s strategy. It would be gross for me to learn everything from someone else then go out and start teaching their strategy. Summits are my lane, and I’m sticking to that lane, but I’m going to experiment with other things to grow our business and have fun in the process.
6-Figure Summits Virtual Conference
Now for the details about our upcoming conference!
In the 6-Figure Summits Virtual Conference, you’re going to learn how to host a life-and-business-changing virtual summit that fills your funnel with high-quality leads and fuels your signature offer sales for months and years to come.
If you’re selling a course, membership, high-ticket program, or something similar, you need a high volume of leads to hit your goals, whether it’s a $50/month membership or a $10k program.
We used to be able to set ads on autopilot and call it good, but those days are over.
Now, we’re hustling hard to pile on new strategies, seeing ad dollars go to waste, and we need to rely on something else.
We’re moving into an era where leveraging relationships and building engaged communities is more important than ever for long-term business success, but that doesn’t mean we should be hustling hard with every slow-growth strategy out there.
A virtual summit done the right way can quickly bring in thousands of high-quality leads, warm those leads up from cold to hot in a week, seamlessly transition into a record-breaking signature offer launch, and fill your funnel with leads for months and years to come.
And that’s what we’re going to cover at the 6-Figure Summits Virtual Conference, running August 16-18.
We’ll have 3 days of live events, including…
- actionable workshops
- expert speakers
- hot seats
- tell-all Q&As
- and more!
We'll be covering the mindset, tools and strategies needed to host a virtual summit that fills your funnel with high-quality leads and fuels your signature offer sales for months and years to come!
And let me tell you, you don’t want to miss this. Grab your ticket here.
Free Training Series: Summit to Sales
Learn how virtual summits can become your most effective lead generation strategy, cash injection method, and lead to a long-term, reliable increase in sales of your signature offer.