What Makes a Summit Fail? The 4 Categories That Tank Your Results
You know I love talking about what makes summits successful - the list growth, the revenue, the authority positioning. But today we're flipping the script.
I recently spent time analyzing summits that didn't go well (and trust me, I hear about them whether people worked with us or not) to see what they had in common. I dug into what went wrong, what the patterns were, and where results started to break down. I found a lot of themes, but the thing that surprised me most was how many different failure points I found. It was more than I expected!
Ready to find out what might be negatively impacting your summit results? Let's dive in and take a look at the 4 different categories where I found the most failure points that can tank your results.
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The 4 Categories That Destroy Summit Results
Category 1: Positioning Problems
Way-Out-There Topics
If you're the only person who understands what you're talking about, you can't host a summit about it. Period.
I've seen summits with topics so niche, using terminology so specific to one person's framework, that nobody else in the industry even knows what they mean. If you're using words and phrases that the average person in your niche wouldn't understand, it's not going to work.
Save your special sauce, your frameworks, your niche terminology for after people sign up. Once you're nurturing them through the summit and inviting them into your offers, that's when you can dive into what makes you unique. But you can't lead with it.
Been-There-Done-That Topics
On the flip side, you don't want your summit topic to be so obvious that it's been done 100 times before. Topics like "Grow Your Business" or generic health and wellness summits have lost their excitement factor because they've been done to death.
Your summit needs to be unique, tangible, and timely. It should stand out, deliver clear results, and make sense for the current moment. Think about when AI first exploded - the first people to market with AI summits saw a lot of success. Of course, as more people host AI summits, it takes more to stand out now, but those who saw the trend and hosted one of the earlier summits on AI benefited from it. How can you do that in your industry?
Broad Audiences
The third positioning killer is one I preach about constantly, but people still do it: targeting too broad of an audience.
If you're targeting "business owners," "moms," "female side hustlers," or "spiritual women," it's not going to work. You can't make your positioning unique with a broad audience. You can't reach out to speakers with the perfect-fit audience. You can't write copy that grabs attention.
You need to narrow that audience down. We have other episodes about this (check out some of them under the blog post), so I won't belabor the point, but this is huge.
Category 2: Event Design Issues
Badly DIY'd Pages
Your registration page needs to look professional. I wish this didn't matter as much as it does, but it matters.
If someone lands on your registration page and it looks messy, clunky, and unprofessional, it's not going to perform well. The design needs to grab attention and look at least really well DIY'd, if not professionally done.
If design isn't your strong suit, use templates (we have them in our programs) or hire someone to help, but don't let poor design tank your results.
Messy Behind-the-Scenes
When you have a messy process for planning your summit behind the scenes, your speakers feel it most. You're asking them for things last minute. You're reaching out because you forgot something. You're pressuring them more to promote because you're trying to make up for your scattered approach.
All of that leads to your speakers not having a great experience, which has a big impact on results. Speakers are less likely to promote your summit if they aren't confident that their audience will have a good experience when they sign up.
One of the best things you can do to make sure your process is streamlined and your speakers have a good experience is to give yourself plenty of time. If you think you can pull off a summit in six weeks because you're a "fast mover," you're going to regret it. You'll have to cut so many corners, and that's what will throw off your results.
I was pitched for a summit last month that was going live in four weeks. They wanted my presentation basically tomorrow. I turned it down because there was no way that summit was going to be hosted well.
But beyond the timeline, if you're a scattered person, you need a step-by-step plan. Maybe even a longer timeline so that when you get off track, you have time to course-correct without cutting corners.
Audio-Only Summits
This one I'm hesitant to say, but I need to be honest: audio summits don't perform as well.
I have yet to hear of a six-figure audio summit or an audio summit that led to a record-breaking launch. From what I'm hearing, they're better for list building than revenue generation.
If you have results that prove otherwise, please reach out and share them with me, but we just haven't seen audio summits have nearly the impact of full video-based virtual summits. (You can still have podcast feeds available for your attendees, but the core event should be video.)
I haven't hosted one myself, so I usually like to test things before I talk about them. But based on what I'm hearing from people speaking at and hosting these events, I'm not willing to spend my team's time on it.
Category 3: Speaker Selection Mistakes
Too Few Speakers
People try to keep it "simple" with 7 or 10 speakers... and the results show it. When you have half the number of people promoting, you're going to get half the results. It's just how it is.
If you're going to go through all the work of hosting a summit - the positioning, copy, website setup, tech, funnels, speaker processes - why wouldn't you maximize the one thing that brings in your audience?
It's not that much extra effort to get up to 20-30 speakers (I recommend a minimum of 15 speakers). The repeatable speaker processes are actually the easiest things to outsource and get off your plate.
Your speakers are where your audience comes from. Don't skimp on that.
Poorly Targeted Speakers
The second speaker issue is reaching out to the wrong people.
This includes speakers with no audience at all, speakers with the wrong audience, and speakers who are too big of a deal to promote.
Now, I know some niches require balance, especially when it comes to your speaker's audience size. If you need professors or therapists or people who typically don't have audiences to provide valuable content to the summit, that's fine - but you need to balance that with speakers who do have audiences. Otherwise, you're only promoting to your own people.
And when I say "wrong audience," I mean there's a mismatch in the speaker's audience and the audience for your summit. You want your speakers to have the exact same audience you're targeting. If you're thinking, "Well, no one else targets my audience," we need to revisit who you're hosting the summit for.
Don't put too much weight on reaching out to the big industry experts, either. 98% of the time (yes, I made that number up, but it's not far off), they won't promote your summit. They don't value it enough. Their calendar is full. Even their friends' summits don't get promoted.
It's really not worth it to chase the big names for results. Maybe for having their face on your registration page, but even then, I'm not convinced it's worth it.
Category 4: Monetization Mistakes
Paid Tickets
Oh my goodness, this one gets me on my soapbox every time! If you're thinking, "I don't want freebie seekers, so I'm going to charge $27 (or $7, or even $1) for a ticket," please don't.
That paid ticket makes it so much harder for speakers to promote. Think about how much easier it is to promote a free thing to your audience versus asking them to pay someone they've never heard of.
Summits attract a very cold audience at first. We warm them up quickly, but initially, it's cold traffic from all your speakers. They're not going to see you for the first time and hand over $27.
We see registration numbers cut by 90% when you put a ticket price on a summit. 90%.
We did a paid event once and got 200 people signed up (only 70 were new leads). Three months later, we did a free summit and had 2,200 people sign up. I have way more opportunity to make sales AND impact with 2,200 people than 200.
Paid events aren't bad - they're just a totally different strategy. If you need to attract thousands of leads, get them engaged, and convert them to buyers, you need a free summit.
Offering Free Ticket and All-Access Pass Side by Side
Your goal at the registration page is to get people in the door with a free ticket. We don't care about a sale yet. They need to sign up first before we can worry about that. If you give them two choices between the free and paid registration on one page, a surprising number of people will choose neither. Keep it simple and stick to one thing at a time.
Don't give them two choices at registration. Sign up first, then monetize afterwards.
Lack of Monetization Strategy
Some people just don't slow down enough to think about how they're going to make money. How are you tying the all-access pass or your offer into the summit? How are you making people want these things? How are you building trust so your offers become the clear next step?
When you're doing it yourself without a system, there's so much you don't know you need to do until you need to do it. It's like a snowball effect where you're constantly scrambling.
You need a system for this so you can have a strong monetization strategy for both your all-access pass and your offer.
Badly Designed All-Access Pass Packages
The most common objections I hear: "Bundles are overwhelming" and "My audience won't spend money."
I get it, but the stats show they perform really well. Trust your people to manage what they get access to. You can even help them with a spreadsheet that filters what they want versus what they don't.
Let your people be adults and decide what they want.
And if your audience won't spend money... then why are you running a business for them? Why are you running a summit for them?
I've heard it all: "Teachers don't spend money." "Homeschool moms don't spend money." (I'm a homeschool mom, and I will spend money, just FYI.)
But then we have clients host summits for these exact audiences, and guess what? They spend money when it's something that will make the exact impact they need. Your all-access pass might not be $200 for that audience - maybe it starts at $47 - but they will invest when it's well put together and makes a true impact on their lives.
Impact Comes First, Money Follows
I did a lot of talking about money in this episode. I hate that, because I know money is what most people want when they come to me, but here's the truth: you're not going to make money through summits if you're not also making an equal impact.
If you go into this thinking only about yourself - "How can I grow my list? How can I make money?" - it's not going to go well. You need to look at: How am I going to benefit this audience? What is this summit going to do for them? How am I going to do that? How can my all-access pass help them go further? How can my offer help them go further?
Once you have that figured out, all the strategy pieces wrap around it.
If you want help hosting a summit that's done well, using proven strategies that actually convert and impact both your audience and your bottom line, you need to be in the Launch with a Summit Accelerator.
We'll teach you how to tie your course, membership, or group program into your summit so your offer becomes the natural next step for attendees. Our membership clients are adding hundreds of members at once. Our course creators and group program clients are having their biggest launches ever. I'd love for you to be one of them!
Resources
- Episode 19: Choosing Speakers That Will Get You (and them) The Best Results
- Episode 29: How Long Does It Take To Plan A Virtual Summit?
- Episode 186: Why We're Hosting a Paid Conference Instead of a Free Summit
- Episode 193: A Values-Driven Summit for a Budget-Conscious Audience
- Episode 233: A 4 Step Process for Positioning Your Summit for Success
- Episode 234: Truly Get to Know Your Audience to Easily Sell Your Summit
- Summit Host Hangout® Facebook group
- Launch with a Summit Accelerator®
- 6-Figure Summits Workshop Bundle
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The 5-Minute Summit Roadmap leads you through the 7 essential questions that will guide the rest of your summit planning process and help you finally start making meaningful progress toward a profitable event.