Clarify why you need a virtual summit
Clarify why you need a virtual summit
1. Determine which of the seven business benefits of hosting a virtual summit are your main motivating factors.
Seven important business benefits of hosting a summit include: Visibility: Get exposure and gain traction for your business. Influencer Relationships: Create quality relationships with influencers in your niche. Audience: Reach new people in your target market. List Building: Grow your email list with people who are interested in your topic. Authority: Establish yourself as go-to expert. Customers: Sell your products to an engaged raving fan base around your event. Revenue: Generate income from ticket sales, sponsorships, and partnerships.
2. Be clear about what it is you're striving for on a personal level when hosting a virtual summit to overcome any obstacles you may be facing.
Hosting a virtual summit will feel overwhelming at times. When facing challenges, knowing your personal goals helps you overcome obstacles. Besides growing your business, hosting a summit also comes with personal benefits that you should not neglect. Personal growth is an important motivation, as is: Freedom: Create the money-, time-, and location-independence to live the lifestyle you desire. Impact: Expand your ability to change people’s lives. Relationships: Connect with thought-leaders and influencers as well as with an engaged audience. Flexibility: Decide on the format, time, and focus of your virtual summit and lifestyle. Value: Create an event that truly helps attendees overcome roadblocks, which you can leverage time and again. Fun: Running a successful virtual summit is a huge rush.
3. Assess your current situation to identify where you are right now, pinpoint where you want to go, and how a summit can take you there.
The best place to start when clarifying why you want to create a summit is right where you are now. Once you’re clear about that, it’s easier to pinpoint where you want to go, and how a summit can take you there. Factors to look at include: Audience size and reach. Connections and partnerships. Income and revenue.
4. Identify and set goals to pinpoint what would make your virtual summit a success for you and what to focus on as you create your summit.
By how much do you want to grow your audience by hosting your summit? How will you continue to leverage the relationships with the influencers you’ll interview once your summit is over? What are your monetary goals for the summit?
5. Connect the dots between where you are right now and your goals to visualize the path to success.
Where are the biggest gaps between where you are right now and where you want to go? In what ways will a successful summit help you make the transition? Why is a summit better than other options to bridge the gap?
6. Use your answers to craft your unique Why statement to stay motivated.
This is a short, simple statement that represents why you are going to dedicate time and effort over the next few months toward putting together a profitable summit. Having this statement handy at all times keeps you motivated when pulling off the summit seems impossible during hard times (such as if a sponsor cancels their sponsorship). For example, “I want to host a virtual summit because I believe I can help families discover the benefits of traveling together. I also want to grow my business and become an influencer in my industry.”
7. Write down your Why statement and keep it somewhere where you'll see it often to remind yourself of why you decided to host a summit in the first place.
The amount of work involved in hosting a summit will seem impossible to cope with at times. Having your Why statement handy will remind you of the bigger picture. You could: Stick it on the wall above your desk Save it as your computer desktop background Put it on a post-it note and stick it to your bedroom mirror Write it in your diary