Speaker 1: Are you thinking about taking your events online and need some tips and strategies around how to run virtual events? Well, you are in the right place because I have been doing virtual events for seven years and I am going to open up my playbook for you. Hey, I'm Amy Walker, Client Acquisition Specialist. I specialize in helping you find your ideal client with the most simple, effective, consistent ways. And I'm also speaker and author and I'm excited that you're here on my channel today. If you're new to the channel, please subscribe and hit the bell notification so you can get notified every time we release new content, which is three times a week. Let's talk about virtual events. They are all the rage right now. In the last week, I think I've been invited to speak on four and everybody's doing them. But not everybody is doing them and getting the results that they want to out of them. I have been doing virtual events since I started my company seven years ago. We have literally had probably over a hundred thousand people participate in our online events and have learned a lot. I want to open up my playbook today and show you what you need to know in order to be able to create a successful online event because they are hot right now. And if you're gonna put in the time and the effort, you might as well get the results right now. So let's get started. So we're going to take a look at this virtual event. I'm going to go ahead and show you my actual templates that we use. These are not a lot of templates. They are just a couple of little templates that you might want from them. And if you stay until the end, I'll actually give you a chance to go and you can grab my actual templates that we use. Our reach out scripts, like our entire process. I'm happy to let you have access to that as well. So let's jump into our tips. Okay tip number one is, you've got to set your goals for the In person, it's possible to do multiple things within one event, and online, you really have to be a little bit more clear on what's your top priority. So here's some things that your online events can do for you. It can be an event for lead generation, which means you just want to grab as many leads as possible, and you want a lot of registrations. It can be that you're trying to actually make money from that event. Like a live event, maybe you're trying to make money from the tickets, and you want to make money from the event itself online, that's an option. Another would be that you're looking for status and brand recognition, that you want to be positioned with other experts and get your name out there, and just really kind of prove that you're an expert in your area. And then another thing you might want to accomplish is that you want to generate sales from the event. Not just the ticket sale of the event, but you want to be able to sell people into your programs or services or products. The last type of event that you might be trying to put together is like a continuing education event, that now that your continuing education events are closed down in your industry, now you're trying to open up a new opportunity for people to be able to get the credits that they need. So those are really the primary functions. Now, in a live event, you can accomplish multiples of those at the same time. In an online event, you have to pick your top priority and structure your event for that, and then maybe pick a secondary that you're hoping will happen. So for example, if you're wanting to create an event that makes money in its own, you need to know that because you're going to have to do a lot more marketing to get the ticket sales than somebody who is going for lead generation and is just going to do marketing to be able to get free registrations. It's a lot easier to get a free registration than it is to get a ticket sale. And so you'll have to adjust how much marketing you're doing on the front end. You're also going to want to look at your pricing because people are not going to pay as much for an online event. As they would an in-person conference. But the other thing is your overhead is way lower. You don't have to pay the venue space. You don't have to pay the lighting crew, the sound crew. All of those things are significantly less. So your production cost is lower, and usually you can support having a lower ticket price. If you are wanting to sell your programs and services, you kind of have to adjust the expectation because at a live event, they are great for selling high-end products and services. An online event is in my opinion. Experience not great for selling high-end products and services. It's great for driving traffic to an application process to work with you and starting a funnel where it's like they apply to work with you and then you do a sales call and then you close them. So you just need to understand what you're really trying to accomplish so that you can structure out your event. Well, my second recommendation is that you need to find the right partners. Um, it is easy to get a lot of people involved with an. Online event, um, but they need to be strategic and they need to be the right types of partners for you. For example, I've had some big name speakers, um, that I've thought like, oh, I got a big name speaker. They're going to kill it. My summit is going to get so many more registrations because of them. But the big name speaker was too big to promote, even though they said they would, they didn't promote. And so we got no extra registrations because of them. So the right speaker in the. Right partner is normally somebody who is hungry to like, they, they want you to do the work to build them the visibility and they're hungry for the visibility and they're willing to promote. They have a list of people to promote to. So if they're too big, they tend to think that they shouldn't have to promote your event. They should be the headliner. Um, and, and the reality is they don't bring in any additional registrations because they're there. If they're too small, even if they have the best message in the world, they're not going to help you fill the event and create registrations. And so you really want kind of like the micro influencers, people who they will promote because they're also hungry for lead generation, um, and sales and growing their business. And they also have people that are following them that are engaged with them that are like loyal members of their tribe that will show up and register. The third thing that you'll do is you'll create your marketing assets. So this is going to be a landing page where people can go and register. It's going to be affiliate link. Thanks for all of your different partners. Um, especially if you're doing any kind of commissions, you need to have an affiliate center. Um, here's the real part though. I can't tell you how many events that I've been a part of where they're like, okay, these are the days to promote. And I'm like, I don't even know what, what do you want me to say? So, um, I always give swipe copy when we're doing our events. We usually do our events for free. And so what that swipe copy looks like is two really well-written emails that they can use to promote the event. And then four. Templates for social media posts that they can use. And then we create an event graphic and we create a speaker specific graphic for every person. So we have a summit, um, that I am by the time this comes out, actually will have just happened. Um, but we've got 28 partners and so we've produced graphics for each one. We've produced, um, all of the swipe copy for them to send out. And that's kind of that front and promotional stuff, but there that's not. It's so there's some other things that you need to produce behind the scenes as well. You also need to have a post registration sequence that, um, gives them the reminders like, Hey, thanks for registering. Here's when it's going to be, here's how to prepare. Here's your link to join, you know, all of that kind of stuff. The other thing though, that you really need is you need a nurture conversion sequence. These are going to be sets of emails that makes these people actually be interested and loyal to you. Um, if you don't have it, what happens? Is they come to this online event because somebody introduced them to it, usually one of your partners, and they're really interested in love that person. They come, the summit's great, but at the end of it, they don't necessarily come out of it loyal to you, which is what you're going for. You want Pete, you're doing this to build your business. You want people to be loyal to you, to your organization, um, so that they'll come back again next year. Cause a lot of us, this virtual event is not necessarily the business plan. It's the transition plan until we can get back to doing live. Events and that's great, but you need to build that loyalty. So having a sequence of emails that they get that really, um, Shares your vision and who you are and like gives them great value and makes them see that you're a person that they want to be connected with and have in their life. So that's all of your promotional materials. Um, it's, it's not like ridiculously hard, but it is ridiculously important that you have all of it together. All right. Step four is promote. Promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, um, and babysit your partners. So when you are going through this promotion series, um, and however long you open that window up for, if it's a month that you're promoting for six weeks or two weeks or however long that is, um, you want to be really communicating with all of your partners. I do always require that my partners promote with us. They all agree to it. It's part of their getting a spot on my platform. I don't charge them for a spot. And so I ask. Everybody to follow a promotion schedule. And what we do is my team reminds them and says, Hey guys, just a reminder. Here's the day that we're promoting. And then we'll update them and say, Hey, everybody, thanks so much for promoting. Here's how many registrations we have. Make sure that you get out that second one. So we're an open communication during this whole promotion window. And, um, you don't want to be promoting too many things over the top of each other. So for example, I have not agreed to promote anything else during the window, the two week window where I am promoting. My summit, I'll promote things before I'll promote other things after, but during my summit, I'm just promoting my summit. All right. The fifth piece is the piece that I think intimidates a lot of people. And that is actually pretty simple, which is managing your technology. I run my summits with zoom and, um, I do a couple of things. One is I, I zoom it and I have all of the people in the meeting. Um, and I do it as a webinar, um, a meeting means that everybody's boxes are up and everybody has their mics. Okay. On and you get people's background noise and you see what's going on in people's houses and it's really distracting. So you do want to upgrade to zoom so that you can have a webinar. Um, and then you want to be able to run it as a webinar and your guests, you just ask them to raise their hand and then you can find them quickly. And then you bring them on, you make them a presenter and then you can talk with them or they can give their presentation. So it's pretty simple to run. Um, there's a couple of things that people are getting frustrated with currently, which is. The zoom's feature to stream to Facebook live is very unreliable right now. You guys zoom is being so overutilized at the moment. Like they are inundated with classes. I mean, all the school districts are using zoom. Um, all businesses are using zoom. Like their platform is just inundated. And so currently that streaming to Facebook, which I have used in the past, it's not working well right now. So I wouldn't try to live. Stream your event. If you've got a large number of people in your group, I just wouldn't even mess with it. Now you can take those videos though, and you can put them onto Facebook later, like a day later. So everybody can watch it there. Um, the other thing that I do with those videos is I take them and I edit them down and I release them on my YouTube channel as interviews. So I'm repurposing that content as much as possible. Um, the best things that you can do to make your conference go well is get somewhere. Where you don't have a lot of competition for your internet, um, because you're running it. If you've got a lot of competition for your internet, that's challenging. So, um, when I run my summit, I'm actually driving to a friend's office that nobody's working in, but she said I can use it and I am going to use her dedicated line. Um, another thing is make sure that you have a good microphone and that you have good lighting and, um, and, and a good backdrop as well. And if you do those things, oh, and a good webcam, if you do those things, like it's going to look good. It's going to sound good. Um, it's not guaranteed that there will be never, never be any technical challenges because you're doing it live and, you know, you're using a platform that is great, but is a little bugged down at the moment. So that's my advice there and everything should go pretty smooth for you. The sixth and most important part for the success of your online summit is your follow-up strategy. So what is your plan for after the summit? So many people put all this time and energy on getting to the summit. And making sure they have their registrations and the right people and their graphics look tight. And then they hope that people are just going to magically come do business with them. Like, oh, let me join your association. Let me sign up with you. Let me, um, buy your high end products and services. And it doesn't really work that way when they're on the summit. Um, there's not break time where they stay engaged. So if you think about a live event, usually where people purchase is during break time. So they'll go and visit the. Vendors and they'll, they'll purchase during break time. Or, you know, you have one speaker and you offer something at the end of your speech and then people come and buy from you before the next speaker comes on online. If you take breaks, your people leave and they don't come back. So your online events, you really have to go from one to the next, to the next real quick, and there's not transition time. So people don't have time to process and purchase during the event, which is why you've got to have a great followup strategy in place. What are you going to do? In order to generate clients and generate business after the event ends, because that is where the magic happens. Um, I have had six figure online events, not because I sold it during the event, but because I sold it and follow up after the event. And that's really what we're shooting for. All right, my friends, I hope this has been helpful. I hope you've got some great tips. I love virtual events. They're great. I mean, you don't even have to wear pants. You can be in shorts or yoga pants. It's a. Beautiful thing. Nobody knows you can generate a ton of leads. You can get a ton of business. You just need to know really how to structure them. So I'd love to hear from you in the comments. What was your greatest takeaway? And if you like this video, click the like button, make sure you share it with other entrepreneurs in your tribe. Now I mentioned at the beginning that I have my system for how to run online events. Um, it's actually called my expert summit kit. I originally sold this for $150 and, um, I've dropped that price down to $1,500. So if you want it, it's got my reach out scripts, it has my production timeline, um, it has all of the instructions, uh, that you need in order to be able to produce a really great summit and it's got some training for me as well. So, um, if you want that, the link is down below, feel free to jump in and grab it. And that my friends, I believe is just about it. If you haven't joined our private Facebook community yet, head on over. Um, it's a great place to be able to ask questions. I post a lot of good content and tips in there, and I hope to see you there soon. Thanks everybody.