Virtual Events: 21 Powerful Tips For Hosting Successful Online Events

Do you want host a virtual event to build, grow and scale your online business?

It’s an extremely clever marketing strategy if you want to see big results FAST. There’s no other way to gain so much momentum and engagement in such a short amount of time.

The best virtual events are so successful because a lot of planning and work goes into them behind the scenes.

In this post, we’ll look at tons of examples of online events at every step of the way so that you can see what works – and what doesn’t. Ultimately, I want to give you the tips that you need to learn how to host a virtual event that is wildly successful.

I’ll feature entrepreneurs who serve a diverse range of audiences in various niches, from one of the world’s top harpists to a woman who has a passion for strength training.

But there’s one thing each of them have in common — they all hosted a profitable virtual event (or in some cases even multiple events!) to help them launch, grow or scale their business.

Some of these people started completely from scratch with no audience, no email list and no relationships with the influencers in their industry. Others had an existing business that they wanted to scale by hosting a virtual event.

They have different beginnings but the bottom line is the same: all of these people saw exponential growth in the profits of their business as a direct result of hosting a virtual summit in their industry. Some of them, as you’ll soon see, even made virtual events into a core part of their business model.

Are you ready for the top 21 tips to help you run an online event to launch, grow and scale your business, rapidly grow your email list, get more authority, generate more profit, create lifelong customers, and have stable long term growth?

Now matter what stage of business you are currently in, we’re about to see the inside story on how virtual events can help you to exponentially grow your audience, influence and revenue faster than you ever could imagine.

Let’s do this!

Note: This in-depth guide to hosting virtual events successfully is over 8,000 words long, so you can check the table of contents below to jump to the section you’d like to dive in to more. 

What Is A Virtual Event?

At this point, you might be wondering, exactly what is an online event?

An online or virtual event is an interactive event that occurs entirely online or on the web rather that in a physical location. Similar to live in-person events, they are very engaging and have a high level of energy.  

There are several different types of virtual events, depending one what the specific goal of the event is. For example, there could be a virtual trade show, job fair, meeting or conference.

Most virtual events (or as I like to call them, virtual summits) bring together a selection of the top experts on a topic to deliver presentations or sessions that attendees can watch and participate in.

A virtual event can grow your audience while simultaneously generating revenue for your business. An effective model is to offer a limited-time (e.g. 24-48 hours) free viewing period when people register with their email address and they are then presented with an option to upgrade by purchasing the All-Access Pass for lifetime access to the entire event.

What’s the difference between a virtual event and a webinar?

Rather than a single sessions offering value, a virtual summit pools together the best content from many experts in a given field. For most virtual events, there will be several sessions per day for several days in a row (e.g. 3-7 days.)

It gives your audience incredible value, your speakers exposure and a platform to shared their message and you build your audience and authority.

It is truly a WIN-WIN-WIN situation.

With this model for virtual events, you provide your audience with a lot of value upfront. You give them the opportunity to watch all the content and implement the expert advice for free.

However, when they say the quality of the sessions, they will realize that if they truly want to use and implement the advice, the best option is to upgrade to give themselves the time they need to utilize it.

In a nutshell, hosting a virtual event featuring influencers in your niche allows you to leverage their expertise to build your audience and authority.

Why Should You Host Virtual Events?

There are two big trends that you might have noticed lately.

The first trend is live conferences. According to Meetings Professional International, “Meetings and events contribute more to the GDP than air transportations, motion pictures, sound recording, performing arts and spectator sports industries.”

It’s a $115 billion per year industry! 

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The second trend is the rise of online education. 

According to MarketWatch, EdTech spend is expected to reach $252 billion by 2020.

If you’ve been following me for a while you know I’m a massive fan of hosting virtual summits.

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What can we learn from these two trends? 

• People have a strong desire to learn from experts and connect with like-minded people. 
• People are more and more willing to pay online to enhance their learning.

Putting it together, people are increasingly happy to pay to learn and connect with like-minded people online at virtual events.

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There are many fantastic reasons why you should host a virtual event.

Firstly, it is a great way to raise your visibility and get notice online, whether you already have an established business or you are brand new to the game.

It’s also a fantastic way to connect with and build authentic relationships with influencers. Reaching out to people in your niche helps to

A nice side effect of connecting with influencer and being seen alongside them at your virtual event is that YOU begin to be seen as an authority by association with them.

Hosting a quality virtual event also delivers incredible value to your audience. This will create raving fans of your business and lifelong customers.

Additionally, you can also generate significant revenue from All-Access Pass sales when you host virtual events. In fact, virtual events can be so profitable that they can form the base of your entire business model.

Build A Large And Engaged Audience FAST

Hosting a virtual event is the fastest way that I know of to build an engaged audience and get your first 1,000 true fans.

Let’s look at how it compares to some of the more traditional methods of growing an audience and email list.

#1 Blogging To Build An Audience

Blogging can work really well to build an audience but – and this is a big but – it requires you to consistently create high quality content.

And the kicker? It takes time for people to notice your effort. In fact, most SEO experts say that it takes 2-3 years of consistent quality content for you to see real results from search traffic. That means it could take you years to build an audience big enough for a profitable business!

There’s no denying that blogging can be very effective to build an audience when done right, but it is undeniably slow growth when you compare it to what you can do with a well-executed virtual event in 2-3 months.

#2 Podcasting To Build An Audience

Similarly to blogging, podcasting can be a good way to grow an audience for your business but it’s undeniably SLOW.

It’s actually very difficult for a new podcast to get listeners and you can’t directly monetize a podcast until you have a few thousand listeners per episode, which can take a while to build up to.

In all honesty, in today’s market I think that podcasting is more effective for connecting and engaging with your existing audience, rather than building one from scratch.

On the other hand, virtual events can help to both build a new audience and connect with your existing audience at the same time (often while making a tidy profit.)

#3 Social Media To Build An Audience

Social media is a another popular way to grow an audience. Why? It’s fun and it works.

But there’s a big problem with this method. There is a huge amount of competition and the only that you you are going to get noticed is if you are damn good at it. And even if you’re good, it’s incredibly time consuming.

Like podcasting, social media is often more useful to connect with your existing audience, rather than try to compete for attention to build a new audience.

Once again, you can both build and engage in one step by hosting a virtual event instead.

#4 Publicity To Build An Audience

Getting your work featured on a larger website or major publication is often hailed as a great way to build an audience but, from my experience, I can’t say that I see the truth in this one.

I’ve been featured in Business Insider, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc Magazine, The Huffington Post,  and many more. And while it’s been great for credibility, none of those features did much to grow my audience.

With a virtual event you naturally create publicity because people want to share it. And if you position your event right, you’ll be attracting the perfect audience for what you want to do with your business after the event too.

#5 Paid Advertising To Build An Audience

Finally, you can pay to build an audience with ads on Google or Facebook.

If you have a solid strategy, this can work. But you need to have a decent budget upfront to get started, and it can be very costly because cold traffic is hard to convert. Realistically, it can cost you several thousand dollars just to get your first 1000 email subscribers.

In general, paid ads are more efficient with a solid base and foundation to build from so that you can retarget your existing audience for a much lower cost per conversion.

As you’ll soon see, virtual events are much better to actually BUILD your audience.

Virtual Events To Build An Audience Fast

Unlike the traditional methods to build an audience and email list, virtual events pack a punch with big results a lot more quickly.

I hosted a virtual event to grow an email list of over 26,000 subscribers and generate multiple 6-figures in revenue in just 30 days. And since then, I’ve brought in over $1 million in sales on the backend.

Granted, it took me another two months to plan and execute the event. But what other method would even come close to those results in less than 90 days?

Virtual events can help you to:

• Build your business around a topic you love
• Position yourself as a leading expert in your industry
• Leverage the credibility and expertise of top experts in your field
• Grow your audience rapidly while generating revenue at the same time
• Create an incredible product without having to create all the content yourself 
• Find ideal clients who will pay a premium to work with you one-on-one
• Turn your audience into raving fans who will become lifelong customers 
• Build authentic relationships with influencers in your industry
• And much, much more!

Who Is Hosting Virtual Events For Their Business?

One of my VSM Graduates, Diana Rowan, created an amazing online event called the Virtual Harp Summit for her community of harpists.

There was nothing else like this out there but the audience was hungry for it.

The result? She absolutely killed it.

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In a really niche market, Diana Rowan brought in 2,100 new email subscribers and made 460 All-Access Pass sales. This then allowed her to create a membership site for the community she grew, which in turn provided her with a recurring revenue stream after her virtual event. 

As my Virtual Summit Mastery students have shown over and over again, virtual events can work in any niche you can imagine. Whether the topic is calligraphy, gardening, health & fitness, marketing or music, virtual events can be extremely 

If there is an audience for it, it’s possible to host a successful virtual event on the topic! 

21 Powerful Tips For Hosting Successful Virtual Events In 2019

Alright, now let’s dive into the 21 powerful tips to create your own wildly successful virtual event in your industry.

1. Define a strong WHY behind your virtual event

One thing that I’m sure that we can both agree on it that there is a lot of noise in the online space.

Fortunately, virtual events naturally stand out more than blog posts or podcast episodes because they are more unique.

But even so, it is essential to define a strong WHY behind your virtual event so that it stands out and attracts your target audience.

You might have a few different virtual event ideas but before you jump into action mode, it’s so important to choose a topic that you are passionate about so that you will see the project through to the finish line. It’s the only way that you will see the results that you deserve.

2. Leverage Virtual Events as an Entire Business Model

Virtual events are the most underrated marketing tactic available to businesses today, according to one of the biggest content marketing websites in the world, ConvinceandConvert.com.

Virtual events are more than a tactic or strategy… they can be an entire business model!

There are millions of blogs on the Internet… over a quarter of a million podcasts awaiting you on iTunes… and you probably get at least a few webinar invitations per day sent to your inbox!

But how many people are actually leveraging virtual events?

Not too many at all are doing it well… which is why it’s such an underrated strategy that you must pay closer attention to. If you want to get your business and brand off the ground, or to grow your business faster, summits are the answer.

Think about a virtual summit as a webinar on steroids. You can leverage multiple experts in your industry who will promote your summit to their audience, instead of just one at a time. It’s like influencer marketing at scale!

VSM Graduate Liam Austin from EntrepreneursHQ hosts of several successful virtual summits on different topics EVERY year! 

Moving his business over to a model centered on hosting virtual events transformed his entire business for the better.  The continual influx of new attendees from hosting multiple events gives him an ongoing supply of leads to join his membership site (which also includes all the summits he hosts) and a stable source of  recurring revenue.

“Just commit to doing it and you’ll see a great ROI. My email list has grown from a tiny, not so engaged list to a community of over 70,000 highly engaged subscribers in little over 12 months. My business has grown to multiple 6-figures in revenue because of my virtual summits and it’s only getting better. I am very grateful for everything I learned from Navid’s Virtual Summit Mastery.”

Liam Austin

3. Pick a specific virtual event topic

Even in a crowded market, it’s still possible for your event to be successful.

You may have heard that the “riches are in the niches”, and it’s very true when it comes to virtual events.

One of my students, Steph Gaudreau, was skeptical about creating a virtual event in the very crowded health and fitness space, as you can see by this conversation I had with her.

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But she decided to go for it anyway since she knew she could create something better and more unique for her target audience around something I’m very passionate about.

What really set her event apart from everything else out there was her topic.

Instead of going broad and general with a “Fitness Summit”, or just a “Strength Summit” which could appeal to both men and women, she narrowed down her niche even more to focus on strength training for women by women… The Women Strength Summit was born!

That really contributed to Steph’s massive success with her first summit… she was able to grow her email list almost 20,000 highly engaged subscribers, got over 600 all access pass sales and many pre-sales for her coaching program.

Several summit attendees even asked her when the next virtual summit will be, or if she will host an in-person event.

Niching down allows you to target the needs and desires of your audience more specifically. You will also be able to get more opt-ins and sales, and it helps you to position yourself as the go-to expert in your industry much faster than if you go for a broader topic.

Your marketing efforts will be more effective and you’ll be able to communicate more clearly once you have defined your niche.

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A virtual event for everyone is really for nobody. Narrow down your niche until it really hurts.

4.  Craft a unique hook for your virtual event

Even in a crowded market, it’s still possible for your event to be successful.

Crafting a unique hook for your summit is often overlooked, but it’s crucial if you’d like to experience the same success as the VSM students featured in this post.

Here are a few ideas to help you create a unique spin or hook will help to make your summit stand out:

• Do something that hasn’t been done before (e.g. largest conference, most speakers, first online event etc.)
• Invite different speakers than you see on other summits in your niche
• Create a cool and unique “theme” around your summit 
• Have a different focus or format of your summit 
• Become the go-to online event in your industry
• Look more professional with a better site design

Your hook should flaunt the unique difference of your summit that will help to draw your target audience in. I’d even argue that your hook is even more important than your summit name!

5. Create an irresistible offer for your virtual event

An irresistible offer hones in on exactly what your audience wants and needs so that it is simply too good NOT to purchase and they can’t refuse.

There are a few ways to put together a no-brainer offer, but one of my favorites is to include relevant  bonuses in your All Access Pass that help people to implement the content from the event

You could include:

• Audio files of sessions
• Transcripts of sessions
• PDF Action Guides of sessions
• Private community or mastermind
• Live Q&A sessions with you and speakers.
• Special offers from sponsors or partners.
• Other bonuses (e.g templates, swipe copy, checklists, cheatsheets, guides)

One of my students, Eric Yang, did this really well with his event for Airbnb hosts.

In addition to the session recordings from the event, he also included several unique bonuses in the All-Access Pass that helped people to take action and get even more value from the event.

Here’s what his bonus package looked like:

Notice the landlord email templates, property cleaning checklist and investment analyzer?

These are very specific bonuses that would help to save event attendees a lot of time and stress, which is what makes them so valuable.

The bonuses you include should help your buyers apply the content shared on your summit in some way so they can get even better results faster.

DON’T just include bonuses for the sake of including more bonuses if they are not related to content on the summit itself. You don’t have to go overboard and include everything you possibly can think of.

6. Plan your virtual event the right way

It’s incredibly important to create a plan for your virtual event and decide on the details how it will run before you jump into action mode.

You don’t need to have a virtual event planner, but you should have a clear outline of what needs to be done and work out a rough timeline for completing everything according to the dates of your event.

When making your plan, you should:

• Choose your summit dates (and how many days it will be)
• Work out when your promotion will start
• Decide how many sessions you’ll have and how many each day
• Decide on the format of your summit sessions (e.g. interviews or slide presentations, session length)
• Decide whether your sessions will be live or pre-recorded (I recommend pre-recorded if it’s your first summit to keep things simple)
• Work out if you’ll need a team to help you (e.g. you might want to hire a virtual assistant, designer or video editor)
• Work out your production and marketing budget
• Work out what tools you’ll need
• Start thinking about how you will promote the summit (e.g. affiliates, blogs, websites, podcasts, paid advertising, contests, email marketing)
• Clarify your goal for the summit and set “good”, “better” and “best” results to aim for

My students typically take 3-4 months to go from idea to virtual event launch, although this depends a lot on how big you’d like your event to be, whether you’ll be working on it alone or in a team, and how much time you have to dedicate to the project.

Once you are clear about what you need to do, it’s much easier to get started and make your summit become a reality.

It’s also a good idea to create an organized system for everything during this step, before you start creating things and wasting time when you can’t find things again!

I’d recommend setting up a separate folder for your virtual event and creating an ideas document to keep track of your thoughts as you go throughout the planning process.

7. Build authentic, powerful relationships before you need them

Something that I stress over and over again is the importance of building authentic, powerful relationships with influencers before you actually need them.

This is something you can start doing today, even if you’re just starting out without any connections with influencers in your industry.

If you want to host your virtual event in 3-6 months from now, then start by adding value to influencers where you can.

You can begin by making a list of the top influencers in your industry of whom you would like to invite on as guest speakers for your virtual event (most online events tend to have anywhere from 20-30 speakers, so make a list of around 50-100 potential speakers in your industry).

Then, start adding value to them by leaving thoughtful comments on their blogs, sharing their content, interacting with them on social media, leaving a book review, signing up to their email list and replying to their questions, or even being a case study for them (implementing what they teach and sharing the results with them).

Just look for opportunities to help them without expecting anything in return.

Doing this will not only make it easier for the influencers to say to YES to be a speaker on your virtual event, but they will also go out of their way to promote it to their email list and on social media to help you out.

A big ninja trick for getting speakers on board to speak at your virtual event is to send personalized video invitations to them.

Very few people take the time to really do this, besides my Virtual Summit Mastery students of course, but it has a big impact to make your invitation to stand out in their inbox.

One of my non-native English speaking VSM students, Sami Vesamo, hosted a virtual event for the Finnish market in the Finnish language called “Natural Wellness Summit”, and he was actually producer of the online event, but didn’t do the interviews himself (which I thought was very interesting).

He shared shared this with me:

“The biggest benefit of hosting my first virtual event was the network that we built. In addition to the amazing network we built from the virtual event, we were able to get over 5,000 new email subscribers, over 400 all access pass sales and about $6,000 from sponsors. We now have a new very active Facebook group with over 2,500 people and I had a few new coaching clients as well. Following Navid’s Virtual Summit Mastery Method made everything so much easier and faster.”

Sami Vesamo

8. Invite the RIGHT influencers to speak at your virtual event

Work through all the influencers on your list and spend some time to read or listen to their content and get a feel for their work. Are they interesting, entertaining and engaging? Does their message align well with yours?

This is the time to trim down your list by removing anyone who doesn’t feel like is a good fit so that you focus on the quality of speakers.

Decide who will be most valuable for your summit and THEN focus on building a real and genuine relationship with them.

To do this, you can:

• Research their work
• Follow them on social media
• Subscribe to their email list
• Check out their website
• See who else they interact with

Also make sure that you think about how their message aligns with your brand. If they are the right fit for YOU, each influencer should complement what you offer.

It’s not about getting the biggest influencer or partner to be part of your virtual event.

It’s all about finding the perfect fit for your virtual event and audience you’d like to attract.

One of the things I teach in my Virtual Summit Mastery Implementation Program is the importance of inviting the RIGHT speakers and partners for your virtual event.

There has to be an alignment between your audience (or the audience you’d like to attract, if you’re still building your list) and the influencer’s audience and message.  

Ask yourself if each speaker really is a good fit for your audience?

Only invite speakers who are very aligned with your message and can provide epic content that will benefit your target audience massively.

Yes, it can be great to get big influencers on board, but only if they are a perfect fit for YOUR summit.

By selecting the right influencers partner with, you’ll be able to get far better results with your virtual event (and other promotions moving forward.)

My VSM student Lisa Edwards, host of the Get Booked Solid Summit (teaching photographers how to get bookings in the slow season) shared:

“Quality over quantity! I’m still THRILLED with the 2,000 registrants from this partner, so I would have still done the same thing, BUT next time perhaps I can find a “big fish” to partner with in the business/marketing side of photography that will be a better fit.”

Now, Lisa still did extremely well with her first virtual summit and was able to get 4,500 new email subscribers and $30,239 in total sales… so you definitely don’t have to get ‘everything’ perfect… she said, “so all-in-all it was a BIG success!”

So the key takeaway here is… Always focus on quality over quantity!

9. Make it a win-win-win for your audience, your speakers… and YOU!

Sometimes it’s not as easy as simply inviting influencers to speak. At this point, you might be wondering:

HOW they can get them to say YES, especially if you don’t know anybody and you’re unknown?

Spend some time researching speakers so that you can present your offer in a meaningful way. Focus on how you can make it a win-win for you and them. Perhaps you could:

1. Give them more exposure
2. Keep promoting them after your summit is over
3. Association with your other speakers/partners
4. Give them a bonus commission

There’s no need to pay influencers a big “speaking fee” to speak on your summit. If you position you invitation in the right way, they’ll want to be involved.

The most important thing is to do what you can to make it a huge WIN for your speakers as well. 

VSM Graduate, Caitlin Pyle, is a great example of this. She set out with a goal to help her speakers increase their email lists and she surpassed their expectations… 

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Here’s what just a few of her event speakers had to say about the event shortly after their sessions went live:

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It’s safe to say that her Work At Home School event was a massive success. 

She brought in 60K new email subscribers and generated multiple six figures in revenue in just a couple of weeks! 

Check out this video with Caitlin to hear the whole story (it’s pretty incredible!)

10. Have a professional design for your virtual event funnel and website

If you want influencers to be part of your virtual event, let alone share your online event with their audience, then you have to make your virtual event look as good as possible. 

This includes everything from the summit registration page, sales page, inner pages, promotional graphics to the all-access pass membership area. 

You could hire a great designer for thousands of dollars, or do what many of my smart and very successful VSM students do: streamline your efforts by using the professionally designed VSM Website Templates to avoid overwhelm and stress as you’re creating your summit.

Here’s a peek at what you get: 

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Marie Grace Berg, host of JV Success Summit & Teach & Profit Summit, was struggling to grow her email list and generate real revenue in her business before she hosted her first virtual summit.

Something that really helped Marie successfully launch her first virtual event in only 6 weeks and her second summit shortly afterwards, was the professionally designed VSM Website Template, which includes all the pages you need to run your first (or next) wildly successful virtual event.

“Someone mentioned to me that my summit pages look like a $50,000 design team created them. I just laughed and told them I used Navid’s VSM Website Template, which made everything so much easier.”

Marie Grace Berg

During a conversation with Marie she said:

“I’ve grown my email list from almost nothing to over 10,000 email subscribers and I’ve generated $107k+ in revenue from my two virtual events. I couldn’t have done it without Navid’s proven Virtual Summit Mastery Implementation Program, and his VSM Website Template made everything so much easier so I could host execute faster and get better results in a shorter time period.”

I see way too many virtual events out there that simply don’t look great.

Rather focus on having a great design and making everything look very professional so your virtual event stands out from the crowd.

Fortunately we make this very easy for you in the Virtual Summit Mastery Implementation Program with the VSM Website Templates we provide our students.

11. Don’t stress over the virtual event technology

One of the biggest concerns people have about hosting their own virtual event is how they are going to pull all the pieces together, especially if they’re not a “techie”.

In my premium Virtual Summit Mastery Implementation Program, we give you everything that you need to succeed, with over-the-shoulder tutorials so that you can’t help but succeed.

You don’t necessarily need a dedicated virtual events platform because we can pull all the pieces

You’ll exact templates for all the summit pages – all you need to do is tweak the copy and branding to create your event website. This makes it incredibly fast to pull your website together, without sacrificing on quality design.

What about email automations and communication with your event attendees?

I’ve got you covered there, too. You’ll also get automation templates that they can import directly into your ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign account with one click.

Here’s what one of my students said when they saw how in-depth and well put together the automations are:

Verick used the VSM templates and was able to put together an incredible online event for people advertising on social networks, such as with Facebook ads. 

Check out this video case study with Verick to see exactly what he did: 

12. Provide actionable content to get your audience real results

You don’t need a product before you host your first virtual event.

In fact, your virtual event can become your first product that you profit from.

All you need to do is feature influencers and get them to share actionable content.

Focus on making the experience and the education you provide within the summit world class, go beyond the duty of call to ensure you not only meet their expectations but far exceed them.

It’s important that your expert interviews or presentations with the speakers are actionable and the audience can walk away with content that they can implement straight away, especially if you’d like people to purchase an all access pass.

If the speakers feel like they shared their best possible content on your virtual summit, they will also be more likely to promote the event (even if you’re just starting out), to their email list and on social media.

Make sure you don’t go on and on and talk about their story which they shared on 100 other interviews already, but rather jump into the content as quickly as possible.

Augustas Kligys who’s originally from Lithuania (host of European Private Label Summit & Seller Optimization Summit) had no previous experience or connections with influencers in his industry before he started out.

He shared:

“I launched a summit with 26 speakers, got more than 1,500 email subscribers and $15,000 in revenue. I feel that my first summit had good content, but I focused more to make the content even better on my second one, which got 2,150 optins and about $30,000 in revenue. The summit attendees commented how valuable the content on the summit was, and the some of the speakers even sent me messages that they got more business just from being part of it, which felt pretty amazing!”

Augustas Kligys

13. Develop great communication skills 

One of the most important things for a successful virtual summit (and business in general) is to be great at communicating with people, in this case with your speakers and partners. Make it as easy for them as you possibly can!

So what do I mean when I say that you have to be a great communicator?

I’ll let one of my most successful students, Chandler Bolt who hosted the wildly successful Self-Publishing Success Summit which got 30,000 email subscribers and $370k in revenue (and they replicated the success the following year with similar results), explains:

“We followed Navid’s proven VSM method. One of the things was a promotional strategy we used, and we made it REALLY easy for our partners to share the summit. In Navid’s system you create individual speaker images for every speaker and give them pre-written emails they can just swipe and update and send to their lists. They loved that! It got us lots of shares, emails, and it created reciprocity, like Chandler created this for me, I’ve got to at least share it on Facebook and Twitter. It was extra time and work but that helped a ton!”

Chandler Bolt

Hosting virtual events helped Chandler to scale his business massively. He went from stagnant growth to $700K+ in revenue and over 60K subscribers from hosting just two online events. That helped him take his online business from low 6 figures multi 7 figures very quickly.

Check out this case study with Chandler to see exactly how: 

You need to follow up and communicate with your speakers and affiliate partners as often as you can without being pushy… you definitely don’t want to come across this way. 

Find a reason to reach out to them and get them excited to share the summit with their audience, for example when you announce a new speaker, or about how many opt-ins and sales they helped you generate so far.

Get on a call with them if needed and make sure they have everything they need to be successful with the promotion.

Create a promotional calendar for them, and communicate it with them clearly by letting them know the ideal dates to share it with their audience.

This can literally make or break your summit, so make sure you focus on making all aspects of your summit as professional as possible, and treat your summit as a “product launch”.

As another great example, being a great communicator and making it easy for my partners to share the summit with their audience, helped me get 26,070 email subscribers and 2,100+ customers for my most recent virtual summit, List Building School.

14. Help your speakers and partners be as successful as possible

Remember, the success of your speakers and partners is YOUR success, so do everything that you can to help them be successful.

How can you set them up to do as well as possible?

Give them ALL they need, so all they need to do is tweak and post. That way, there won’t be any reason for them not to promote.

Putting together an Affiliate Packet with information about your virtual event so that they are super clear about what is involved and how to promote. You can also provide swipe copy and done-for-you promotional images that they can use to promote

You could provide:

• Swipe copy for emails
• Swipe copy for social media posts
• Promo graphics for social media
• Anything else you can think of that might help!

15. Automate your virtual event where you can

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from being involved with hundreds of virtual events, it’s that things can get stressful during the launch. Anything that it is possible to do ahead of time, should be done ahead of time to keep everything running smoothly.

This means that you should be scheduling all your social media and other promotions to go out on time – you can do this weeks before so that during the launch all you need to do is check in to see that everything is going smoothly.

Another big part of automating the delivery of your virtual event is the email communication to your attendees. You can create automations in your email service provider such as ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit.

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16. Start to promote your virtual event to your own audience 3-4 weeks before

Your own audience is the best place to start promoting your summit and start gaining momentum. They already know and trust your brand and will help to get things started.

You can do this by:

• Sending emails
• Texting
• Calling
• Private message
• Sharing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or other social media profiles

Many of my students tend to get 100-200 people registered for their virtual events and their first few All-Access Pass sales just by doing this!

If you already have a following somewhere else – a blog, a podcast, an email list, a social media following – use this to your advantage! You can create regular updates about your virtual event as you go throughout the creation process to make them feel like “insiders”.

Once you’re ready to start promoting in earnest (about 3-4 weeks before it all starts) start getting the message about your summit out there!

You can also promote your event with:

• Blog posts
• Podcast episodes
• Social media posts
• Publicity
• Paid traffic

17. Start to virtual event affiliate launch 2 weeks before the kick off

Good partners and affiliate promotion is the main (but not only) way many virtual events bring in the majority of their attendees.

I recommend asking your partners to start promoting around 2 weeks before your summit launch.

Make sure that you are communicating clearly with your affiliates from the very beginning so that they know when they should promote, any important dates (kick off, disappearing bonuses price increases etc) and how to contact you if they have any questions.

Keep communicating with speakers and partners frequently during launch and keep them engaged – sometimes they just need a simple reminder to get them to promote!

You can go beyond email, too. You could contact them via:

• Facebook message
• Other social media channels
• Skype
• Phone
• Text
• In-person 
• Any other way that suits them!

18. Focus on the 80-20 to make your virtual event a big success

There are a lot of different paths to success and none of my successful Virtual Summit Mastery students have followed the EXACT same blueprint to host their virtual event.

Yes, many of the steps they followed are similar but there is one really big thing that you’ve got to consider:

Each topic is nuanced and every audience is unique.

There are MANY possible ways to promote a virtual event but you DON’T have to do everything!

The 80:20 rule applies here. This mean that the majority of your results will probably come from just a few of your efforts.

The best way to make the most of this knowledge is to focus on the 20% of activities that are really going to make a difference and culling the rest. Doing a select few things really well will get the best results!

Choose your highest value activities according to your event topic and audience – what works for one event might be totally different for another.

VSM Graduate, Jared Decamp, is a great example of this. He knew his audience for the Learn Microsoft OneNote Conference well.

He knew his audience was most likely to hang out on Twitter.

So he didn’t waste his time on Pinterest. He focused is marketing efforts on Twitter, where his audience was focused.

Twitter probably wouldn’t be the best place to promote for most virtual events but Jared he knew his audience and where he would get the best response, and that is why he experienced more growth from his summit when the promotion period started.

19. Host a live hangout to kick off your virtual event with a big baam!

You put a lot of work into organizing a virtual event. When the launch rolls around, it deserves to kick off with a massive bang!

A good way of doing this is to host a Live Kick Off event the day before the first interviews go first. For example, if your summit is running Monday-Friday, you could do your Kick Off Event on the Sunday night before everything starts.

This is a great opportunity to connect with your summit attendees and offer fast action bonuses for anyone who gets the All-Access Pass while on the hangout. You could even ask speaker if they want to make an appearance or do a Q&A.

It’s worthwhile to set up an automated email sequence to remind your summit attendees about your Kick Off event.

Here’s a peek into the Pre-Summit Phase of VSM Summit Funnel that I recommend to my students who are holding a Live Kick Off session for their virtual event.

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20. Show gratitude towards your speakers & partners

How can you thank your speakers and partners for their involvement in the event?

Send PERSONAL thank you note to each of the speakers and partners for your virtual event.

This doesn’t have to take a lot of time but will make a HUGE difference to your ongoing relationships with the influencers. 

Here’s an example template that you could use as a base for your thank you notes. All you need to so is tweak a few things to make it unique to them, and you’re good to send it out! 

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If you want to go above and beyond, you could also send them a personalized thank you gift.

In the past, some of my VSM students have reached out to the assistant of top A-Listers that they interviewed to ask what gift they would like for a more personal idea. 

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21. Plan continued growth after the virtual event

I can’t think of many other marketing strategies (and business models) that will give you a higher ROI than hosting a virtual event if you do it the right way.

But a very common mistake I see is that people don’t really have a plan after they host their summit.

It’s important to have a plan for after your virtual event to continue to leverage the momentum for consistent business growth.

Think about what’s coming after your virtual event ends NOW so that you can leverage it moving forward.

The month after I hosted my first virtual event, I promoted a relevant affiliate offer to my audience, and generated a total of about $40,000. This was a game changer for me, and I  became the #1 affiliate for that promotion.

You can also plan to be launching a new or existing high-end online course or coaching program in the back-end of the summit or to turn your summit evergreen to generate ongoing opt ins and sales.

Or you could publish a kindle book to become a bestselling author (just repurpose the content from your summit) to further establish yourself as an authority and go-to expert in your industry.

Another great example is Brian Appleton, who is the host of the Insurance Agent Summit and Virtual Advisor Summit. He went from zero to a 6-figure online business in just a short few months after hosting his first summit.

During my conversation after his first summit Brian said:

I’m just blown away by what this summit has created for me, what it has created for my future and for my family. My summit got 3,500 sign ups, 465 sales, $70k in revenue, $20k in sponsorship and I have a $2k a month recurring revenue product.

Brian Appleton

Yes, you can even create a recurring revenue stream from your virtual summit (s) if you have a plan for it. Just like Brian and many others students have done… the opportunities are endless!

Bonus Tip: Just get started to plan your virtual event today

You don’t have to have everything perfect to get started.

Even if you screw up a few things, it’s very hard to fail when you implement the proven step-by-step Virtual Summit Mastery Method – act before you’re ready and just start now!

Before I hosted my first virtual summit back in 2014, I was struggling to make things happen. Blogging and podcasting didn’t really grow my email list much at all, and I was definitely not generating a lot of money in my business.

I committed to doing the work to host my first summit, and it paid off big time. My first summit enabled me to quit my draining part-time job and move abroad, and it changed my entire business and life to say the least.

Since then I’ve hosted multiple successful virtual summits (most recently List Building School), and grown my email list by 10,000’s of highly engaged people and built a multi 6-figure online business with customers all over the world.

But you know what’s interesting about my success and hundreds of successful VSM students?

You don’t have to get everything perfect and have it all figured out before you get started.

Hint: My premium flagship program Virtual Summit Mastery can help you find success a lot faster, even if there will still be a few bumps along the way.

You just have to get started today and make a commitment to yourself to do the work.

Best Virtual Event Platforms and Software

There are many different virtual event platforms and software available and I know it can be overwhelming to decide what you need in your toolkit, especially if you’re new to the game.  

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be complicated. In this section, I’ve put together a short overview of the best tools for hosting an online event so that you can get started without too much fuss. 

Website Tools

I recommend setting your summit up on a self-hosted Wordpress. You’ll need a website host such as Bluehost (budget) or WPEngine (more reliable for bigger online events) to do this. 

If you decide to use the VSM Website Template (and I highly recommend that you do), you’ll need the Thrive Architect page builder to customize the templates.

You will most likely need to set up your paid access area separately to your main event website for the best functionality. I recommend an great online course platform like Teachable or Thinkific to do this because they are exceptionally easy to use and you won’t have to spend a ton of time working out everything out yourself (membership sites can be quite complicated!)

You’ll also need a checkout cart to accept payments for your customers. My #1 recommendation is ThriveCart, hands down. It does everything that you need a quality shopping cart to do and is incredibly easy to use.. You can read my in-depth ThriveCart review here. 

Email Automation Tools

You’ll need an email service provider to collect and store email addresses of your virtual event attendees and send out email communications before, during and after your event.

I recommend either ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign to help you do this. I’ve used both and have found them both easy and intuitive to use but with powerful functionality.

To make this a lot simpler and save you a ton of time, I recommend using the VSM email automation templates so that you can import everything in with a few clicks and all you need to do is tweak the details.

Recording Studio Gear

You’ll need some kind of recording software to record the sessions with your virtual event speakers. You can do this on Skype with ECamm Call Recorder. YouTube Live (Google Hangouts On Air) or with Zoom – either of these options can work well and I use both from time to time.

To set up a recording studio at home, you’ll need a decent microphone, camera and lighting to make your event look more professional.

Here’s what I recommend using for someone starting out (Level 1 of the three levels of recommendations I have for my Virtual Summit Mastery students.

• Microphone: Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XRL Microphone
• Camera: Logitech C922x HD Webcam (or similar HD webcam from Logitech)
• Lighting: Dimmable LED Desk Lamp (or similar like a Ring Light)

What Is The Best Virtual Event Training Program Available?

If you are looking for a virtual event training program that will walk you through everything that you need to host your own virtual event, look now further that Virtual Summit Mastery™.

This is a seven-module implementation training program that will lead you step-by-step through creating and promoting your first (or next) profitable virtual event (or as I like to call them, summits!)

The program has been developed through thousands of hours and years of research and testing with 100’s of online events. The strategies that you will learn will give you everything that you need to build, grow and scale your online business using virtual events. 

Whether you are just getting started with your very first online event or you’ve got an established business have already had some success with events, Virtual Summit Mastery™ can help you to have more impact with your virtual event so that you can achieve your business and lifestyle goals. 

Using the VSM Method for your virtual event, you can exponentially grow your audience, influence and revenue faster than anything else, as 100’s of successful VSM students have shown is possible. 

For more powerful tips and strategies on how to host world-class virtual events for your business, read my ultimate guide on how to create a wildly successful virtual summit here.

Your Next Steps: How Will You Host Your Virtual Event?

Hosting a virtual event in your industry can bring success to your business in many ways and different strategies can work better for different people.

It’s not about getting everything perfect and, as I mentioned, you can even screw quite a few things up and still do it very well.

That’s the power of the virtual event model (or Virtual Summit Mastery Method as I’d like to call it).

It’s all about committing to one business strategy and ignoring everything else.

Focus is key to achieve success in business and life…

I believe that one business strategy that will make the difference for you and your business is…

HOSTING VIRTUAL EVENTS.

It has been proven time and time again by so many people in a wide variety of markets (and their niche is most likely more “weird” or “obscure” than yours).

These powerful tips to host a wildly successful virtual event will help you build, grow and scale your online business quickly.

If you follow this proven Virtual Summit Mastery Method it will exponentially help you grow your email list, influence and revenue faster than you ever could imagine.

Just like the examples of many VSM students you read about in this epic post, your experience could be the next success story to be featured….

But only if you commit to hosting your first virtual event.

It can literally transform your business and life… just like it did for me and 100’s of VSM students around the world.

What was your #1 takeaway from these virtual event tips and strategies? And how will you put it into action?

I’d love to know in the comments below what you thought of this post and tips I shared. 

And for those of you who stay active on Pinterest, I’d be super grateful if you’d take just 10 seconds to pin this image ????

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Want to learn more?

• Best Online Course Platforms
• Best Webinar Software Platforms
• How to Create an Online Course
• Influencer Marketing Guide
• 10 Lessons Learned From Hosting 100’s of Virtual Conferences