Since I came across soooo many of my clients who dropped thousands and thousand dollars to organize a virtual summit, I thought that this would be a really great topic to write about.
First things first - cheap doesn’t mean low quality. It just means that you spend on what is most important and cutting ALL of the fluff. Working in so many non-profits taught me to do grand events at a fraction of the cost and it’s possible to provide a great experience for your attendees with a small investment. If you are on a tight budget, I got you!
Here’s how I organised an EPIC virtual summit with just $300:
1. I take advantage of free trial offers on the event platform to build my pipeline
Whichever event platform you choose whether its Clickfunnels, HeySummit or Kajabi, you can open up a trial account closer to your event date when you are ready to build your event pipeline.
Event pipeline is the automations that help to provide a seamless experience for your audience such as the Registration Page leading to a Check-out Page / Upsell Page which triggers the Automated Thank You emails etc.
Clickfunnels have a free 2 weeks trial while Kajabi have a generous 1 month trial which I use to build everything. I make sure everything is set during the free period so that the moment I pay for a subscription, I can start promoting the event for my attendees to sign up. Subscribing to the platform for only the month of your event helps to keep your cost super low!
One month Kajabi Subscription: USD$199
2. I stay away from paid marketing efforts and maximize free marketing platforms, tools and strategies
It’s totally possible to reach out to your target attendees without splurging on a huge marketing campaign. All you have to do is utilize different marketing strategies that are free. 80% of my virtual summit income is from affiliate partnerships so this is my favorite zero-cost event promotion tool (they also help me get tons of attendees sign-ups!). I also did some FB ads during the event week to drive additional traffic.
FB Ad Campaign: USD$70
3. I organize the event with zero additional manpower
Here’s the thing that surprise me about virtual summit – it actually requires more work that I anticipated. Yes it looks really easy on the front-end but there are quite a few technical stuff that needs to get sorted and sometimes a simple “let me change that small bit” became an one hour task instead of 10 minutes. I spent around 3 to 4 hours a day and it took me 6 weeks to plan Ladies, Let’s Talk Money Virtual Series. The most time consuming tasks is doing transcribing for PDF transcripts (an exclusive for my All Access Pass Holders) so I outsourced it to Fiverr. Each transcribing gig is only USD$5.
Transcribing Services on Fiverr: USD$30
And that should be a grand total of $300 for my virtual summit! The same summit that allows me to collaborate with renowned speakers who were featured on Forbes, Wall Street Journal and Oprah Winfrey Show, x 200 my subscribers list, earn my biz some cool profits while providing MASSIVE value to my audience.
I hope this blog post bust your myth that you need thousands to plan a high quality (and profitable) virtual summit.
All you have to do to organise a great virtual summit with low cost, manpower and budget is to plan well. This is super duper important. Plan for how much time you will take, how big your event is going to be and how you’re going promote it to get the results that you want. This is the only way to keep your budget, manpower and marketing in check.
Cheerios,
Rashidah
P.S: Get your platform trials here (I'm affiliate and might receive some commission at no extra cost to you) (:
Fiverr: Get 20% off your first purchase
HeySummit: 14 days free trial
Kajabi: 28 days free trial ClickFunnels: 14 days free trial
