Before Your Summit: Paid Ads & Marketing Strategy to Maximize Your Virtual Summit

BYS 5 | Ad Budgeting For Virtual Summits

• Jenzaia • Episode 5

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In this episode, we discuss strategic ad budgeting for virtual summit success, with different approaches depending on your experience level and how much you have to budget. 


Through the episode, I break down a four-level approach to layering your ads including the order to stack different ad types, the percentage of your budget to allot to each type, how to balance the budget for warm and cold audiences, and more!


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Speaker 1:

Before your virtual summit goes live, before the speakers start presenting, before your email list explodes or your sales start coming through, there is a lot of strategy that needs to happen. Hey, I'm Jenzea, a Facebook ad strategist and launch partner for summit hosts and digital educators, and this partner for summit hosts and digital educators, and this is before your summit. Every Saturday, I'm going to be giving you short tactical episodes that are going to help you to develop your summit marketing strategy to include organic marketing, paid marketing and affiliates in a well-balanced plan for your summit. I'm here to give you tons of actionable tips and strategies, specific for paid ads, because I am a Facebook ad strategist first, and I'll be showing you the inner workings of some of the most and least successful summits that I've been a part of, so that you know exactly what works. So if you're a coach, educator or creator looking to use summits to grow your business, this podcast is for you. Hit subscribe now and join me for these Saturday strategy sessions to make your next summit the best one yet. Hello, I'm your host, shanzaya. I am so excited that you are here for another episode, and today we are talking about budgeting, so we're going to break down your ad spend for your upcoming summit, so you can figure out exactly what you're going to spend on which type of ads, and yeah, so let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

First, I just want to remind you that in episode two, I did talk about paid versus free summits and whether you should have, like, a free ticket for your attendees or if it should be paid, and some of the ways that you can help make that decision. This episode not talking about paid summits, because the ad strategy is a bit different when the attendee has to pay, but yeah, because you'd be running a different type of ad. For a free summit, within all access pass upgrade, you're running lead generation ads, and for a paid ticket with a vip upgrade, you are running sales ads. So I am specifically talking about free summits in this episode. Uh, yeah, so if you're trying to make that decision, go back to episode two and you can see what the choice is for you. I also want to say that, as a general rule, I feel like you should be spending a minimum of $10 per cold ad set per day.

Speaker 1:

For warm ad sets, you can run a lower budget because they tend to be smaller and you tend to fatigue them faster, and so, especially with like retargeting ads that have a very, very small audience that you're retargeting. You can go as low as five dollars a day when you're doing engagement audiences. So your facebook, instagram, facebook engagement, instagram engagement, traffic, email list, those types of bigger, warm audiences I would still stick to that $10 a day. I'm sorry, $10 per ad set per day, but again for like retargeting. So the only people who see the ad are those who opted into the summit but didn't upgrade to the all access pass. If you're doing that type of retargeting ad, you could do like $5 a day. So, just as a general rule, $10 per day sorry, $10 per ad set per day is your minimum ad spend and then you can always increase from there.

Speaker 1:

So let's start. If this is your first summit and or first time running ads and or you have a fairly small budget, like $500 for your summit, I would be focusing 100% of that budget on your registration ads. They are the easiest ones to make successful and they are going to have an immediate return on advancement because you're going to get more people registered for your summit and hopefully likely more all access passes sold. So you'll be bringing in a bit of money on the back end and if you have a $500 budget, you're running these ads for 14 days. That's about $35 per day. I'm going to be spending $5 per day on my warm audiences and then $30 per day on cold audiences. That would be all the lookalikes in one bucket for my cold audiences and then two different interest-based audiences. You want them to be big, broad, huge audiences right now. Meta loves and really really does well with large audiences right now, and I'm talking like 10, 20, 30 million people in these audiences. So we're not getting really specific, we're keeping it big. So something like teachers or moms, we're keeping it really really big. Even if you really only speak to third grade teachers or you really only speak to first-time moms, you still want to keep it really really big and let meta find the pockets within those gigantic audiences of the right people as your budget gets a little bit bigger and you have a bit more experience running ads.

Speaker 1:

The next layer that I would want to add in are retargeting ads for your all access pass. The majority of your budget is still going to be spent on your registration ads and about five percent it would go to the retargeting. I always start these retargeting ads at five dollars for all of my clients and then I watch and see the frequency. If the frequency is staying pretty low at like one or two, then I'll increase the budget for our retargeting ads. But if it's getting more and more like the frequency is getting higher and higher, then I'm more hesitant to increase that budget because it means the same people are seeing the ad.

Speaker 1:

There's a couple different things you can do. You can change the ad type. Instead of it being like a sales ad one, you can change it to a traffic ad. Or you can change it to an awareness ad, which makes it just like go in front of people's faces and you're not asking them to do an action, and so more people are going to see those ads and the frequency won't increase as quickly. The other alternative is to have additional images or video that you can swap out. Images or video that you can swap out when people are getting fatigued by an ad and they start to get kind of like resentful or frustrated by seeing the ad again and again again. It's the image that they recognize and that they are going to remember. So if your frequency is getting high, it is the image that needs to be swapped out. You don't necessarily need to change the ad copy or the headline, but you definitely, definitely, definitely want to change that image.

Speaker 1:

So, again, if you feel comfortable running ads you've been running ads for a while, or you have hosted the summit before and you feel pretty confident in your setup, or you have a large budget, so, like I was going to say $70 it's $70 a day that I have written down here, a thousand dollars for your whole summit then that's when I would be introducing those AAP ads, because we really want to make sure that the registration is running smoothly and focusing on getting increasing the conversion to of the AAP, of the all access pass organically versus retargeting people. Now the next layer would be, again, if you are very comfortable running ads and you have success with the ad from a past summit and you have a larger budget, so here I've written down like 5,000, but you could start adding these in even at the thousand dollar level if you're feeling comfortable, confident. But I would say these two ads that I'm going to talk about now are actually going to be running before your summit registration ads, and so you're going to want to have a separate like 500 to a thousand dollars for these ads. So we're looking at a total budget of at least 1500 to 2000 for this next level of ads that we're layering in and that is lead generation and nurturing ads pre summit. And so those are going to be the ads that you are growing your email list with an opt-in, a freebie of some sort, before the registration period. So it's not growing your list with summit registrations, it's before that. So I like to start those anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks before the summit.

Speaker 1:

And then nurture ads are are content based ads, where you are driving traffic to your blog posts or to your podcast episode so that more people are interacting with that long form content and you're nurturing them. There's no other goal, nothing else. More people are consuming your content. Now you can set up what I like to refer to as a waterfall strategy, where the first way that they interact with you is that content piece and then, once they've seen the content piece, it triggers them to start seeing those lead generation ads so you can get them on your email list. And these flow really nicely together because the content ad, that nurture ad, is typically going to be at a lower cost, because it's less of a demand. You're just asking someone to read a blog post or listen to a podcast episode or watch a video of yours, and then you can pay a little bit more money and get them on your email list and now you can be emailing them and nurturing them and hopefully they're going to keep consuming your content.

Speaker 1:

So that's our next level, and then our final level that we'd be adding in is some sort of post summit retargeting, and again we're going to want another like 500 to a thousand dollars for this, and that is two. There's two options and you don't have to do either one of them, but the two options are to continue promoting the all access pass afterwards, whether it's for like a set period. I just wrapped up a summit with a client and they continued their all access pass sales for four days after the summit ended and then they cut off. I've also had clients who change their entire summit to evergreen content and you can purchase an all-access pass to get access to the entire summit at any point, and we continue running these ads for anywhere from three to six months, depending on how relevant the content is and how those ads are doing. So that's option number one for post-summit retargeting.

Speaker 1:

Option number two, and you do need to pick one or the other, because you don't really want to be confusing people. You want to keep it as simple as possible. Option number two is open cart of some sort. So you might be promoting a course or a membership or a program of some sort and after the summit is done you open the cart and are welcoming people in, and so you can spend five to twenty five dollars per day with retargeting ads and promotion of that open cart. So those are kind of the four levels. I'm just going to quickly go back through them. Level one is registration ads and getting increased registration. Level two is adding on retargeting ads for your all access pass. Level three is adding on lead generation and nurture ads eight to 12 weeks before your summit starts. And then layer number four is some sort of post-summit retargeting, whether that is continuing to sell the all-access pass once the summit has finished or going into an open cart launch. I do want to just say that, depending on your business model, open cart may not even happen post-summit summit. I noticed that, like service providers and coaches don't tend to open their cart post summit, whereas course creators and membership owners are more likely to open their cart. So keep that in mind too of like what type of business you have, if opening the cart would even make sense post summit.

Speaker 1:

The last thing I want to chat about is how to know if your budget is working or not, and I have two different things that you would need to that I consider. The number one is rollout, so that's return on ad spend. Basically, are you making money from your aap sales, from that all access pass? Your first goal? So, like the first time you run these ads, the first thing you want to look at is just breaking even straight up. Breaking even for every one dollar you spend on ads, you're making one dollar back from the all access pass. I typically consider anywhere from 75 return on ad spend to 125%. I consider that breaking even even though technically 75% means you're only making 75 cents back per dollar you spent. I think if you are only spending 25 cents to get a lead on your list, like that's pretty amazing. So that's our first kind of like success level. The next one would be refining your messaging, improving conversion, lowering ad costs, doing all of that optimization piece so that you can return. You can increase your ROAS, you can increase your return on ad spend to 300% or more. So that's making $3 for every dollar spent, or at least $2 profit.

Speaker 1:

What I've noticed by helping clients run summits year after year after year I have two different, three different clients that I've ran summits for every single year for the past three or four years, depending on the client, and what I've noticed is return on ad spend tends to increase year over year, and so for each one of them, our first year was closer to the like break even goal, and then it doubled the second year and I don't want to say doubled again, but, like my one client, it it increased from it was about one 150 percent to 380 to 500, and then this year it's in that 500 range again. So year four, we're making five dollars per every dollar spent on ads. And then I have another client, who's someone I just wrapped up first year working together was actually about 300, which was phenomenal, and then second year it was like 600, which is a double, and then this year it was 1200, which is making 12 return on ad spend, or sorry, 12 for every one dollar spent on ads, which is just like my brain exploded when I did that calculation and every week sending them their uh, results. I was like I can't believe I'm sending you this. So if you are going to be hosting a summit, I really recommend that you try and make it an annual thing and that you are tightening your messaging, tightening your clarity around what you're serving and who you're serving, and that you continue to build on your success year over year over year, because I've definitely seen it happen multiple times. So that's the first way you know your ads are working is calculating that return on ad spend and you are making at least what you are spending, if not more.

Speaker 1:

And then the second way is your cost per lead. Now, not all of the summits that I support are able to track this, because sometimes we are so focused on the return on ad spend that we don't actually separate the leads out from the rest of the leads, because it really depends on the summit host and what they want. So I've definitely I definitely have hosts that have completely separate ads funnels and I know exactly how many leads and how much money was earned from the ads and only the ads. There's no mixing anything. And then I have other clients that all of the leads go into one bucket and then we have a specific affiliate link for the ads so I can very, very accurately track the return on ad spend. But that's the second metric is your cost per ad, per lead. So I've seen summits where the cost per lead is like around the $2 mark and I've seen it as high as $15.

Speaker 1:

So I don't have a golden number for you. It really depends on your niche, the type of like client or audience that you have. This is where running ads in the past can really come in handy, and again running ads year after year at your summit, so that you know exactly what a lead costs and you can see your own lead costs. You can also talk to other people in your industry, talk to other people in your niche and just figure out, like what might be normal for you. But just know that there is a pretty wide variance and, keeping that in mind, how much are making?

Speaker 1:

Like if your all access pass is $15 and you're paying $15 per lead, then it will be very hard for you to profit. But if your all access pass is $15 and you're paying $2 per lead, it is a lot easier to profit. So, having those numbers in your mind, knowing how much your all access pass costs, obviously you're the one who said it as the host, and then also knowing what your cost per lead is so that you can make those calculations. Are you making enough money on your all access passes to make your return on ad spend? So I really hope that that was helpful. Uh, some insight on the different layers of budgeting and how you can know your ads are successful. I will be back with episode number six of our launch series. We're going to be talking about getting speakers to promote from a speaker aka me, who sometimes kind of a little bit hates promoting. So I have lots of thoughts about this and I hope that you will keep listening to the next episode, Thank you.