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

BYS 10 | Three Critical Pre-Summit Funnels Every Host Needs

• Jenzaia • Episode 10

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Strategic funnel planning is crucial for summit success and it starts long before your event goes live or speakers start presenting!

In this episode, I share the three essential funnels every summit host needs to implement for maximum impact.   


Funnel #1 is highly recommended

Funnel #2 is nice to have, especially for experienced summit hosts

Funnel #3 is 100% necessary and your summit might flop without it...


Jump in now to learn more about the what and why behind each, plus the biggest mistakes I see and how to fix them.


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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 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, today we are going to be talking about funnels. I am super excited about this. If we've never met before, my name is jensea, I am a facebook ad strategist and I absolutely love summits and supporting my clients with summits, and so with that, I'm bringing you a really, really important episode where we're going to talk about the different funnels that summit hosts should know about and should be using. We're going to do them in chronological order. We're going to do them in chronological order, so we're going to start with the one that is the furthest away from the summit and then end with the one that is closest to the summit in the timeline, but that's not the order of importance. The last one we talk about is actually the most important one, and if you walk away with nothing else, it'll be that third funnel.

Speaker 1:

So the three funnels are your lead generation funnel, which is going to happen pre-summit. The second one is the waitlist funnel, which is going to happen pre-summit. The second one is the waitlist funnel which is going to happen right before the summit, like I would say two weeks to four weeks before registration for the summit opens, and then, of course, the registration funnel. So this is like pre-pre-summit, pre-summit and then summit, and so obviously, registration funnel is going to be the absolute most important for the summit. This is a non-negotiable. You need to have people walking through a very specific pathway to get them registered, purchasing the all-access pass and then engaging in the summit. And then the next funnel I would add in would be your lead generation funnel, where you're growing your email list before the summit. This is going to start like 12 plus weeks before your summit, and then your waitlist funnel would be the last one that I would be adding into the mix, and actually the waitlist funnel is the only one that you won't run ads to, but that's a totally separate conversation that we'll go through as we get into it.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about the first funnel, which is your lead generation funnel. It is used for growing your email list before your summit. Is on anybody's radar? Yes, maybe you've ran the summit every single year and so it is kind of on people's radar because they know that every j June you host a summit or whatever it is. But you're going to be wanting to grow your email list between summits and the easiest way to do that is a very simple lead generation funnel where you go Facebook ad or other traffic source to opt-in page, opt-in page to thank you page, thank you page, to nurture sequence in your emails. The goal of this is to nurture your audience, grow well, actually to grow your email list and then your email sequence would be the nurturing piece as like a next step. Instead of just having a plain thank you page page, you can add a tripwire on the thank you page, which is something for sale. I do recommend most people are running free lead generation to paid tripwire into the nurture sequence, because that's just a really great way to grow your email list and I personally am not a believer in freebie seekers and people who are going to be like quote unquote, abusing the system to just get free things from you.

Speaker 1:

I think that everybody is at different stages of buying for different things. Like right now, if you came to me and was like we have this really, really great playstation and all here's, all the features and the benefits and all the everything about the playstation, and you did the best sales pitch ever, I'd be like, okay, cool, that's great. We're not in the market, like we're not interested at all. But if you came to me and was like this fridge and you gave me all of the everything about your fridge and it had a drawer, a fruit pullout drawer thing, I'll post a picture of it on my Instagram stories. So if you listen to this in the first 24 hours after it's posted. You can head over to hey, it's Jenzea on Instagram and you can see what I mean about our pullout. But it's like you know how people have the drawer for the freezer. We have one of those, but it's for fruit, and so it's only like maybe six inches deep. Love it, and we need a new fridge.

Speaker 1:

This fridge came with the house, so we bought it, and I would guess that it is original to the house, so the house was built in 2011. So this fridge is like 15. No, like 13 years old, 14 years old. At this point, I guess 15 wasn't that far off. But yeah, anyway, long ramble short.

Speaker 1:

I'm not in the market for a playstation, but I am absolutely in the market for a fridge, and so people are in the market for different things at different times, what they're looking for, who they're wanting to work with, and so I don't necessarily believe that people are exclusively freebie seekers. I think that in some aspects of our business, we are and others we aren't, and so I think that by providing a free lead generation tool whether it's a PDF download or a video or something else, and that can be a really great way to get people into your audience, and then you can nurture them and then when they are ready to buy, they will buy from you. So the biggest mistake that I see in this lead generation funnel is not nurturing your audience after they are on your email list. Most people, I would say and I don't work with people if they don't have a welcome sequence set up. I think most people know the importance of a welcome sequence, so that's that automatic five to 10 emails that go out over a week or two weeks after somebody opts into your email list. But you need to continue emailing people after that welcome sequence.

Speaker 1:

If you purchase the traffic because that's what a Facebook ad is right Like you're buying traffic to your opt-in page, so now you're paying to get someone to see your lead magnet that wouldn't have seen it otherwise probably. You're basically paying to get them on your email list and then you don't nurture them. It's just a waste of money. It's absolutely just a waste of money. So I would say if you have to pick between growing your email list and nurturing your email list, I would pick nurture. Every single time You're going to grow those relationships. You're going to increase your ability to be seen as an expert. You're going to increase your like trustability level by providing high value, quality information, nurturing your audience. Free, long form content every week, email sent out every week.

Speaker 1:

Building that relationship, I would say, is more important than growing your email list. So yeah, so that's your first funnel. That in the timeline. It would start about 12 weeks before your summit. You can continue running your lead generation funnel all the way up until your summit. You can even run it through your summit. They run. They are different purposes. The audiences are probably going to be similar. There might be some fatigue in your audiences. There may be some like competition between your lead generation ads and your summit ads, but for the most part I've never really seen the competition thing play out. I have seen the audience fatigue play out. And so if you have a smaller audience or your budget is a bit on the smaller side and you're only running to like warm audiences, you do need to be a bit like careful about running the two separate campaigns. But if you have a larger budget and a larger audience, then you absolutely can continue running lead generation ads through your summit. I generally don't recommend it. I would rather you pour all of your time, energy, money into the summit registrations during summit registration period, but it's totally an option. Once the summit is done, you can turn those ads back on Funnel number two is our waitlist funnel.

Speaker 1:

The goal here is to build up excitement and hype around your summit before registration is open. You can have the waitlist page open basically all year round, so somebody stumbles upon your summit six months out from your summit or two months out from your summit. Then they would land on that waitlist page and then you would add them to a specific tag or group in your email marketing system like platform, depending on how it works. There's different ones that use segments or tags. So you'd want to identify them as somebody who has shown interest in your summit and then provide them with some sort of nurture sequence. And then this is important, key well, optional. I recommend providing some sort of benefit once your summit opens, so whether that's a discount code for your all access pass, or they get early access to the all access pass, or there's some sort of special bonus for being on the wait list. I like doing that rewarding people for showing interest, rewarding people for being there quickly and on the ball, but it is optional.

Speaker 1:

The reason that this strategy is important, this funnel is important is because it builds that anticipation. You pre-sell your summit concept and you want to get confirmation that your idea is wanted and people are excited about it. And having a wait list and growing that anticipation before the summit even starts can be really fulfilling and really valuable information. As the summit host, you do want to make sure to email your wait list as soon as summit registration opens. You don't want them to find out from any other way. You want them to get that email from you, like immediately. I might even send an email the day before being like registration opens at 9 am. I'm going to send you another email at 8, 45 or whatever to remind you and you're not going to run ads to this funnel.

Speaker 1:

This is an organic, only funnel. You there's. There's nothing really in it for the person in that moment, right, there's not. So paying to get somebody to a wait list feels feels wrong to me. You want to get people excited through other means, organically, so like posting on your social media, sending emails to your email list and then just through like word of mouth, especially if this isn't your first summit, the biggest mistake that I see here is not doing anything with the waitlist so you don't have to have a waitlist, especially if you've never run this summit before.

Speaker 1:

Once you've run the summit before, if you plan to make it an annual event, which I highly recommend, setting up a waitlist is a really great way so that people who participated in the summit already or who heard about the summit can stay in the loop. But you don't have to have a waitlist. But if you do have a waitlist, you need to do something with it. So, if nothing else, like I said, make sure that you email them specifically as soon as the summit opens. Some of the things that I recommend that you would do is give them priority access, some sort of early bird pricing. So if they get like, let's just say, your summit opens on September 1stst but you email your wait list on like august 30th, that gives them a bit of time to purchase their all access pass before it goes up to like the regular price quote unquote. You might also decide to do some sort of bonus training or a bonus download, some sort of bonus that only the early birds get, like the waitlist get uh, and then, like I already said, a discount code so you know they can save an extra ten dollars, or something like that again, I would say with the discount code they're on the waitlist. If registration opens on september 1st, the discount code is only good until like september 3rd or something Like. There's still a time urgency there. Yes, they were on the wait list. Yes, they should have this benefit, but maybe not forever. That's just my personal opinion.

Speaker 1:

Okay, last, definitely not least, actually most important is your registration funnel. You're going to use this during your summit registration phase, which is typically going to be 10 to 14 days before the summit opens. I do have a client who actually runs her summit registration period for four to six weeks before the summit, and one of the benefits of her all-access pass is pre-access to the presentations, and so by purchasing the all-access pass, you actually don't have to wait for the summit to start. You get early access, which I think is really cool, especially with such a long registration phase. People who are registering for a virtual event six weeks beforehand will often forget. Now she does a lot of engagement in the Facebook group and through email to make sure that these people stay engaged and that they are excited. Typically, I would say that the ideal range is 10 to 14 days. That way people don't register so early that they forget about the event or that they lose excitement in the event. But it's not like so close that people can't move their schedules around and figure out a way to attend.

Speaker 1:

The structure of your registration funnel is going to probably look something like registration page, where they click a button to say sign up and then there's either a form embedded on the registration page itself or there's a pop-up. That happens Either way. You want to have these buttons all over that registration page so that anywhere through the process right at the very beginning, right at the very end and then multiple times throughout as soon as someone's like yes, I want to register, they register, they click that button and they can get their free ticket. Once they've signed up for the free ticket, then and only then present the all access pass. I personally don't believe that the all access pass should be promoted on the registration page. I think that it should be exclusively free tickets. And then on the thank you page like thank you for registering for the summit, we're super excited. Here's all of the bonuses that you can get from the all access pass. And then we promote the all access pass on that thank you page and then there's a second thank you page for purchasing, if they do purchase. And then we're going to go into our summit nurture sequence, and there I like having two separate nurture sequences for your summit one for people who purchased the all access pass and one for people who did it. And my reasoning for this is, if I've purchased the all access pass, I don't want a whole bunch of emails about purchasing the all access pass. I've already purchased it. I don't need to keep getting reminders of the all access passes available. I am one of those people.

Speaker 1:

I'm actually in the midst of being a participant in a summit, not speaking just like attending a summit. Right now, as I'm recording this, it starts Monday, so in like two days, and I'm really excited about it. She's made everything available Well, not everything, but all the bonuses are already available for the all access pass. So I've gone in. I watched her intro video. I explored all of the things there's. I can apply to get hot seat coaching and I can apply to something else some other. Oh, I think there's two different hot seats Like they're different reasons, so only one was really applicable to me. I applied to that already. What else was there? Oh, there's a voucher for something in there. So I have that code that I've saved and then I can see exactly where the presentations are going to live, where the live recordings because there's going to be live panels and live interviews and those hot seats so I can see where they're going to live. They're're not there yet, but and then there's a bonus section and I've already gone through all the bonuses because, again, I'm that person. I was really excited about this all access pass, so I went in and I just explored all of it and I don't need another email being like hey, purchase the all access pass, I already got it.

Speaker 1:

So, but you do want to be nurturing your summit attendees from the moment that they sign up all the way to the process of the summit starting, and so making sure that you have some sort of nurture sequence that's going on, that, uh, introduce people to the summit and keep them engaged. You also want to get people into the Facebook group, so making sure that they're aware that there's a Facebook group, how to access it and make sure that they are there. And as soon as you open the Facebook group, if it isn't already open, you want to be making sure that you are interacting with them daily as part of this funnel, because the entire goal of your registration funnel is to get people registered, purchasing the all-access pass and engaging in the summit. I highly recommend that you have countdown timers so people know exactly how much time is left, especially if you have different pricing tiers, so they know how much time is left for them to purchase at this specific tier or how much time until the summit, using testimonials as much as possible. Highly, highly recommend.

Speaker 1:

There's two mistakes that I want to go through for a registration funnel. The first one is confusion on the registration page of what to do, how to do it, what's expected of them, and this can come in a different, a couple different forms. So the first one is they don't know how to register. There's no buttons or there's only a button at the top and a button at the bottom and they can't really figure it out. That's why I said you want to have multiple different buttons all throughout the page so as soon as someone says yes, I want in, they can register right away. Another piece of confusion comes in if there is the all access pass there, then people start to go like, oh, do I want the free pass or do I want the all access pass, like what do I want? And that can leave people to decision fatigue and they're not really sure, and so that's part of the reason why I'm like I just want them to register, get them in and then present the all access pass, because we're eliminating some of that decision fatigue and option fatigue. Yeah, so making sure it's really, really clear who the summit's for, when it's happening, how to register, is one of the biggest mistakes.

Speaker 1:

And then the second one is this is with the all-access pass not having a fast action price point to create a sense of urgency. So the clients all the clients that I've ever ran summits for have they use deadline funnel or some equivalent to create like 20 minutes, 40 minutes at one of them's 19 minutes for $19, and then the other one was like 20 minutes and then the purchase price was 47 and in both cases, as soon as that timer ran out, the price point doubled. That creates a bit of urgency. So someone sees, okay, I only have 20 minutes, I have to decide right now if I want it or don't want it, and then they can get in and they get it at the absolute best price. So having that creates that sense of urgency. It needs to be a legitimate sense of urgency and that's why using something like deadline funnels is really important, so that it isn't every single time they go to the page there's a 20 minute countdown. It only they only get 20 minutes once.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we've talked a little bit about when to use each of them and when to start the next one. So, like I already said, you can run those lead generation ads all the way through. I would probably recommend stopping them when you start your registration. The waitlist is four weeks out from the summit, maybe a little bit longer if you really want a long hype phase, if you're really excited about it. Your registration page is going to redirect to your waitlist page whenever registration isn't open. I would also recommend, with that, having a tag that's like your waitlist for your 2025 summit and then, as soon as your 2025 summit's done, we change the tag to waitlist for 2026 summit.

Speaker 1:

But that's just me. I can be a little neurotic with my tagging and then, like I said before, registration starts 10 to 14 days before the summit. Once registration is open, the waitlist is now closed and your opt-in for your lead generation is probably turned off, and then, once your summit is done, we can go back to lead generation, so I really hope that this was helpful. I'm very excited about it. I love talking about these like little details, and thank you so much for being here and having. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day. If you are looking for being here and having, I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day. If you are looking for tips and strategies to make your next summit the best one yet, come hang out with me on Instagram. I'm at heyitschenzea. I would love to connect with you there, so send me a DM and let's do this thing. Thank you.