Virtual Summits: Why and How to Launch Your First One and the Newbie Mistakes to Avoid [Rob Gelb Interview]

Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

The world of marketing is continuously changing, especially during this time of the pandemic. Virtual summits are now becoming popular and the most effective digital lead generation tools today.

If you are to start your first summit – or even thinking of creating one, this episode will surely help you understand the basics and elements you need for your own virtual summit. So come and listen as we learn “Virtual Summit 101” with the CEO of Hey Summit, Rob Gelb.

Key Highlights
[1:37] What is Hey Summit?
[4:35] How Rob Started Hey Summit
[10:44] Hey Summit Case Studies Success Story
[12:28] Different Types of Events
[16:50] Should I Go for A Broad Topic or Niche Subject?
Choosing a subject or topic to discuss in a virtual summit can be challenging. Should I go for a broad topic or a niche subject?
[21:05] Categorizing Subject and Topics
[25:21] How to Create a Summit
Learn the steps and important elements when creating a summit.
[28:10] Rob's Advice to Companies Doing Webinars/Virtual Summit
[31:21] Mistakes to Avoid When Launching Your First Virtual Summit
[33:23] The Importance of Creating Attendee Persona
Why is the process of understanding my target audience critical? How can it help me give value to them?
[35:08] Final Tips from Rob
Notable Quotes:

• One is, thinking about what it is that your objective, what is your objective with writing an event.
• The second thing is that like, getting back to the why, like, why are you doing this in the first place is super important.
• And we say to everyone, build your attendee persona first, just anything else that you're doing with digital marketing? Who are you selling to? who aren't you selling to? If you can't answer who you're not selling to, that means you're trying to make something for everybody. And that means you'll end up serving nobody.
• So, I think that when you're thinking about virtual events, no virtual fences are no two ones are the same, nor should they be. But you also should be understanding like, what is it that you think when it comes to engagement? Like, why are you doing this?
• Don't assume that you have to be everywhere to all people makes you that authority. Adding your very specific bit to the conversation as a starting point. It's a step. It's not a winner-take-all-in-one event type thing.
• I think you do, what you do need to do is make sure that if you're creating, are you thinking about creating a summit, that it's work that it works for your webinar strategy, and that your webinar strategy works for the summit
• Not worrying too much about trying to be everything to all people at one, you know, at the same time. Also, being clear about the speakers that you're bringing on about the expectations.

Links & Resources
Free Trial and 15% Lifetime Discount for HeySummit: https://nealschaffer.com/heysummit (affiliate)

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