4 Reasons Why Every Online Business Should run a Regular Virtual Conference

For the past 8 years I’ve been organising virtual conferences or “Summits” as they’re more commonly referred to as, and I’ve seen first-hand what tremendous impact they can have on a business.

In this post I wanted to share a few reasons for why I think every online business (or perhaps any business…) should organise a regular online conference or summit.

For the sake of this article and general discussion, I’m talking about a 3-7 day, fully online conference which has presentations from internal and external speakers.

Reason 1 – Lead Generation

Hosting an online conference opens up the doors for a lot of new potential customers or clients to get to know about your business. New leads can be sourced from:

  • Speakers you invite to speak at your conference
  • Affiliates and Partners you invite to promote your conference for a share of the ticket revenue
  • Participants registering and getting excited about the event, and thus sharing it on social media.
  • Paid ads (not free, but the ‘excitement’ of a limited-time event can drastically lower your acquisition cost.)

Reason 2 – Audience Nurture

Your business may have accumulated a lot of contacts over time, and so, part of the challenge of converting leads or prospects into sales may be solved by simply providing more chances for your audience to get to know you, and interact with your brand.

An online conference, especially if coupled with some live interaction (live chat, comments, etc.) can provide a wonderful experience for existing leads. Plus, they’ll be watching your presentations and absorbing your message in a much more concentrated way, compared to just reading your emails and seeing your regular content.

And once you’ve hosted an event once or twice it quickly becomes a “thing” that your audience looks forward to, and you will get a lot of repeat participants which then get a new chance to buy your product or service.

Reason 3 – Networking

Another great benefit to hosting an event is that it gives you an excuse to reach out to fellow movers and shakers in your industry, and start to build a reputation with them. By sharing their work and products generously throughout the event, and in the associated promotional materials we are planting the seeds for future collaboration.

This is also how you can get relatively big names in your industry to speak at your conference for free.

Basically, offer as much as you can to the speakers, and treat them all like rockstars. They are the cornerstones of your conference, and the quality of your speaker lineup typically determines how many new leads you can expect to gain from your event.

Your own presentations may also be a source of future speaking work. If you become the “guy” or “gal” for this topic based on your conferences or summits, then you might suddenly be invited to speak on the big stage, which grows your company even more.

Reason 4 – Revenue

Even though my favourite online conference format includes a generous free ticket option, a virtual conference is a great source of direct revenue. Here are some of the ways you can make money with your summit:

  • Upgraded Tickets
  • Sponsorships
  • Affiliate Income from partners
  • Backend revenue from your existing products/services

The revenue potential is generated, in part, by “reciprocity” which is the tendency for people to want to reciprocate, or to reward what they consider valuable content or bonuses.

In simpler terms: Because you offered people a free ticket, they are more likely to buy an upgraded ticket, donate to your cause, or enrol in one of your premium programs.

I’ll talk more about pricing your virtual events in a future article. For now, just know this: Having a free ticket option will make you more money than all other revenue streams of the event combined.

There you have it. 4 fantastic reasons why any business should run their own online conference or Summit.

I recommend a frequency of at least yearly. This is partly due to the costs associated with the various software (my favourite for the event itself is HeySummit) but also just to make sure that you maintain a certain momentum for your new leads.