How to Plan an Effective Virtual Event for your Business

Jordan Aspen [00:00:00]:
As a business owner, you can be more agile when it’s only you getting up on the stage. 

Jeffro [00:00:14]:
Welcome back to digital dominance. When Covid first hit and the economy shut down, people couldn’t meet in person. And as you all know, we turned to Zoom and virtual events, or at least the savvy and light on their feet entrepreneur newers did. Then everyone else struggled to make the leap. Now, while online events may have felt unnatural at first, many of the summits and virtual events actually got pretty good after a while, and that made the ones who didn’t innovate start to look pretty bad by comparison. Virtual events are not going away, and they have proven to be an effective way of expanding your reach and connecting with people that really wasn’t available to smaller businesses in the past. So today I will be talking with Jordan Aspen from civilized animal to discuss these events and how to utilize them effectively. Jordan is a virtual and hybrid event coordinator that helps people connect with their audience in a way that aligns with their values and desires, not just the algorithms of social media.

Jeffro [00:01:05]:
She and her husband Paul help with all aspects of your virtual event, from software to speakers production and more. So welcome to the show, Jordan.

Jordan Aspen [00:01:13]:
Thank you so much for having me.

Jeffro [00:01:15]:
Definitely. And Jordan, I love the fact that you have a focus on virtual events. A lot of people feel like they should be doing webinars or something, but they have no idea what they’re doing. Then they end up spending a ton of time and effort only to have no one show up. And the people that do show up don’t sign up or buy or do whatever they are hoping people will do. Can you start by giving us your high level philosophy on virtual events?

Jordan Aspen [00:01:38]:
Yes. So I’m really passionate about a very particular kind of event, even though we do various types with our clients. But the one that I’m really passionate about is taking center stage to give center stage hosting a virtual event where you take people from your network and elevate your network with you by inviting guest speakers to be a part of your event. So like a virtual summit, for example, I like small virtual summits with no more than a dozen speakers, because then you can feature each of those people individually, build your community with those speakers, and elevate your entire network and their networks through this event yourself. And the reason that I’m really passionate about that is something that you mentioned in the intro, the COVID era. We had this situation where in person events were being shut down. And I had personal friends who ran the conference circuits, specifically in the home school conference circuits who made their living and fed their children based on those in person conferences. So I saw them just lose their job overnight, essentially.

Jordan Aspen [00:02:49]:
And then on the other side of things, I had a bunch of my peers, especially fellow entrepreneurs, who were freaking out because they didn’t know if their kids schools were going to open back up and they didn’t know how they were going to manage their kids education on top of all of their work requirements, like I said, especially those entrepreneurs who are building businesses themselves. And so I saw these two groups and thought, these guys need to get together, because as a homeschool graduate myself, I knew that those homeschool conference speakers had so much more to offer than simply, here’s how to create a whole homeschool environment yourself. Instead, I knew that they could help these parents see that their kids would get educated even if they stayed home, or had to do virtual school, or had to do some kind of hybrid where they’re in and out of school, or maybe even skip a year and do a gap year. So I brought these two together and created a virtual summit, and it was amazing. We had three times the turnout that we expected, and we were able to bring peace to a lot of these anxious parents, as well as connect those anxious parents with the speakers who had the tools for them to buy that they needed in order to give them a little bit of income back as well.

Jeffro [00:04:07]:
Right. So you’re able to combine. You saw the need and you saw the resource, and you just kind of put them together in that virtual format, and that was a win for everybody. So I know that you focused on the summits, you mentioned that. So we’ll come back to it. But can you walk us through some of the other different types of virtual events as well? And when someone should consider hosting one versus the other, like a webinar versus a summit, as a business owner, how do you really decide what makes sense?

Jordan Aspen [00:04:32]:
Yes, as a business owner, you can be more agile when it’s only you getting up on the stage. So if you want to test a talk or a workshop or something like that, it can be very effective to just throw up a webinar workshop, something solo, even a multi day challenge where you can split that signature talk into a couple of different pieces and do a challenge. It’s a very effective way to test your messaging, and it can also be an effective conversion tool. When you have an audience existing, it’s less effective. If you are wanting to get new leads, brand new leads, you need to have a lot of other marketing pieces in place dialed in, you might want to run ads, that sort of a thing. If you want to use a solo event as a lead generation event. If you want a lead generation event where you’re bringing new people into your circle and introducing them to you, a virtual summit type of setting where you have multiple speakers coming in can be very effective for that because you get those speakers audiences to come and join you as well. And so that’s where the lead generation comes in, this affiliate partnership sort of situation.

Jordan Aspen [00:05:50]:
Now, to split the difference between those two jv webinars can be very effective. And what I mean by that is finding one single collaborator and making an agreement with them that you do your webinar, you do your workshop for their audience, so they do the promotion, you show up and give the content and create the experience, and then anyone who converts from that to your paid offer, that paid offer pays out a good sized affiliate commission to that joint venture partner that you have done the webinar with. So that’s a sample of a few more.

Jeffro [00:06:30]:
Got it. No, I like that. And it’s good to know there are multiple options out there. I’m sure a lot of people haven’t thought of the joint venture approach for something like this. Can you talk for a minute? Let’s talk about scheduling. How long should these events be scheduled for? How far in advance? Well, before we get how far in advance, what percentage of time should be allocated for teaching, making an offer, networking, when you’re doing a summit, because so much can happen within a summit, it can be a one day summit, two day summit. And if you’ve got twelve speakers, or however many, how do you decide how to allocate that time? Let’s start there.

Jordan Aspen [00:07:03]:
That’s a really great question. And what it really comes down to is even just the beginning of that question, how do you decide, and really, when it comes to deciding anything about your event, what kind of event you’re having, how many speakers, and any of these decisions, you need to have a North Star objective that you keep coming back to, and that’s going to help you make these decisions so much easier. And so that’s a part of my process where we set these North Star intentions before we start making any real decisions about the event at all. So if my North Star objective is to get as many leads as possible into my ecosystem, new leads, and I want them to get to know me as an expert and convert to my offer. So new leads to convert to my offer, helping get to know them is part of that North Star objective for my event, therefore, it makes it really easy. Is this going to be a solo event or am I going to have other speakers? Well, I want to use what I just talked about, the speaker’s audiences, and so therefore I’m going to have other speakers if I want them to get to know me. I don’t want them to be overwhelmed at the event, and I want them to see me everywhere. So therefore, I’m going to lean toward doing interview style presentations versus having my speakers submit presentations.

Jordan Aspen [00:08:31]:
I’m also going to keep the speakers to a minimum. Like I said, I prefer to do events with fewer than a dozen speakers because I don’t want to overwhelm the participants with speakers and keeping everybody straight, especially if I want to be that central human in the middle of it. Similarly, I’m going to do a multi day event where I’m showing up truly live. Throughout that event, I’m at least doing some sort of intro to the day, kick off to the day with, hey, don’t miss these interviews. Here are some highlights. Or at the end of the day, I’m going to hop on live and say, hey, did you miss this? We’ve still got a few more hours to catch it. This is what people have been saying in the chat. This is what people have been loving, that kind of thing.

Jordan Aspen [00:09:17]:
That’s putting me in front of the audience repeatedly. And again, all of these decisions are based off of that North Star objective. So if the North Star objective is different, then I might do a single day event, or I might do an event where everything is truly live versus having pre recorded sessions. You asked about networking and what percentage should be networking. Again, what is your objective? If your objective is really for you to get connected with your people, you want to make sure that every networking session is not a break where you’re letting people network so that you can peace out for a little bit. You want to be there networking and be engaged. And so that’s going to tell you how much time you can spend networking because you have to be on for every minute of that networking. So, yeah, North Star, that’s what you need in order to make those decisions.

Jeffro [00:10:15]:
I like that. And that’s a good way to think about it, too, because sometimes we get caught up in, oh, what’s the right way to do it? And we’re looking for someone to tell us the map to get there. But everyone’s goals are different, and that, of course, does affect how you plan out the event. So I like that. Now you’ve mentioned multi day events. I’m curious how much more work is a multi day event versus just a one day event.

Jordan Aspen [00:10:38]:
Not much. In fact, sometimes it feels like less work to me because I’m able to spread some of those objective, the tasks that it takes to fulfill my North Star objective, I’m able to spread them out over three days or two days versus trying to pack them all into one day. I had a client event where we were initially looking at multi day, but because of his schedule, we had to do it on one day. And so I was telling him, okay, you need to cut down on speakers, and he wouldn’t. And so we ended up just going back to back to back to back to back and packed that day in. And it was so much work on that day of. The hype was incredible. And he was able to maintain his energy because he had this awesome team in the background, including myself, but not limited to myself, making sure everything went smoothly.

Jordan Aspen [00:11:32]:
So he just had to show up and be amazing and network and do his thing. So he had everything in place to make it not so crazy. But if he had tried to do that solo, he would have burned out so bad, run into tech issues, because he was over here while this was happening, and we didn’t have literally any breaks in between sessions. And so if he had been doing it solo, he would not have been able to take a breath for any reason. And so, again, more work, because you have to make sure that everything is in place to deal with any potential issues that might come up, versus a three day event where you can actually schedule in breaks, have that overnight time to let things buffer, literally or figuratively letting yourself buffer, or literal downloads, buffering and responding to customer service thing. So, yeah, not much more work. Ultimately.

Jeffro [00:12:35]:
How many people, on average, does it take to be that team? Right, the ones in the background, not counting the speakers.

Jordan Aspen [00:12:42]:
Again, that really depends on the type of event you can totally do this solo. That original event that I told you about, where I had the home school educators come together with the parents, I did that solo, pretty much, I guess my husband is a team member of mine, and we did it together, but to a certain degree. But for the most part, I was doing it solo. I know a lot of solopreneurs who do it solo. A lot of people also hire one assistant, and that’s sufficient for their objectives. But ultimately, if you want to do this premium level event where you just have to show up and everybody else is doing all the tech support and all of that, I guess it’s the same answer to the question of how many people does it take to run a business? Well, what kind of business? And how far along are you and how many people are attending your event? Because if you have less than 100 people, if you have less than 50 people, then the customer service is going to be low and you’re going to be able to manage that during breaks. You might need someone to handle customer service and tech issues with people trying to log into your event. If you’ve got multi thousand people attending your event.

Jeffro [00:14:02]:
Right? Yeah. Okay. So it just depends on the scale and what you’re trying to do. I saw on your website you typically recommend 90 to 120 days to plan an event. Can you explain that timeline and what is happening during those months leading up to the big day?

Jordan Aspen [00:14:17]:
Yes. I love that you asked this question, and I love how you asked it, because a lot of people ask the wrong question, and that’s how little time can I spend planning this event? How soon can I run this event? And so, keeping in mind that we’re talking about a multipurson, multi day event, maybe just two days, but still multi day with multiple speakers, 90 to 120 days is really ideal because you are having to wait on speakers. That’s one of the biggest reasons why you need that full 90 days, because it’s not about man hours. If you just counted up the man hours and you worked full time on your event, you could theoretically do it in just a couple of weeks. However, ever you know, as a podcaster that you reach out to these people to invite them to interview and speak, and then you have to wait for them to say yes. And then when they say yes, you get them the details, and then you have to wait for them to get you the details back for their bio and their headshot and all of these things, and talk about what they’re going to talk about, and then they have to actually talk about that thing, whether they’re showing up live and coordinating that or pre recording it, there’s just all of those logistics. And so it’s not just man hours, because sometimes that just is a minute here and 5 minutes there, but it’s waiting that seven days before you remind somebody to do something that they haven’t done for you yet, so that you’re not having to remind them on the daily because your event is a week away. So that’s really where that comes down to.

Jordan Aspen [00:15:50]:
I will tell you that I have run an event from idea to actually being live at that event in six weeks. So it is possible, but you’re not going to get the speakers that you necessarily want, and you’re going to have to cut corners in other places as well. I will also insert this one last tip is if you have any quote, big name speakers that you want who you figure are going to be busy. So maybe you have a connection with a coach, but you know that they’re constantly doing all the things. Reach out to them as soon as possible to get dates on their calendar, because I’ve run into issues where those people schedule their calendars out a full year in advance. And so that’s something to keep in mind is if it’s not just your buddies who you’re asking to come speak for your summit, give people more warning, much more warning in some cases.

Jeffro [00:16:54]:
Sure. More warning is better, especially for busy, popular people.

Jordan Aspen [00:16:58]:
Right?

Jeffro [00:16:58]:
So what else happens in that time while you’re waiting? I know there’s got to be promotion work and working on the details of the schedule and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about what goes into promoting this? Because obviously you want people to show up, especially at these big events, if you’re asking for speakers and stuff. So sure, they’re going to bring some of their audience, but a lot of that falls on you to kind of create that collateral and get it out there.

Jordan Aspen [00:17:21]:
Yes, and that’s part of what you’re waiting on for other speakers from other speakers, because when they get you their headshots, their speaker topic is dialed in and you have a title, you can start turning those into assets, promotional assets, both for them to use and for you to use to promote that event. And so you want those to be in place all in advance so that you have an actual marketing plan. And you can even do that with clips. If you have a pre recorded interview, for example, you can make reels to post on social media that tease what’s going to be happening at the summit and move forward from there. So that’s one of the things that happens in advance and that you need that timetable for. You’re also dealing with all kinds of logistics in the back with software selection and setup graphics that you might need within the software, or again, for marketing, for even just your waitlist. If you put out a waitlist in advance with sort of a save the date, but generally speaking, in the virtual event space for a virtual summit like this, it’s recommended that you start promoting no more than three, maybe four weeks in advance of your event. Because if you go back further than that, people are likely to register for your event and then lose the excitement and even forget what your event is about and why they signed up and then forget to put it on their calendar and they don’t show up.

Jordan Aspen [00:18:58]:
Basically show up rates go down the further out you start promoting. So that’s one reason why it’s encouraged to start promoting about three weeks out and even have your affiliates start promoting two weeks out. So your speakers are only promoting for those final two weeks, generally speaking. And that is in part because the event is not all about them. And so if they promote four weeks in advance, and then people start getting emails from an unfamiliar Email inbox, by the time that four weeks has finished out and the event is actually happening, they don’t know who you are. They’ve forgotten who you are and why they signed up for this summit and have kind of moved on from that initial excitement. So that’s the theory behind it. You may notice my tone and me saying this theory, and this is in the industry.

Jordan Aspen [00:19:54]:
I feel like there is a lot of room here for different strategy, especially as the event, especially the virtual event, market shifts and changes. People who actually want to benefit from virtual events want to know further in advance so that they can actually block out time on their calendar to attend, just like they would an in person event. People are treating virtual events, or at least want to be able to treat virtual events more like in person events. It’s less about the hype and excitement and, oh, man, I’m going to clear my calendar. No, there’s too many virtual events going on in the virtual space for people to be clearing their calendar every time a potentially interesting event comes up. So I have some theories about the shifting of the event space. I don’t have enough data to tell you exactly the best way to approach that right now, but I will say, go back to your objectives and then how can you fulfill those objectives? Perhaps using a longer timeline even.

Jeffro [00:21:03]:
Yeah, but it’s helpful to have that frame of reference knowing that, okay, three weeks is actually a normal, good place to start. And so I don’t have to feel like, oh, I got to start six weeks out because it’s going to fizzle and die out. So it’s not actually productive to do that. You just spend more time prepping and then you execute your strategy when you get a little closer. Let me shift gears a little bit here. What about sponsors now? I mean, if you’re doing your own webinar, you don’t really need a sponsor necessarily, but if you’re doing a two day summit, that’s going to come up. And how do you go about that? What are you looking for? How do you know what to charge? What do you offer them? There’s a lot there, so maybe we can’t do a full deep dive on that. But can you give us some pointers on just how to approach it?

Jordan Aspen [00:21:44]:
Yeah, some quick pointers. First of all, like you said, if you’re doing your own webinar, you do not want a sponsor. It’s not even that you don’t need one. Maybe you don’t want one. And here’s why. The webinar is about conversions for your thing. So we go back to that North Star objective. When you’re running a webinar, your objective is conversions to your thing.

Jordan Aspen [00:22:06]:
And so having a sponsor that you’re promoting their thing is counterintuitive, both for the sponsor and for you. So you do not want a sponsor. In that scenario, if you have a multi day event that you’re approaching more like an in person conference, there’s room for other sponsors. But keep in mind that it’s going to dilute your final offer. So if you can find a way to really find sponsors who are directly in alignment with solving the problem that you want to solve at your virtual summit, and it makes sense for someone to not only buy from you, but also buy from your sponsor, that can be a really great win win. And so you can have another premium sponsor. Maybe you even have a bundle deal where if they buy from you, they get the sponsor’s offer as well, or they get a discount on the sponsor’s offer or something like that, or vice versa. So you can come up with something like that to make it a win win.

Jordan Aspen [00:23:10]:
But just be aware of that dilution factor, because if you’re promoting something else, then it dilutes your actual sales pitch for your own thing. The other thing that can be a good fit with sponsors is to do lower tier sponsorships. So you asked about numbers and that kind of premier sponsor position where you only have one next to your own offer. For example, that can be a four five figure sponsorship, depending on who’s attending, how many people are attending, and a lot of things with positioning, just like any offer that you’re pricing sponsorships is going to be similar. But if you dial that back to three figure sponsorships, you can have opportunities to have more sponsors, more like vendors, and approach it more like vendors. Now you have to have a good platform for this. This is not something that I recommend doing on Zoom, period. Full stop.

Jordan Aspen [00:24:13]:
Don’t try to do sponsors if you’re just doing a Zoom hosted summit because it’s just too difficult to put those sponsors in front of your people in an effective way where the sponsors feel good and your people feel good, you’re either constantly interrupting yourself to mention the sponsors, and that doesn’t feel good to anybody, to you as the host, to attendees, it feels like an ad. They’re going to tune it out. It just doesn’t work. And so you need to keep that objective in mind, and you need to find a software that’s actually going to support sponsorships. Now, I have my recommendations, but that’s one thing to keep in mind for those lower tier sponsorships. Treat them more like vendors and get them a spot like a vendor spot in an in person scenario. That can be hard to picture in the virtual space. But that’s what civilized animal productions is really genius at, is recreating that in person event experience in the virtual space as much as possible using the softwares that we use.

Jeffro [00:25:18]:
Awesome. Well, I mean, I like that, and that’s helpful to kind of think of it that way. So, Jordan, thank you for spending time with us today. You’ve given me some ideas for my next virtual event. I’m sure the audience has gotten some ideas as well, and I know we have limited time here. I have more questions. I’m sure other people have questions, too. So, guys, go connect with Jordan.

Jeffro [00:25:35]:
Her links will be in the show notes. If you want to ask her questions about your next event, hire her to help or get in touch with her soon before her calendar fills up. Last question for you, Jordan. What’s your favorite thing about virtual events?

Jordan Aspen [00:25:47]:
My favorite thing about virtual events, you might get me to cry here, depending on how this story comes out. But my favorite thing about virtual events is their accessibility. When I was postpartum with my first child, I’ve got four now, but when I was postpartum with my first child, I didn’t realize it, but the combination of the postpartum hormones and the toxic mold that we didn’t know we were living in mixed up to create the worst postpartum depression you can imagine. I was physically ill in bed, and I was completely depressed. But virtual connections are literally what kept me going at times there. I remember sitting on the floor next to my bed with my baby laying on the floor next to me, tuning in to virtual live streams, and that was all I could do. I couldn’t even take in what was going on, but I was connected with them, and so that enabled me to stay connected, to keep our business going, or even just to keep myself connected to the business enough to be able to get it going again once I got back. And so that’s just one example of one time in my life when virtual events saved me, and I want that for other people.

Jordan Aspen [00:27:07]:
There’s a trend in the event space right now to go back to in person events because we’re not reliant on virtual anymore like we were in 2020. But that’s we. That’s a very, very general we. Some of us still are. So I’m very passionate about virtual events and great experiences at virtual events so that amazing events and the connections that you can make at them are accessible to people who can’t travel to go in person.

Jeffro [00:27:39]:
Yeah, well, I’m sorry you had to go through that, but it’s nice to hear how these events can still provide that human connection. I think that’s something that people object to about virtual events. Sometimes it’s not the same as in person. Of course, it’s never the same, but you’re still connecting with humans, and that matters. Like you said, makes a huge difference. So thank you for sharing that story with us. Thanks again for being here, Jordan. Thanks to everyone listening.

Jeffro [00:28:03]:
And remember, this is a virtual world, so let’s embrace it. I’ll see you guys in the next episode.