Virtual Event Monetization and Lead Generation with Kevin Sanderson

Danyel McLellan [00:00:01]:
Running an agency can be a lonely proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. We can learn how to be better faster if we learn together. Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label iq. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid sized agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. With 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan [00:00:38]:
Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Super excited to be with you this week and looking forward to bringing our guest and his wisdom to you as well. It’s got some interesting ideas around biz dev and creating allegiances, communities, alliances, lists of prospects that you can then mine for lots of reasons. So that’s going to be a great conversation. Before we dig into that though, of course I want to give a shout out to our friends at White Label iq. They’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast, as you know, super grateful to them. One of the things that’s cool about them is that they are built from an agency. That’s how that was our origin story. And so they understand how agencies work and what that means is they are willing to structure how you work with them to kind of fit what you need. So maybe you just have a couple little projects that your in house web dev team or media team can’t get to or PPC team and they’re willing to roll up their sleeves and do that for you. Or maybe you want to outsource all of that work to somebody and you want a partner and so that’s going to be how you want to work with them in a fixed fee kind of model where they’re helping you put together the estimate, working with the clients. Or it might be that you actually want somebody embedded in your organization like a full time equivalent that is on your roster and so they’ve got FTE programs that’ll bring continuity and deeper integration if you want that. That’s the thing. They get your world, they know it’s not cookie cutter and they are willing to restructure in a way that serves you and your clients best. So if you are looking for a partner that does design, dev or media, then maybe checking out White Label IQ would be the smartest thing you do this week. So head over to white labeliq.com ami to read more about them, to reach out to them, let them know that you appreciate the podcast. And also if you’ve never worked with them before, they’ve got A deal there where you can get some free hours on your first, first project. Okay, so let me tell you about our guests. So Kevin Sanderson comes from an agency, and he decided along the way that he was going to experiment with the idea of putting on virtual events and leveraging not only his own expertise, but the expertise of other subject matter experts and of course, the audiences that they’ve already built to cultivate his own audience. And so he’s got a whole model around this. I was a guest on a two day event that he held. I was one of probably 10 or 15 guests that he held over a two day period of time aimed at agency owners. So perfect example. So I think this is an interesting episode for you as an agency owner, but also thinking about it from your client’s perspective, is this a strategy you could bring to your client? So I have a lot of questions for him about how he does it, how he structures it, how he monetizes it. And so let’s just jump right in and welcome Kevin, to the podcast. Kevin, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Kevin Sanderson [00:03:51]:
I’m honored to be here. Drew. Thanks.

Drew McLellan [00:03:53]:
Tell everybody a little bit about you and about the work you do.

Kevin Sanderson [00:03:57]:
Yeah. So folks listening to the audio don’t necessarily know this, but behind your shoulder, there’s an image of a mouse, a famous mouse, Vicky mouse. And earlier on in my career, coming out of college, I worked at Walt Disney World as a restaurant manager and then into banquets, which is, you know, catered events.

Drew McLellan [00:04:17]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:04:17]:
And then I left there and I went into a hotel company near there doing conventions. And so I got to learn the event business. And fast forward a few years. I started selling on Amazon and I would get a lot of questions from people like, you know, how do you do this? And so I was sharing the knowledge of, you know, how I was selling on Amazon, and I started doing virtual events. And so I would bring on, let’s say 2015-20 people who had knowledge that the audience wanted. And I since then, have now put on about 32. I’m actually, tomorrow I have another event I’m putting on for an agency owner. Oddly enough, that’ll be my 33rd event. So I’ve done quite a few virtual summits as well as webinars and live streams, more than I could count for the webinars and live streams.

Drew McLellan [00:05:17]:
So today you not only put on your own events to generate revenue, but you also will take on clients who want to host a virtual event and sort of be the events coordinator for all of that.

Kevin Sanderson [00:05:32]:
Right, yes. Yeah. There’s a few moving pieces that, as I’m sure you know, with events.

Drew McLellan [00:05:39]:
Yep.

Kevin Sanderson [00:05:40]:
Yeah. And so I’ve gotten a pretty good model on what works for the virtual events. And, you know, for me, it’s easier than, you know, having to have, you know, tables slugged around or production equipment coming into a room or, you know, turning over from one event to the next. So there’s no physical presence, which makes it a lot simpler. And there’s no hotel contract.

Drew McLellan [00:06:00]:
Right. Which is a big one.

Kevin Sanderson [00:06:02]:
Yes.

Drew McLellan [00:06:03]:
Someone who signs one of those a year.

Kevin Sanderson [00:06:04]:
Those are the most restrictive contracts in the world.

Drew McLellan [00:06:07]:
Yeah. So I think a lot of people think. And I know for you, actually, let’s define. So there’s webinar that you have sort of different levels of events. So define what those different levels are.

Kevin Sanderson [00:06:21]:
Yeah, great question. So what I would say we’re going to talk about here is mostly the type of events where someone has to raise their hand and say, I want to come into a private room. So the digital equivalent of a ballroom or a meeting room. And so it’s not just like we’re not talking necessarily about doing a live stream, which is great, like a live stream on YouTube or to your LinkedIn profile or whatever. We’re talking about something where someone has to make the conscious effort to say, I’m interested. I want to go into this room and learn whatever Drew or whoever is teaching. And so the different levels of that could be one, just a basic webinar, which is, you know, one to many. And so with a webinar, I tend to like to use the term masterclass or something like that.

Drew McLellan [00:07:05]:
So webinars and 45 minutes an hour? A couple hours, yeah. One instructor kind of in outdone, right?

Kevin Sanderson [00:07:14]:
Yeah. So you’re usually teaching something, some sort of audience participation. You have a replay. You may give the replay either gated, where people can sign up for the replay on your page, or maybe it’s available for a limited time, or you splice that up into content to put in other places. So that is just a basic webinar. Now, the challenge with the webinar is it’s great, but you have to have people on your list to get them to show up to the webinar, because this is something that people have to opt in for. So then the other option is you could maybe get two or three people as guests, and they could be like a panel. And if they have this, the audience you’re looking for, maybe you get a couple hundred people to sign up for It. And so now all of a sudden, you’re growing your list that way. The challenge with that sometimes is you’re trying to align schedules with maybe two or three people. Like, hey, we’re going to do this on Thursday, February 5th, at, you know, 1:00pm Eastern Time. Oh, I’ve got a meeting at that time. Right, this. So sometimes coordinating with that, especially if you want to go beyond, you know, two, three at the most. Panelists.

Drew McLellan [00:08:15]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:08:15]:
Can be challenging.

Drew McLellan [00:08:16]:
Yeah, right. And you’re hoping they’re all in a reasonable time zone from each other, et cetera, et cetera. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Sanderson [00:08:23]:
Or somebody says, yeah, I’m in, I’m going to promote it. And then they don’t. And so now 50% of your speakers aren’t promoting it. So that’s kind of the challenge of it. Then you have what I call a virtual summit, which is like the virtual equivalence of a conference. And so it’s usually multi day. I tend to find 15 to 20 is the sweet spot. I know there’s people teaching this model that, you know, like do 30/30, you’ll pull your hat.

Drew McLellan [00:08:50]:
Speakers, you mean?

Kevin Sanderson [00:08:51]:
Oh, yeah, speakers. Sorry, speakers. Yeah, bringing on speakers. So it’s an opportunity to network with people who have, you know, audiences or whatnot. So, you know, basically you reach out to. Gonna have to be more than the 15 to 20 you want on there. And you bring these people on, you record. And oftentimes they have, you know, not canned, but they have presentations that they use periodically.

Drew McLellan [00:09:19]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:09:19]:
And they just repurpose those.

Drew McLellan [00:09:21]:
Yeah, they’re subject to experts, so they have something that they’ve already talked about that they could talk about again.

Kevin Sanderson [00:09:26]:
Exactly. So they have either, you know, it’s interview based or they present some sort of slide deck. And so you have maybe 15 to 20 of those people, and then they come on. And then now they. And you pre. Let me say this. You’re pre recording this. So then now they’re going to share this with their list. And so there’s two different ways you could do this. You could do it where it’s free to sign up or maybe a small price to sign up. And then that would get people access over the dates of your summit. And then they can upgrade to VIP or all access Pass. People use different terminology for that. And then that allows you to bring people onto your list. So we’ll just use an example of Drew. You spoke at the scale, your agency summit that I hosted last week. As we record this, we had 10, 85 people sign up it generated thousands of dollars in revenue, which, you know, if I was to run ads and try to get those same thousand people onto my list, they wouldn’t be as warm as they are from coming onto the summits.

Drew McLellan [00:10:23]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:10:24]:
And you know, I would have been paying more than I brought in if I wanted to run ads to do that. And then, you know, it also opens up collaboration opportunities. I mean, I’m here because you spoke on my summit, which is one of the nice things with the virtual summit model is I think it opens up the most doors, creates the most energy, the most excitement, and it feels kind of like a event, except you don’t have to get on an airplane and use your Marriott points or whatever to stay in a hotel room and eat overpriced meals from the comfort of home or wherever people can watch sessions from people they like and respect. Which is why the model tends to work for virtual summits.

Drew McLellan [00:11:07]:
So there’s a lot of talk that people are saturated with virtual events that, that they. You could attend a webinar an hour, seven days a week. So it sounds like you. That has not been your experience. What makes the events you put on, whether it’s a webinar or a one day event or a multiple day event, what makes them different that you’re still getting good attendance?

Kevin Sanderson [00:11:34]:
Yeah, great question. So, you know, if you think about a webinar like I was mentioning, it’s time specific and it’s usually, you know, one hour in time or whatever the case is. So you’re available, you’re not. Even though most of the time people get replays. Yeah, they might say I’m not available at that time and then they just move on. Whereas if it’s over a certain date range, they’re more likely to say, okay, I can probably make it for a part of it. You know, it’s less friction over a particular time. So I think the model works too, because you’re creating more of an energy behind a virtual summit. So I give speakers a variety of graphics. One of them, which is always the most popular one that gets shared the most is the speaker kind of front and center with kind of the other speakers behind them. And so that gets a lot of energy because we’re speakers and you can tell me if this was your experience as well. It oftentimes it doesn’t feel like they’re necessarily promoting the summit. In essence, they’re promoting their own expertise and their own. They’re part of the cool club, for lack of a better phrase, if that makes sense.

Drew McLellan [00:12:41]:
Yeah, Look, I’m amongst these famous people speaking at an event. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Kevin Sanderson [00:12:47]:
So people always like to feel included. And so it helps to raise their own expertise. So even if people see their speaking and don’t sign up, they still, in their mind, like, I do this sometimes. Like, I’ll say, oh, this person’s speaking at that event. Even if I don’t sign up, I still am like, oh, that’s exciting. And that person, you know, they’re helping the community, whatever. So my perception of them is raised. And so because of that, people are more likely to promote it, which I think is one of the reasons why you tend to get better results from a virtual summit than, say, a webinar, which webinars still can be very powerful.

Drew McLellan [00:13:25]:
So I’m not sure that answered my question, which is, okay, everybody else says nobody comes to those anymore. You have bucked that trend. So what are you doing different or what’s different about your content or your speakers or how you promote it that, you know, you just said the, the event that I was one of the probably 25 speakers that you did last week, you know, you had over a thousand people attend. So what do you do to get a thousand people to make that commitment?

Kevin Sanderson [00:13:57]:
That’s a great question. And so I think, taking a step back, it starts with, who is your target audience?

Drew McLellan [00:14:05]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:14:06]:
So who’s the target audience? In this case, it was agency owners. The summit I’m doing next week with the agency owner is for Amazon sellers. So look at your topic and kind of use that as the basis of the topic. And the audience is going to dictate what directions you go. So if you have that as a good base foundation and a good steady foundation, you’re going to do a lot better. Then start thinking about, okay, from there you have a topic, which it could just be scale your agency. And if you’re not sure what the topic would be, you can use AI, you know, what does the target audience want?

Drew McLellan [00:14:47]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:14:47]:
And so if you’re an agency owner and you know you are, let’s say, targeting chiropractors, what do chiropractors want? Now, you probably don’t want to go down the maybe medical information, but they want business things. So if you focus on business things, either how to get more clients, how to scale, how to have a better operation, less headaches, and those are pretty universal, right?

Drew McLellan [00:15:13]:
Everybody wants that, right?

Kevin Sanderson [00:15:15]:
Exactly. So if you focus on those universal things they want and then that are in that audience’s specific pain points and specific aspirations, now you start looking at who has the audience I want and who could speak intelligently on that topic, and then ideally, who might promote that. And so if they have an audience and they have some sort of cachet, so to speak, in that audience, it’s going to do a lot better. And so you want to look at like, okay, what is the overlap of. They have an audience, they have the ability to speak on the topic, and they will. I don’t require people to promote, but who would be likely to promote. And sometimes, you know, because they’re already out there in the public promoting things that they’re doing anyway.

Drew McLellan [00:16:07]:
Right. So for you, what makes it work is the partnership with the speaker. So you’re. You’re not buying ads. No, you’re not. You don’t really have a platform that agency owners or chiropractors or whoever are already subscribing to. So for you, it’s not about building your list or it’s not working a list you already have. It’s really leveraging the list of your presenters to try and create some momentum. So, but the event you’re doing this coming up week for a client who happens to be an agency owner, they are doing this to build a list, I would assume, of people that they can continue to support and provide information to. And ideally, some subset of them are going to become a client. Right, Exactly.

Kevin Sanderson [00:17:04]:
So this is an opportunity for her to build her list, also develop collaborations. So one of the pieces of feedback she gave to me was that, you know, reaching out to people who she didn’t have an opportunity to reach out to before, and this is somebody who. She already has some level of notoriety in that. In its target in that space, but there’s still people that she wanted to connect with. And it can be hard to say, hey, I want to connect with you. You have to have a reason sometimes to want to connect with people. So when you go to someone as a potential speaker and say, hey, I’m putting on this event, I want to give you a platform, it’s a much warmer conversation.

Drew McLellan [00:17:42]:
Sure.

Kevin Sanderson [00:17:43]:
Than if you do it otherwise. So for her, it’s building her list, it’s building her authority. She also has the opportunity to teach on what she wants to talk about, since it’s her event.

Drew McLellan [00:17:53]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:17:53]:
And then she has the ability to follow up with these people and then get them into webinars and things of that nature afterwards.

Drew McLellan [00:18:00]:
Okay. And then once, once you’ve lined up the speakers and all of that, then are you promoting the event as well, or are you letting the speakers do all of that promotion.

Kevin Sanderson [00:18:11]:
I recommend doing both. So I’m looking at the results. And so I have a couple different lists. And so I have a list of basically the Amazon space that I was in. So there was a lot of agency owners who were on that. So we did get people to sign up through that. And then we also had my existing list which included agency owners, coaches, consultants, things of that nature. So it wasn’t a huge list. And it wasn’t mostly agencies on either side. You know, I did get, maybe we’ll call it 7% off the top of my head, of the people that signed up came from my existing list. So that means 93% came outside of my list. And a lot of it came from the speakers and whatnot. So if you make it enticing for the speaker, you’re much more likely to get them to promote. So I like to create graphics and things of that nature. I suggest on whatever platform your speakers are hanging out on. So like with agency owners, a lot of times LinkedIn do a post, tag them all, they see that, you know, oh, he is promoting this. And so social media works great because it at least makes it publicly aware that this event is happening. Whereas email is where I think the magic happens because that’s where people tend to sign up from.

Drew McLellan [00:19:28]:
So you think that your email or the speaker’s email is what drives attendance?

Kevin Sanderson [00:19:35]:
I would say in this case, it’s the speaker’s email. So email in general tends to outperform signups.

Drew McLellan [00:19:42]:
Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:19:42]:
Than social media.

Drew McLellan [00:19:43]:
Yeah, for sure. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about why the listeners, because I’m thinking about this from the listener’s perspective.

Kevin Sanderson [00:19:51]:
Sure.

Drew McLellan [00:19:52]:
I’m an agency owner. I might, if I have followed Drew’s advice, I’ve niched my agency down. I’m focused on a specialist. I’m trying to build authority with these people. They may be difficult to get their attention or get into their inbox. So there’s that. But I’m also thinking about this from the agency owner’s perspective of this is a service I could sell to my clients. I could have basically, you know, virtual summit in a box, and I could sell it as a product. So talk about the way you drive revenue for you as someone who puts on these events for other people. So, for example, the. The event that you’re doing next week, I’m assuming there’s a free component that people can attend for free, and then there’s some sort of upsell to paid. I get. I get the recordings forever and Whatever right. You can get. So how do you charge for that when you don’t really know if anybody’s going to pay for it on the back end?

Kevin Sanderson [00:21:02]:
Yeah, that’s. That’s a good question. So that feeds into which I’ll go a little bit backtrack from there.

Drew McLellan [00:21:07]:
Yep, yep.

Kevin Sanderson [00:21:08]:
There’s two concerns everyone always have. When I do a virtual event, will any speakers say yes? Will anyone actually sign up?

Drew McLellan [00:21:17]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:21:17]:
So going back to what I was saying before, if you have the right basis and the foundation of you’re targeting the right audience, you’re talking about things they care about and they want to learn about, and you have people that they would want to learn from, you’re much more likely to make this work. It’s like anything, you never truly know. But what are the core things they want? They want more clients, they want more leads, they want better closing rates, they want to be more profitable, they want less headaches in their operations. And that, like you said, is universal. So if you just put that into words and put your copywriting hat on and focus on those things that they want that are their pain points and their aspirations, you’re going to be more likely to make it work. Right now with speakers, the hard part sometimes is getting speakers to say yes. And so start off with just if you have any sort of connection with them, any. Even if it’s like, for example, one speaker, I said, hey, I noticed you’re in Miami. I’m about an hour and a half away. That was in my intro email. Not like, you know, like, oh, I know this person. And there was someone else who I knew someone in this person’s mastermind in 2019. I mentioned that, you know, long time ago. He probably doesn’t even remember that person was there. I don’t even know if this was a factor for these people saying yes. But I tend to find if you have some level of connection, even if it’s, I’ve been listening to your podcast for X number of years. When you reach out to people, you’re going to do a lot better. So if you get them to say yes, you get the right speakers, you’re much more likely to then on the back end get people to sign up. So to your question about the revenue generating, it’s either free to sign up or charge less than $10.

Drew McLellan [00:23:05]:
A nominal fee, right?

Kevin Sanderson [00:23:06]:
Yeah, nominal fee. You’ll get fewer people to sign up if it’s a nominal fee up front, but you have a higher percentage of people generally will take the upgraded option.

Drew McLellan [00:23:15]:
Does it Change how many people actually attend. So if I sign up for free and you pay $5, are you more likely to show up than I am?

Kevin Sanderson [00:23:23]:
Yes. So in my experience, the people who pay will watch about two and a half to three times more sessions on average.

Drew McLellan [00:23:34]:
Interesting.

Kevin Sanderson [00:23:35]:
Yeah. So they’re, they’re more engaged.

Drew McLellan [00:23:37]:
Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:23:38]:
And it could be the same person signs up for free versus sign up for, you know, $9, but if they pay $9, I want my money’s worth,

Drew McLellan [00:23:46]:
you know what I mean? Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:23:48]:
So it’s just that mental thing that they cross the payment threshold.

Drew McLellan [00:23:51]:
Yep.

Kevin Sanderson [00:23:51]:
So then on the the back end, a few other ways you can monetize it. If you have like say a digital product, if you have some sort of like templates or something, you could put that as a order bump. Meaning like when they go to checkout, either for the nine dollar product or for your upgrade, one of the two, you could have that. And if you run summits, you can view other summits in the Amazon space. I have a membership group where people can pay. It’s kind of like the Netflix, so to speak. As long as they’re active in the group at a monthly charge, they can have access to all the previous summits that I’ve run for Amazon Sellers. And then they can also have access to the future events that we’re running, right?

Drew McLellan [00:24:30]:
Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:24:31]:
Then if you’re running services so like for agency owners now, you can start getting people into your webinars and things like that. And so for taking a step back, which I probably should have mentioned earlier, two companies that I’m running virtual events through, one helping others, one for Amazon Sellers, the one for Amazon Sellers was acquired by an agency in the Amazon space. And so I’ve been also helping him behind the scenes with marketing and so doing what I would call the follow up part, which is getting people onto, you know, the email list and then driving to webinars that has generated about $99,000 in MRR that we can track. So this is people that are going to specific calendars and HubSpot. Most of them, to be completely honest, is they sign up for a webinar and on the thank you page we just say, hey, would you like a free strategy call that drives quite a bit of calendar appointments.

Drew McLellan [00:25:30]:
Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:25:30]:
And the crazy part is like we’re not hard pitching it necessarily in the webinar. Sometimes we do sell things in the webinar, but I think a lot of it actually just comes from the thank you page. And then from time to time we’ll do like case studies and things like that in our emails. And so that’ll drive more revenue. So that’s kind of your backend, is that you’re getting people, you know into your ecosystem, which some people will say, you know what, this is great. I need somebody to handle my ads or I need somebody to, you know, help me with whatever. Your services.

Drew McLellan [00:26:00]:
Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:26:01]:
And then from there they can be monetized by some people. Just need a little time to. A little nurturing.

Drew McLellan [00:26:09]:
Sure. Yep. Well, again, especially if, if your client or your agency obviously is a considered purchase. And I want to build confidence and trust that you know what you’re doing and you know I’m going to give you tens of thousands of dollars a month to do something.

Kevin Sanderson [00:26:25]:
Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:26:25]:
I probably just am not going to pick you out of a hat for sure. So I’m thinking about your business and I’m thinking, and I’m equating you to the listeners. If they’re going to sell this to clients, how do you. Actually, I’m going to ask my question, but then we’re going to take a break and then you can. This will be a big. Everyone will be waiting on bated breath. How do you charge for this? Because again, you can’t promise the client what speakers are going to say yes. You can’t promise if they’re going to promote the event. You can’t promise how many people are going to attend. You have no control over who upgrades or who doesn’t. So when we come back from a business model, if I’m listening and I’m an agency owner and I’m like, oh, I could offer virtual events as a, as a standalone product to clients or to prospects. I want to just learn a little bit about how you price it in a way that, with all that uncertainty that I just rattled off, your clients are like, yep, I want to, I want to pay for that event. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and talk about that. All right. We’re taking a quick pause and while we’re on this pause, I want to answer a question that comes up all the time. In my conversations with agency owners, I’m often asked who we trust when agencies are thinking about building long term remote teams, especially when they want to do it properly and avoid costly hiring mistakes. And more and more, our answer has been Noel. At jobrack, I’ve heard consistently good feedback from AMI agencies who’ve hired him and his team. I’ve seen the quality of the relationships they’re building the longevity of the folks that they are placing on AMI agency teams. And after having him speak at the summit, I know he really understands agency hiring. The not just recruitment. So because of that we have partnered with Job Rack and they’re a paid sponsor of the podcast. If you are even considering a hire this year and you want to think through it properly, Nolan, his team have put together a really solid hiring playbook. You can find it at jobrack.com backslash ami one more time jobrack.com ami there’s a thief loose in your agency. They don’t wear a mask or sneak in at night. They’re stealing from you in broad daylight. A missing hour here, an unlogged revision there and poof, 15 to 30% of your profits have disappeared without a trace. It’s time to call in the detectives at Toggle’s agency profit heist. They’ll investigate your workflows, expose where the money is leaking out, and hand you a 90 day plan to recover what is rightfully yours. The clues are [email protected] AMI that’s T O G G L.com AMI use code AMI10. So that’s AMI and the number 10 at checkout for 10% off annual plans or just mention this podcast during your demo. Case closed. All right, we are back with Kevin Sanderson and we’re talking about holding virtual events, whether it’s a hour long webinar or it’s a multi day summit or conference or whatever words you want to use to call it, to do two things. One, to generate revenue potentially for the end user, whoever the client is that’s the host of this event. And two, obviously the long tail of this is depending on what the company is that’s hosting these events. In theory, they’re also building up a prospect list and selling clients. So before the break I said to Kevin, how do you, how do you monetize this? How if, if the agencies listening are like, yep, I want to offer this as a service to our prospects and clients. Talk about the business model. So Kevin, how, given all the uncertainty of I can’t guarantee you a number of speakers, I can’t guarantee you a number of attendees, I can’t guarantee you what happens on the back end. How do you charge for this in a way that your clients are raising their hand and saying, yes, I want you to do this for me?

Kevin Sanderson [00:30:37]:
Gotcha. I think the first step they should do is run their own virtual summit. If they’ve never run a virtual summit, run a virtual Summit for themselves because then they can at least test the model, see how it works.

Drew McLellan [00:30:46]:
Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:30:47]:
Then if anyone was to say, yeah, but if I can’t guarantee results, should I do it? Well, name me one marketing agency that can actually guarantee a result for their client.

Drew McLellan [00:30:57]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:30:57]:
And so really what it comes down to is do you have the right model and do you have, you know, something that’s at least, let’s say case studies. I don’t want to say proven, but at least the case studies are things

Drew McLellan [00:31:09]:
that have worked successfully or eventually you have done it successfully.

Kevin Sanderson [00:31:13]:
Yeah, yes, exactly. So, you know, like in my case Now I’ve run 32 going into the 32nd, sorry, 32 going to the 33rd tomorrow summit. So I can confidently say I’ve seen the model work and work in multiple niches. And so it’s something that if someone wanted to offer this, let’s say as a service to the client, I would definitely go at least through it themselves to see how it goes because there are a lot of moving pieces. But you know, with a lot of things, once you kind of get the, the system down.

Drew McLellan [00:31:46]:
Yeah. You have the, you have all the checklists, right?

Kevin Sanderson [00:31:48]:
Exactly, exactly. So you have the checklist. Like, you know, we, we do everything in airtable to organize this. And so, you know, that’s how we store all of our tracking links. You know, who said yes, who said no, who scheduled, who hasn’t scheduled, you know, they’re recording, you know, and then so how we, you know, keep up with our designs, like, you know, who has which designs. And then we will create, you know, shared folders so we can share it with the speakers and all that fun stuff. So once you get all that down, then if you wanted to offer this, let’s say as a service to your clients, then you could do that. So say someone is. Give me a niche, if you don’t mind that you think might work for.

Drew McLellan [00:32:28]:
Well, let’s, let’s use your agency owners because you just did that last week.

Kevin Sanderson [00:32:32]:
Okay.

Drew McLellan [00:32:32]:
Yeah, somebody wants to reach agency owners.

Kevin Sanderson [00:32:34]:
Got it. Yes. So somebody wants to reach agency owners. Now we start reaching out to who are the thought leaders, the niche specific, quote, unquote celebrities, or at least people that have good content. Like not everybody has to share and have a big list. Sometimes just people with interesting content can add to it.

Drew McLellan [00:32:54]:
So sure, they can be a draw or the topic that they speak about. Right. Or their experience. Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:32:59]:
So if you’re looking in a niche, like one. Is it a specific niche where people would say, I’m part of that, yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:33:05]:
Right. I belong to that club. Right?

Kevin Sanderson [00:33:08]:
Yeah. They may be a part of the club, but they may not identify as

Drew McLellan [00:33:10]:
part of the club. Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:33:12]:
So are there other virtual summits that have happened in your niche? Are there other in person conferences that have happened in your niche? So generally speaking, if there’s other times people have done something similar to the model, then usually that’s a good sign.

Drew McLellan [00:33:28]:
Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:33:28]:
And so are there YouTube channels, are there podcasts, are there, you know, LinkedIn groups or Facebook groups? Are there people with big followings? And so if you have a hungry audience, like, you know, the whole saying it’s, you don’t need the best cheeseburger, you just need a hungry audience.

Drew McLellan [00:33:43]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:33:43]:
If you want to be successful in restaurants, it’s kind of the same thing here. If you have an audience that’s hungry for learning and they’re always trying to figure out what is the newest thing, how do I take my business to the next level, which is fairly universal across businesses, that’s generally going to put the odds more in your favor. So if the audience doesn’t resonate with I’m part of this audience, that’s probably going to hurt a little bit.

Drew McLellan [00:34:09]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:34:10]:
It’s hard to describe who is in this audience. You don’t see a lot of conferences and you don’t see a lot of sometimes overlap of people on the quote unquote circuit that are speaking at a lot of those conferences. Those are all bad signs. But if you, if you have the other things that I just mentioned, it’s going to put the odds more in your favor. And so that if you’re looking to, let’s say, charge for something, you could start off with say, you know, rather than here’s this elaborate, you know, multi month thing recurring where you know, we’re gonna add, you know, a virtual summit and then we’re do a series of webinars on the back end and you know, help you with your email marketing. All that, which is stuff I offer, you could start off with, let’s just do a small project, we’ll just see. Is the summit something that would work in your case? What would be the messaging? Who would be the audience? Who would be potential speakers? And what would be the hook, so to speak, to get people to sign up for it, which helps you name your summit. And so I tend to like to have something that’s like aspirational in nature, like scale. Your agency Summit is the name of the summit, which helps very quickly. People, okay, I’m part of that audience or I’m part of that club, so to speak. And this would help me just quickly, in the name, in just three, four words.

Drew McLellan [00:35:32]:
Right. So how do you. Does all of that influence how you charge? You are. You are now the provider of the service. So again, everybody listening is like, yep, I’m going to add this as a product. So I’m going to become a Kevin. I’m going to do what Kevin does. How do you decide how to charge your clients to put on an event for them?

Kevin Sanderson [00:35:53]:
Gotcha. So what I would do is first off, you know, is, is there potential for them? And not everybody this is necessarily going to work for. But you want to look at it multifaceted. One is their return on investment immediately with summits. And sometimes there is, sometimes there wouldn’t be, because, you know, oftentimes to get speakers to promote, you’re giving them an affiliate commission off of the revenue they helped you generate. So if you factor in that payment processing fees, design work, if you have a designer or a virtual assistant on your team or whatever, can they at least make their money back on the short term?

Drew McLellan [00:36:33]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:36:33]:
And oftentimes the answer is actually no. But how quickly can they get their money back after that?

Drew McLellan [00:36:41]:
Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:36:42]:
So what are the other benefits of doing this? So, for example, are they going to potentially get on other podcasts in their niche? Which you can’t guarantee that. But oftentimes the best things, the best collaborations are the ones that just kind of organically happen. And so if you give people a stage with no expectation in return, oftentimes Drew or someone else in your niche asks you to come on their podcast. And so is there the potential for that as a background, what collaborations could come out of it? And then for, you know, what revenue are they ultimately trying to get, which is really what you want to look at it. So if they at least get some of their money back initially, as opposed to you were charging to do ads, you’re putting all the money up front, plus your management fee, and then hoping they make money on the back end, you know, which a lot of ads people will say maybe six to nine months before we turn a return on investment here, you get money back relatively quickly. And then on the back end, you have the ability to now have this audience that has goodwill towards you. So you’re borrowing this audience from others now they’re becoming your audience. They could sign up for future events that you do with that same audience. And then also you can get people to, you know, potentially sign up for. If you are the Agency owner. Now, these people could become clients of yours. And so regardless of who it is you’re selling to, whether it be agency owners or you’re an agency owner selling to quick service restaurants or whatever, you have all these people that now they’re probably going to come to your webinars. Now your webinars are busier now. Your. Your email list is bigger now. More people are clicking on your calendar links. More people are seeing your case studies, to use your language. More people are seeing your cornerstone and cobblestone content.

Drew McLellan [00:38:33]:
Right, Right. So how does that influence what you charge to put on an event?

Kevin Sanderson [00:38:40]:
Gotcha. So the event itself, like, for me, like the.

Drew McLellan [00:38:44]:
Like the one you’re doing next week, you’re doing as a paid service to a client. So.

Kevin Sanderson [00:38:50]:
Yes.

Drew McLellan [00:38:51]:
How do you charge for that and how do you set the prices? Is it just like, if Kevin does an event, it is always X number of dollars? And here’s how it works. No matter who the audience is or what the event is or whatever, or does it vary based on the potential for the client? Like, oh, gotcha. Walk us through the business model for you.

Kevin Sanderson [00:39:14]:
Sure. So for me, it’s more of a management fee.

Drew McLellan [00:39:16]:
Okay.

Kevin Sanderson [00:39:17]:
You know, it’s kind of like the. The hardest part for myself and my team is if, you know, somebody has 40 speakers versus 20. Now somebody said, I really want to have 40, I would talk them out of it.

Drew McLellan [00:39:28]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:39:28]:
Because it’s a lot of work. Because it’s a lot of, you know, times you have to schedule yourself with these people. So keep it down to, you know, which if you keep it focused to 15 to 20, that tends to be the sweet spot, I think. And so it doesn’t. Whether you have 200 people show up or 2,000, there’s really not that much difference in work other than if we’re helping you with your customer service, like, hey, my password’s not working type of thing. We might get more requests, but outside of that, there’s not much difference for us. So it really comes down to what is the scope, which I’m sure a lot of agency owners can relate to. What is the scope of what we’re doing? And that’s really what it comes down to, is the scope of what we’re doing. And then whether or not we would want to take on someone as a client is do they have the ability on the back end to make up their money or at least, you know, have a good opportunity to. And then what is the ancillary benefits that are harder to quantify? Which Sometimes really actually outvalue the quantifiable benefit.

Drew McLellan [00:40:33]:
Sure. The goodwill, the name recognition, all of that. Right. So then do you typically charge? Are you quoting an hourly fee or are you saying, look, phase one, which is we’re going to recruit the 15 speakers, is X. Phase two is the. We’re going to record all the sessions. So how are you bundling or packaging your pricing?

Kevin Sanderson [00:40:57]:
Yes. So I’ll be completely transparent. This is still a relatively new thing of doing it for others, you know, just in the last few months. And it’s picking up steam with more people, like, just reaching out to me, like, hey, can you do this for me?

Drew McLellan [00:41:11]:
Sure.

Kevin Sanderson [00:41:12]:
You know, or, you know, now that we did the summit, like, people like who are attendees are starting to ask, and I’m going to start promoting this as a service to those people. So I’ll start getting more people. So as you know, there’s only so much time on my own calendar. I’m still in a very flexible stage where I can say like, okay, I can make something fairly bespoke, like, are we reaching out to the speakers for you or are you reaching out on your own? But we help you identify them. You know, certain things like design work, setting up the tech, which I use a system called Kartra. You know, if it depends on what we’re doing and you know what, let’s just say the scope of the project and on how much we charge, that would be the easiest answer.

Drew McLellan [00:41:54]:
But it’s a flat fee right now.

Kevin Sanderson [00:41:57]:
It’s a flat fee. Yes.

Drew McLellan [00:41:57]:
Yeah. So it’s not like the back end, like a percentage of the upsells or anything like that for you. It’s like a. Look, I’m, I’m going to do these things for you. You’re going to pay me X number of dollars and then how you monetize it for yourself is kind of on you. Yeah, well, yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:42:14]:
And dude, still have my guidance of like, okay, let’s figure out how we can make the most per attendee.

Drew McLellan [00:42:19]:
Yeah, right. But. But you’re not. But your fee isn’t related to how many people buy a VIP on the back end. Correct. Not a commission or something like that. It’s a. I have an expertise that I am selling you for a service fee. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So the, My, the question that I almost got off on, my tangent in the middle of my question was talk about the tech of this. So when you hold an event like this, is there a tool where that houses all of the presentations that allows people to go back and Watch them again and all of that that you think is superior to the others out there?

Kevin Sanderson [00:42:59]:
Yes. So I use a system called Kartra K a r t r a.com Kartra. It’s similar Kajabi Click funnels, if people are familiar with that. It’s kind of one of these all in one platforms. I like it because everything is included. So it’s got emails, it’s got landing pages, it’s got the membership areas. So I’ve got everything all in one and I’ve got the templates to set it up in there. I love Kartra for that reason, but it doesn’t have to be in Kartra. You just need something where you have a landing page. Can you take payments? If you’re collecting payment for either the upfront ticket or for VIP or any sort of upsell, do you have, you know, somewhere to store the emails, to send the emails to, you know, maybe your prospects that are potentially going to sign up for this, send updates to people who did sign up for it. And then I like to have some sort of membership area where people have to log in to see the content one because that controls the, you know, if I say, hey, it’s. You’re going to have access for X days. That would turn off the people that upgraded to VIP if they realize everyone could just go find the content listed on YouTube.

Drew McLellan [00:44:13]:
A Google search.

Kevin Sanderson [00:44:14]:
Right, right, exactly, exactly. That. That would upset people. So to hold true to that part of my word, I do like to have a membership area. So that’s why I use Kartra and then I use Vimeo for hosting the video portion of it. You don’t necessarily have to like if you use Kartra, I believe you can use. You have enough video bandwidth to do this. But I like the control aspect that I have in Vimeo and then if I ever move off of Kartra, I’ve got all the videos somewhere else that I could just embed some on another platform.

Drew McLellan [00:44:46]:
Yeah, I’m mindful of our time. So last question, at the end of the day, obviously people want to monetize this in the short run by selling the upgrades and the vip. Sure. Now all access passes or whatever and then depending on the audience, they may also want to monetize it with the long tail selling to clients and all of that is are there things that you have found, given that you’ve done almost 40 of these, that increase the likelihood that someone will upgrade to the VIP or the all access pass? Is there, is there a formula for you, that you have to include these three. You know, you have to get a set of Ginsu knives, you have to do this, you have to do that to get people to pay that, that fee. And is there for you a price point where if you charge more than that for the, the, the pass you get, you’re going to get a bunch of no’s?

Kevin Sanderson [00:45:43]:
Yeah. So if you’re doing a free summit, the industry standard is typically anywhere between like, let’s say 6 and 8%, although for the agency summit, it’s 13%. I would say agency owners, probably more than the average audience, have the money to spend on, you know, the, the VIP pass, and then also value their time and the ability to be flexible and go back. So I think that’s why that one worked almost double what it would in a lot of other cases. Now, some of it just depends on the audience. And so. But to make it more in your favor, you want to have some bonuses. What are things they care about? And so, you know, and this is a way that maybe you could, you know, showcase a masterclass that you do, or maybe, you know, you could get some sponsors. You’d be amazed how much people want to get in front of a target audience. Is your sponsor able to provide something? So I have a company that I’ve been working with across Most niches called pickfu.com and they usually say for the upgrade, we’ll give them a $50 coupon code so they can do AB testing, which works great for agency owners. And then price point wise, I, on a newer audience, I usually will start off at 47 and then on the thank you page and then go up to maybe 67 or maybe even 97 as we get closer to the event. And then usually as we get to the end of the event, I start raising the price more and more. So, like, for example, this last event, the ending price of the upgrade was 127, which I’ve gone as much as 147, 197. But the more you charge, you tend to get a little bit lower conversion rate. But you make. Sometimes you make your money up on the numbers.

Drew McLellan [00:47:30]:
Right, Right. And again, that’s probably for most people, not the ultimate reason why they’re doing it. They’re probably ultimately doing it to. Yeah, to get to the longer tail sale, Right?

Kevin Sanderson [00:47:43]:
Well, yes. And I am amazed at how many people have said the feedback I’ve gotten from other people that have, I’ve worked with is the value of. For them was the druze of their space or whatever. Putting LinkedIn posts out there saying, yeah, hey, I’m working with at whatever their name is.

Drew McLellan [00:48:06]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:48:06]:
On this summit. You know, kudos to this. So all this kind of like attention they’re getting is so valuable.

Drew McLellan [00:48:13]:
Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:48:13]:
That they really, it almost like made it up for it. That like the money they made on the front end was just a bonus and then now they’re getting clients on the back end and it’s warming people up. And so even people that are on their existing list are now like, oh, wow, this is amazing. This person’s putting together the summit. So it’s, it’s the goodwill meter of people that they’re already potentially working with is going up.

Drew McLellan [00:48:36]:
Yeah, yeah. I clearly the long tail side of it is really where the value is the, you know, the reputation attribution from who you attract and that they’re willing to do an event with it. And for you, probably also the relationship with the speakers has some value in and of itself.

Kevin Sanderson [00:48:54]:
Huge. Huge.

Drew McLellan [00:48:55]:
For sure. And obviously the sales opportunities that. Where you’re building your list with warm prospects. Yeah. So last question. What’s the. What is the mistake you made the first few times that every listener needs to avoid like the plague? What, what, what is the. Oh, if, if you’re going to do these events, don’t do this.

Kevin Sanderson [00:49:19]:
Yes. So this is not a knock on anyone I’ve had speak at my event, but it goes back to the foundation of you have the right. It’s like anything. It’s like if you’re targeting the right people, like if you’re running Facebook ads, if you have the wrong targeting, you’re gonna get the wrong people into your list.

Drew McLellan [00:49:35]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:49:35]:
And so who is it ultimately you’re looking to go after and who has those lists? And try not to go too outside of that. Sometimes you might say, this person would be interesting to my target audience. But if you have too many of those people that are not quite your core demographic, you will have results on the back end that don’t do quite as well. And it was a little bit harder for me in the beginning to figure out like this would be the right speaker for this reason or this is the right audience. Sometimes I would get all over myself in the Amazon space. There’s Amazon sellers and there’s people that have their own direct to consumer sites. And there’s overlap, but not as much as you would think. So it’s kind of two different audiences, two different worlds. And so you don’t want to go too much into the two worlds. And so whatever audience you’re going after. If you want to also go after the other audience, do another summit. It’s almost better to separate it because that’s going to help you in the long run.

Drew McLellan [00:50:37]:
What I’m hearing you say, Kevin, is niche your events really tight.

Kevin Sanderson [00:50:41]:
Oh, yeah, yeah, Definitely niche your events.

Drew McLellan [00:50:44]:
My listeners, if I don’t say niche at least once an episode, they, they. I’m sure it’s a drinking game somewhere like, oh, my God, who’s talking about niching again? But what you’re talking about is your speakers have to match the niche to get the right audience that’s going to deliver the result for your clients that you want.

Kevin Sanderson [00:51:02]:
Yeah. And you might get someone who, you know, they would be interesting to your audience, but they don’t have an audience of your niche. And if you have too many of those people.

Drew McLellan [00:51:10]:
Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:51:10]:
It’s going to affect the pool of people that come on. And then you. They may even get people to sign up, but they may not be the people.

Drew McLellan [00:51:18]:
But they’re the wrong people, right? Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:51:20]:
Yeah. Well, they’re the wrong people.

Drew McLellan [00:51:21]:
And I’m sure it’s probably worth it to have a couple of those that A, aren’t the same ones everybody hears all the time, and B, they have something interesting and new to say. It’s really about the balance. Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:51:32]:
Like, for example, one time I did a summit on branding and I had a gentleman who was at one point in charge of three of the four parks at Walt Disney World and, you know, not at all related to E commerce.

Drew McLellan [00:51:47]:
Right.

Kevin Sanderson [00:51:48]:
But if it’s a great summon.

Drew McLellan [00:51:49]:
Branding.

Kevin Sanderson [00:51:50]:
Yeah. Great speaker, great guy, good story behind him.

Drew McLellan [00:51:54]:
Right. Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:51:55]:
Good pedigree. And so that helps to add something to that. But if you do too many of those where it’s like, oh, that’s kind of interesting.

Drew McLellan [00:52:02]:
Yeah.

Kevin Sanderson [00:52:03]:
It’s not. It’s not going to attract your right audience and the event itself starts to kind of skew off and then you sometimes, as the host will be getting feedback and you’re chasing the feedback of the wrong people.

Drew McLellan [00:52:15]:
Right, right. Yeah. This has been fascinating. If folks want to learn more about the work that you do or chat up with you about doing an event for them.

Kevin Sanderson [00:52:27]:
Sure.

Drew McLellan [00:52:28]:
Because that would be another way for the listeners. By the way, if you think you want to do this as a service, maybe you work with Kevin to do one for you, and then you learn all the things that he’s already learned and then you can package them up and sell them yourself to your niche or your clients. So. But Kevin, if people Want to chat with you, whatever that may be about what’s the best way for them to track you down.

Kevin Sanderson [00:52:52]:
Yeah. So if they want, I have a workbook where I have a lot of the core exercises you could do on the front end. You could go to lgnmarketing.com as in lead generation and nurturing. So lgn marketing.com forward/workbook. You download the workbook for free. You can also email me kevinjn marketing.com if you have any questions. More than happy to answer them.

Drew McLellan [00:53:14]:
Awesome. This has been great. Thank you for. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your expertise and reminding people that, you know, there are lots of ways to do events and you know, to your point, you can go whole hog and sign the hotel contract and bring everybody together, but there’s also opportunity to, to do it from the comfort of your home or office and still hit the right audience with the right messages. So I appreciate you coming on the show and, and sharing some of the do’s and don’ts so people can get this done and get it done. Well, thanks, Drew.

Kevin Sanderson [00:53:47]:
Appreciate it.

Drew McLellan [00:53:48]:
You bet. All right, guys, so I think the, the homework from this episode is sort of twofold. One, I want you to think about it from your own perspective. Could you, if you’re an agency that is niche down and as Kevin was saying, especially if your audience is hard to reach or you know, hard to get their attention, would a virtual event, again, whether it’s a one hour webinar or multi day summit kind of thing, would that be kind of up their alley and is that something that would really elevate your subject matter expertise and their perception of you and to if this is a tactic that you believe would be valuable to your end audience, your prospects and clients, is this something you could do? A lot of agencies are looking for things that they can package as a product rather than, you know, an ongoing monthly retainer or things like that, you know, a foot in the door perhaps with a prospect where it’s like a set deliverable for a set fee. So this might be, this might be exactly what you’ve been looking for. So I challenge you to give it some thought and experiment with it a little bit because I think there’s opportunity for you both on your own sales end, but certainly, you know, as you help clients achieve their goals. So that’s the homework for today, of course. Want to thank our friends again at White Label for being the presenting sponsor. White labeliq.com AMI, like I told you at the top of the the show and last, but never for me least just a reminder that I am grateful that we get to hang out every week. I know how busy you are and I know you could be spending this hour with a lot of different people doing a lot of different things. So whether we’re on the treadmill together or we’re walking your dog or I know I put on makeup with some of you, whatever we’re doing while you’re listening, I am, I am really grateful that you hang out with me every week and give me the opportunity to bring you folks like Kevin to learn from. So thanks for listening. I’m coming back. I hope you will too. All right, have a great week and I will be with you next week. Talk to you soon.

Danyel McLellan [00:55:49]:
That’s all for this episode of AMI’s builds a better agency podcast. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses and other ways we serve small to mid size agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.