Close your eyes and imagine…the year is 2019. We're all hosting fun live events and completely oblivious that the joy of being in person is about to be put on pause for a looong time.
I’ve told the story before about how at the end of 2019, after a very successful live in person event, I was ready to go ALL IN on in person events as a strategy! Obviously that didn’t happen. We all learned to pivot - and for us that actually led to the genesis of one of our most successful strategies we’ve ever implemented, The Virtual Conference strategy that we teach our clients in Profit Architecture.
You can hear more about how we adapted from live events to virtual conference events in my 2020-2021 recap episode.
As I’m publishing this, it’s 2023 and live events are making a comeback (slowly but surely).
Recently, a client asked me how we had hosted live events “before”. She was trying to decide if she should host a “delivery event” - designed for her existing clients to attend. Or if she should create a “sales event” - inviting non-clients and making an offer to join her program.
I explained that we had always done a “hybrid” strategy where we seamlessly do BOTH (of course I did, I am kinda the “hybrid” person).
Her mind was blown - she didn’t even know that was an option! 🤯
So I created a little mini-training on how to host “hybrid” style in person events that are valuable for your existing clients, AND enticing to not-yet clients.
Today I’m sharing that mini-training with you on the podcast!
I’m not a live event expert in any way, shape or form. I haven’t hosted a live in person event since 2019. But I’ve done it before and people keep asking for my experience, so here it is.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The strategy for hosting successful “hybrid” sales AND delivery events
- How to design an event that is valuable for both current clients and not-yet-clients
- Whether or not you should charge existing clients for tickets (and some real-talk about how expensive in person events are to produce)
- When we pitched our offer during the event (hint: don’t wait til the last day!)
- What our offer was for existing clients and new clients (and special pricing strategies for in-person events)
- The type of content I taught at our event that appealed to both existing clients and soon-to-be clients
- Why we started small with less than 30 people in the room, while still being profitable after expenses