How I Ran a Survey About Virtual Summits (And Turned It Into A Powerful Asset)
School holidays in France are here, my son is home, and life feels a bit upside down. At the same time, my business does not completely pause just because I am trying to rest.
Right in the middle of this chaos, I decided to run a survey about virtual summits. The timing was wild, the goal felt big, and the results turned into something much more useful than I expected.
In this post, I am pulling back the curtain on why I decided to run a survey about virtual summits, how I set it up, what actually happened, and how that survey evolved into the report you can now find as my State of Summits Report.
Why I wanted fresh data on virtual summits
Virtual summits had a big moment a few years ago. Lately, I have felt that things are shifting. Attendees are more selective, hosts are tired, and speakers are asking better questions before they say yes.
I wanted to know:
What is actually working for summit hosts right now?
What attendees enjoy and what they are tired of.
How speakers feel about promo expectations and results.
Where my beloved audio summits fit in.
I could have relied only on my own experience as a summit strategist and event producer, but I wanted real numbers and real words from people who run, speak at, and attend these events.
So the goal of the survey was twofold:
Gather data to guide my own strategy for summits and events.
Create a useful, shareable report for my community that goes beyond opinions.
How I set up the summit survey
To run the survey, I used Tally. I chose it for a simple reason. I wanted conditional questions, and I did not want to overcomplicate the tech.
I filtered questions based on who was filling out the survey.
Summit hosts
Summit speakers
Summit attendees
Then I used conditional logic so they only saw the questions that matched their role. Hosts did not have to wade through speaker-only questions, and attendees did not get asked about planning timelines or tech stacks. That kept the experience short and relevant for everyone.
The questions were a mix of:
“Numbers” style questions, like how many summits they had run, spoken at, or attended.
Opinion questions, like how they feel about all-access passes, live chat, audio-only content, or intensive schedules.
Open questions where they could vent, dream, or share frustrations.
That mix of quantitative and qualitative data made the final report richer and much easier to interpret.
How I actually got responses
Once the survey was live, I kept the promotion simple by
Emailing my list.
Sharing the link on Threads, which is my main social hangout.
Reaching out to a few friends and peers who have summit-focused audiences and asked if they could share it.
About five people actively promoted it to their communities, which helped a lot. Considering the chaos of Black Friday and the holidays, I was genuinely happy with almost 100 responses.
Could I have doubled that with different timing and a more aggressive promo plan? Probably. But the point here is that the survey did not need to be perfect to be useful.
The last-minute opt-in that turned into a big win
A few days into sharing the survey, I had a big “oh wait” moment.
If someone took the survey but was not on my email list, how would they get the results?
I quickly set up a simple opt-in page in Flodesk that said, in essence, “Want the report when it is ready? Pop in your email.” Then I dropped that link at the end of the survey.
That one scrappy decision did a few things at once:
It let people raise their hand to say, “Yes, I care about this topic.”
It gave me permission to send them the final report.
It turned the survey into a quiet little list builder.
In the end, around 40 people who were new to my world joined my list through that survey. When you compare that to the 80-something total responses, that is a very strong conversion rate for an “unplanned” freebie.
It also validated that people genuinely wanted this kind of data-backed content, not just another checklist or template.
How the report fits into my audio summit and course
Once I closed the survey, I spent time really reading the responses, pulling out themes, and turning it all into a structured report that people could easily scan. I also recorded a short video debrief to talk through the highlights.
This was not just a “fun project.” I had a clear business reason too.
In January, I’m hosting the second edition of my popular Energy Savers audio summit. I’ll then be reopening Simple Audio Summits as a self-paced course!
The survey data now helps me:
Back up my messaging about why audio summits are appealing.
Show patterns in what attendees and speakers are tired of.
Support arguments for designing summits that are lighter, more focused, and easier on people’s energy.
I wanted potential students to see that my ideas are not based only on my gut, but also on real data from hosts, speakers, and attendees.
The report grew into a key piece in my launch strategy, not just a random lead magnet.
The surprising confidence boost
There was another benefit I did not see coming. This survey and the resulting report gave me a big boost in confidence as an event strategist.
I have been living in the online business and launch space for years, and I have attended and spoken at plenty of events. But stepping into a niche like virtual and audio summits still felt a bit fresh.
Looking at the survey data and realizing, “Oh, this matches what I have been noticing,” was incredibly grounding. It helped turn my hunches into something I could point to and say, “Here, this backs it up.”
It also positioned me differently in my peer group. I was no longer just the person who runs summits, but the person who is curious enough to gather data about them and share what is working.
Why a survey feels easier to share than “my freebie”
Here is a funny mindset shift that happened. Promoting my own stuff sometimes feels heavy. It can sound like, “I made a thing, do you want my thing?”
Promoting a survey or a report feels different in my brain. When I talk about it, it sounds more like:
“Look at what we created together! Look at what hosts, speakers, and attendees are seeing. Look at what the data is telling us.”
It feels less like self-promotion and more like sharing something interesting with the industry. The same thing happens for me when I promote summits. I am not shouting about myself, I am shining a light on all the speakers and the content.
That small mindset tweak makes it so much easier to send emails, talk about it on social, and keep mentioning it long after launch week.
What running a survey can look like in your business
If you want to run a survey in your own business, here is what my experience taught me about the process.
Start with one clear question I want answered, not twenty.
Decide who I want to hear from, and shape the questions to match them.
Keep the survey short and respect people’s time.
Add an easy, low-pressure way for people to get the results if they want them.
Plan, even loosely, for how that data will support something I am already doing, like a summit or a course.
The magic is not only in the answers themselves, but in what you decide to build around them.
Wrapping up
What started as a slightly random decision to run a survey in a busy season turned into a surprisingly powerful piece of my business. It helped me gather real data about virtual summits, grow my list, support my audio summit and course launch, and deepen my confidence as an event strategist.
It also gave me the foundation for my new State of Summits Report!
If you have been wondering whether it is worth it to run a survey for your audience, my experience says that data paired with intention goes a long way. Even if the timing is messy, even if the response count is not perfect, you can still turn those answers into something long lasting, useful, and genuinely exciting to share.
