As events and experiential marketing have become one of the most powerful forms of branding, there are many reasons why they are so effective. Experiences are always more profound than contacting someone through email or cold call – they need to be seen firsthand in order for them to be taken seriously.
Today, with the opportunity to measure event metrics and pinpoint specific results for event marketing campaigns, it’s crucial to be able to demonstrate how these endeavors were successful. After all, marketing is allocated a considerable portion of the budget, and we need to be able to show evidence that marketing investments are worth the money spent. Additionally, measuring what event marketing efforts were and weren’t successful can help you establish a plan for improving future marketing campaigns; this will ensure success when it comes time for your next big market campaign.
Set Event Marketing Goals
Without clear objectives attached to an event, it is hard for marketers to measure how successful the event has been. When setting SMART goals for measuring event success, you need to make sure they are specific, measurable, attainable/achievable, relevant/relevant and timely. Having too ambitious of a goal will lead to failure; having too easy of a goal leaves no challenge in reaching it so you’ll end up with mediocre results. For those not familiar with the idea of SMART goals, the acronym stands for:
- Specific: goals should be well-defined with a particular target.
- Measurable: being able to track the results via metrics using quantitative or qualitative attributes.
- Attainable: setting a goal that can be achieved is a way of making you (and your client) happy when you do reach it.
- Realistic: make sure you’re honest about your capabilities and any hurdles you may face. Budget is often a constraint when it comes to keeping goals realistic.
- Time-bound: deadlines are an integral part of goal setting.
For instance, goals can be defined by answering the following questions:
- What do we aim to achieve with this event?
- What are our company’s general marketing goals?
- What is my event budget?
- Who is our ideal attendee persona?
- Who are we marketing to?
- What type of event best suits the purpose of the event?
Measure Event Marketing Success With KPIs
Goals of an event are directly related to how successful it is: measurable data points that determine whether the goal has been achieved. Those benchmarks should relate to your desired outcome for the event, from both your expertise and client expectations.
Before an event begins, it is important to decide what statistics you want to measure and track throughout the process. Also, choose the analytics tools you want to use in order to measure your success before, during, and after an event.
If you want to have a full understanding of the process, then it would be wise for you to track some of these metrics before it starts. Think about it- if you don’t know where your numbers are coming from, how can they accurately represent what has happened over time? To determine the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for your event, think about what type of success you want it to reflect. For example:
- increased online presence on social media and increased brand awareness
- wining new accounts to increase sales
- session popularity and interactions through polling and interactive discussions
- expanding the number of product users so you can delight your customers
Many different quantitative methods can be used to measure event marketing success and its return on investment (ROI). For instance, the number of attendees/social media mentions/content downloads, Likert scale survey results, grading content from 1 to 5. Also, qualitative data is often associated with the attendee’s perspective. This includes how they perceive the event, position of the brand, and awareness levels. For example, social media mentions or responses to an open-ended survey question would provide qualitative data relating to these factors.
Choose Your Data Collection Points
Event planners can measure KPIs and event marketing success through various means, but we suggest that they use the following six channels for collecting data:
- all-in-one event platforms
- built-in analytics from registration platforms and POS systems
- manual count of registrations, revenue, session visits, etc.
- real-time surveys and analytics
- pre- and post-event surveys
- social media engagement and website traffic
It is difficult to measure the success of event marketing campaigns and determine ROI. Event planners need to prioritize which metrics they want to use, decide how they will collect and analyze their data, then present this information to those involved with the event.
Key Takeaway
Happy event attendees make for wonderful advocates of brands, customers and even potential business partners! Events can be a highly effective form of marketing, but only if marketers understand how to work an effective event strategy. Marketers must also understand how to measure these events so they know whether or not their efforts are paying off.
We cannot rely on our intuition to judge whether or not an event was successful. Nor can we only gather data from one source. Likewise, it is important for us to ask everyone who attended the event their opinion- attendees, staff members, sponsors, exhibitors – before making a final decision about how well the event went. Moreover, event marketing performance success can be measured in different ways that requires preparation beforehand, such as during the event itself, and then when all of the collected data is analyzed afterwards.
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