Events and experiential marketing have emerged as some of the most effective marketing methods. After all, real events have a far greater impact on a person than emails, cold calls, and other impersonal marketing techniques. Event participants who are pleased with their experience are more likely to become brand loyalists, customers, or B2B clients. Welkin Events not only organizes awesome events but also does event marketing with our best digital marketing team. Events are a highly effective marketing approach, but not by coincidence. Marketers must understand how to create a thorough event strategy as well as how to measure event marketing success.
We cannot rely on instinct to decide whether our events are effective, nor can we rely solely on one type of data collection. Similarly, we must solicit feedback from all event participants, including attendees, staff, sponsors, and exhibitors. Measuring event success is a multifaceted activity that begins long before the event, continues throughout the event, and concludes after the event data has been reviewed or applied to the overall event strategy.
With the capacity to evaluate metrics and pinpoint specific results, it’s critical to be able to demonstrate the success of event marketing activities. After all, marketing receives a sizable amount of the budget, and we must be able to demonstrate that event marketing efforts are worthwhile. Furthermore, determining which event marketing activities were and were not successful will assist you in developing a strategy for improving marketing efforts for your next event.
Set Event Marketing Plan:
An event marketing plan must include event goals; otherwise, event planners would be unable to objectively assess if their event was a success.
When creating successful goals for event marketing success, make sure they are Logical. You will fall short if your goal is too ambitious. If your goals are too low, there will be nothing worthwhile to strive for, and you will only get poor results with your event promotion.
Defined: Goals should be well-defined and have a specific target. Setting the number of new entries you wish to obtain from a specific email campaign is an example.
Quantifiable: the ability to track results using metrics based on quantitative or qualitative features.
Achievable: Setting a goal that is attainable will make you (and your client) delighted when you achieve it.
Feasible: Be honest about your talents and any obstacles you may face. When it comes to keeping goals realistic, budget is frequently a restriction.
Prompt: Deadlines are an essential aspect of goal formulation. Your event marketing success should be measured every event and with a deadline, rather than as something you want to accomplish eventually.
Goals can be defined, for example, by answering the following questions:
What is the cost of my event?
What do we hope to accomplish with this event?
What style of event is best suited to the event’s purpose?
What are our company’s overall marketing objectives?
Who are our ideal attendees? To whom are we marketing?
What content or speakers will strike a chord with the audience?
KPIs Can Help You Measure Event Marketing Success:
Event goals are linked to KPIs, which are measurable data points that determine whether the objectives are met. Those benchmarks should be related to the event’s planned outcome, based on both your knowledge and client expectations.
Select the specific metrics you’ll be tracking from the start of event marketing to ensure you have the data you need before, during, and after the event. To gain a thorough view, you should start tracking some of this data before you launch your marketing initiatives. After all, how can you claim that your results are accurate if you don’t have a good beginning point?
To select your event KPIs, consider how you will define marketing success for this event.
The following are examples of event success:
- Enhanced social media presence and brand recognition
- Gaining new accounts to boost sales income, session popularity and engagements via polling and Q&As
- Increasing the number of product users to feed an ultimate goal of pleasing your customers
There are both quantitative and qualitative approaches to determining event marketing success.
Quantitative event data quantifies marketing success and event ROI. For instance, the number of attendees/social media mentions/content downloads, Likert scale survey responses, content rating from 1 to 5, and so on.
Qualitative outcomes, on the other hand, are tied to the perception of the attendees. That is their perception of the event’s worth, brand positioning, and awareness. For instance, social media mentions, written evaluations, and responses to open-ended survey questions.
Pick Your Data Collection Points:
Event planners can track KPIs and event marketing success in a variety of ways.
- Real-time surveys and analytics
- Pre- and post-event surveys
- Social media engagement and website traffic
- Built-in analytics from registration platforms and POS systems
All-in-one event platforms, manual registration, revenue, and session visit counts, and so on.
During the event, try to create small questionnaires at regular intervals. This might be at the end of each session or during downtime throughout an event. You can take actions to remedy any difficulties that the survey identifies for attendees. In our post on crowd shaping, we expand on this concept.
It’s a basic technique that requires little effort from attendees and can be performed on the fly. While we recommend utilizing this as a guide, you shouldn’t put too much faith in the event app’s results on their own. After all, even if your event goer has had a generally pleasant experience, one minor issue could push them to signal adversely at this time.
The Internet and Social Media
Monitoring social media activity might be a helpful sign of event marketing success if you’re not sure how to assess it. Monitoring social media, on the other hand, may not be appropriate for every event you plan. Some types of events and demographics of attendees would be better suited to this technique than others. A festival with a predominantly youthful audience, for example, will automatically have a better chance of social media involvement than a medical conference for busy surgeons or an event with unplugged zones.
This is how you may engage your audience on social media and track the success of your event:
- Is the hashtag for the event being used? How many times have you done this?
- Were there a lot of brand references?
- What was the total number of social media impressions?
- Is there a lot of participation from attendees, such as submitting photos or tweeting their favorite speaker quotes?
- Were the responses overwhelmingly positive?
- Were there any complaints that came up again and again?
- Keep a look out for remarks indicating that an attendee was unaware that a session or speaker was scheduled for the event. After all, if they’ve missed something interesting because they weren’t aware it was going on, it’s a sign that your event marketing efforts need to be tweaked.
How Do You Know If Your Event Marketing Is A Success?
It’s not easy to assess the success of event marketing and the event’s overall return on investment. Welkin Events can help you choose which KPIs to prioritize, as well as how to collect and evaluate data before presenting it to the event’s stakeholders. The larger the budget and the greater the importance of a company’s event marketing strategy, the more likely event planners will turn to event management companies for assistance.
Partner with the team of experts at welkin events & welkin marketing and reap the benefits of a running a successful event.