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The world of event marketing and experiential marketing will continue to grow and evolve as we move beyond 2021.
If you're an event marketer with a budget growing as fast as executive interest in your events, calculating return on investment rockets to the top of your priority list.
When planning and executing any event, you need to make sure the ROI is worth the investment. So, how do you measure the real return on investment for your event?
First, let's start with the basics.
No two events are created equal, but high-functioning event marketing teams should quickly gauge event marketing ROI from one event to the next regardless of format.
Focus on these critical areas:
Budget: One of the golden rules of event marketing is to stick to your budget, no matter what happens. Everything from personnel travel to contractor invoices to collateral printing to expense reports should be included in your total budget.
More often than not, when we speak to marketers, they tell us, events are just something we do to get our name out there. If we had a dollar for every time we heard someone say they're just participating in events for exposure, we'd give that dollar right back to them and say, there's a better way.
Start by designing a comprehensive strategy and set specific marketing goals for every event. You'll also need to develop a measurement strategy as well to track performance against your goals. Without the tracking, it's hard to demonstrate the ROI.
The best time to make an event marketing plan is before you're hurtling a million miles a minute toward an upcoming event (though the right kinds of tools can make that a much better logistical ride). You can only track what you're set up to track, after all.
Taking a moment to nail down four key data points in advance of an event can make measuring ROI afterward a breeze and ultimately save you a boatload of time and energy in the long run.
Nothing is worse than realizing after the fact that you neglected to establish a baseline metric or forgot to give the prepared hashtag to your social media manager. #facepalm
The goals you choose are secondary to having them in the first place. Your goals should exist in writing, and everyone who needs to agree on them should agree on them. Aim for 6-8 goals; 4 at minimum. These should be as concrete as possible; if there are questions or uncertainty from your team, you should take another pass with clarity in mind.
Your goals might be a compilation of any number of these:
If you put your goals on a hilltop (stay with us here...) and let them shine like a beacon, everything you do should be in service of cutting a clear and direct path to the top of that hill.
There will be peripheral concerns, of course, but your primary focus should be on the items that will get you closer to those goals at the top of the hill.
With that analogy in mind: make a list of all the data you need to gather and define how it ties back to your goals. It would help if you also started thinking about how you can accurately measure that data concerning your goals.
Here's a sampling of the types of data you might need:
Your CRM, analytics tools, social UI data, and any survey platforms you utilize are good places to start when deciding which tools you will rely on to measure the data on your list.
You'll want to be mindful of how to assess the validity of your tools, the accuracy of the data they provide, and how they will integrate with your current systems (i.e., some platforms only show data for specific periods or only in certain formats).
It would help if you also took a moment to evaluate how you are acquiring your data. No shame, but it's officially time to move beyond clipboards full of paper forms for company reps to fill out in chicken scratch and forget in the hotel lobby! Or Excel spreadsheets full of leads that get lost on the company's Sharepoint.
Make life easier on yourself and everyone on your team by looking at some modern solutions that can increase efficiency and accuracy and make the overall process a lot less complicated.
Identifying a single event marketing platform with robust integrations might be a consideration to help streamline an active event calendar, manage your event tech stack, as well as vendors and budgets.
Phew - the event is over and was a screaming success! Now what? Chances are you either:
But remember: there's a better way! If you've taken some time to set up a lil' savvy strategy beforehand, this is the moment to review event data, clarify your metrics and confidently determine your event's ROI.
Many marketers use post-event surveys or interviews to help gather data for calculating ROI. Surveys are among the best ways to gather quantitative and qualitative info from participants, partners, and vendors. A mix of open- and closed-ended questions is best practice.
Don't miss your chance to ask how likely people would recommend your product or service to a friend or coworker on a scale of 0-10; your event Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the fastest ways to understand how to improve.
Once you have the fundamental metrics of an event, it's time to calculate the ROI. Looking at the cost of the event – your budget – compared to the outcomes of the event – engagement, leads, opportunities, and brand awareness – will give you your ROI.
Let's say your team hosts a product-focused webinar to promote a new feature. There were great questions from the attendees, multiple new leads attended, and a few even turned into viable opportunities. Plus, since your team hosted the webinar over your in-house platform, the startup costs were minimal. This kind of event would have a much higher ROI than a large-scale conference with plenty of passing conversations but no real meat.
You'll also need a few additional ingredients to calculate event ROI:
If you followed the plan, the first two should be quite straightforward. The third can be a little tricky.
A note on budgets: Costs get buried in many places, especially when you're planning for significant events or multiple events at a time. Did you buy a case of stickers and use them across ten events? Does the line item for shipping the promotional materials live in one spreadsheet, and the line item for renting the cheese truck live in another?
You'll need to configure your accounting software or use an event planning platform with the right features to keep all your costs in one place. This will allow you to trace all the costs back to the event and accurately calculate your ROI.
The new normal of virtual event marketing looks more than a little different than the past world of in-person gatherings. Instead of judging success on the number of booth conversations, event marketers have a plethora of new ways to track and measure engagement.
For marketing leaders, it's vital to have a clear path of understanding between these engagement metrics and how the bottom line (i.e., revenue, deals, etc.) is impacted.
Here are the several numbers every marketing leader should know when it comes to event marketing metrics:
Always track virtual marketing event ROI back to your original goals.
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