What's your strategy for measuring the impact of live events?

1 Define your objectives

Before planning or hosting a live event, you should have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve. What are your specific and measurable goals for the event? How do they align with your overall marketing and sales strategy? Common objectives for live events include increasing brand awareness and reach, generating qualified leads and conversions, educating and informing your audience, building trust and loyalty, showcasing products or services, and networking and collaborating with partners and influencers. Writing down your objectives and prioritizing them based on needs and resources is essential in order to focus efforts and budget on the most impactful activities for the event.

2 Choose your metrics

Once you have your objectives, you need to decide how you will measure them. What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will show you if your event was successful or not? How will you collect and analyze the data? Attendance and registration, engagement and satisfaction, leads and revenue, cost and ROI, and feedback and testimonials are all common metrics for live events. Depending on your event format and platform, you can use different tools and methods to track and report your metrics, such as online registration forms, surveys, polls, social media analytics, email marketing software, CRM systems, and more. To ensure reliable and consistent measurement of your metrics before, during, and after the event, make sure to have a system in place.

3 Benchmark and compare

To understand the impact of your live events, you need to have a baseline to compare them with. How do your events perform against your expectations, industry standards, and competitors? How do they compare with other marketing channels and activities? How do they change over time and across different segments and markets?

To answer these questions, you need to benchmark and compare your metrics with relevant data sources. For example, you can use historical data from your previous events, industry reports and benchmarks, competitor analysis, and market research. You can also segment and filter your data by different criteria, such as audience demographics, location, behavior, and preferences. This will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your events, as well as the opportunities and threats in your environment.

4 Optimize and improve

The final step in measuring the impact of your live events is to use the insights you gained from your data to optimize and improve your event strategy. What worked well and what didn't? What can you do better next time? How can you increase the value and relevance of your events for your audience and your business?

To answer these questions, you need to review and evaluate your metrics, objectives, and activities. You also need to solicit and act on the feedback from your attendees, speakers, sponsors, and partners. You can use various methods to gather feedback, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, reviews, and testimonials. You can also use A/B testing, experiments, and pilots to test different elements of your events, such as content, design, format, and promotion. By optimizing and improving your events, you can increase their impact and ROI, as well as your reputation and credibility.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?