As renowned management consultant Peter Drucker says, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Any event planner and marketer knows the importance of measuring the success of their events.
After all, measurement provides insights and feedback that allows you to get a sense of what’s working and what isn’t, and improve accordingly. Here are five ways to measure the success of your event.
Identify your goals.
Of course, measurement starts with identifying your goals. When establishing your event goals, make sure they tie in to your business objectives. Are you raising funds at your event? Aiming to get your exhibitors some visibility? Identifying your goals will help you inform what data and insights to look at.
Track your data.
Once you establish your event goals, track key data, including registration and check-in rates, and attendee engagement and behavior.
Measure your revenue versus overhead costs.
One of your event goals may be to bring in additional revenue. And, of course, you have to spend money to make money. But if you’re spending more than you’re bringing in, that may be a problem. That’s why you should measure parameters like:
- Anticipated cost versus actual cost
- Anticipated revenue versus actual revenue
- Actual cost versus actual revenue
Keep in mind that going slightly over the budget or earning slightly less revenue than anticipated doesn’t automatically make the event a failure.
Monitor your social media activity.
It’s a given that you should be active on social media during the days leading up to, and during, your event. But you also need to monitor social media activity during this time.
Are attendees posting with the event hashtag? Are they engaged? Are your followers more active than usual? You can use a tool like Hashtracking to monitor social media activity by hashtag.
Ask for post-event feedback.
If you want to know how attendees felt about your event, just ask them. Send out a survey after your event. This will allow you to hear from the horse’s mouth how attendees felt about significant aspects of your event.
Want to take your event to the next level? Book a demo with Streampoint today.
