For the past few days we have been talking about how you can get the most out of your event marketing. We have covered how to create both a comprehensive, multi-touch pre-event marketing campaign and a great on-site experience.
Now the event is over and you are back in your office. Most likely your boss is asking you to quantify your success. These answers can be difficult to answer, but you have to find a way to justify your event presence and the pre-event campaign expenses.
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One common goal is to generate leads. Many companies that attend events see it as a great opportunity to approach prospects and directly generate leads at their booths.
It is also easier goal to justify in terms of ROI. If your goal is to generate leads at an event, one of the most important things you can do is ensure timely follow up.
One of the worst things that can happen is your sales reps begin calling what they expect to be a warmed lead only to find the contact doesn’t know who you are. By following up quickly, you can make sure that your leads are still warm when your sales reps start calling.
Not everyone you meet at an event is ready to become a lead. There is a simple solution to this. Take their business card and enter their email address into your lists for lead nurturing.
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Not every company exhibiting at an event is there to generate leads. Many rely on events as a great way to increase brand exposure and awareness. Events can be really effective for this purpose because of the highly targeted nature of attendees.
There are a lot of ways you can determine foot traffic at your booth. In many instances you can use badge scanners to track exactly how many attendees visited your booth. Even if you don’t have access to this technology you can still bring tally counters. Either way, it’s important that you are able to judge how many people visited your booth.
You can also monitor and track social mentions. A mention on social media means that someone interacted with your brand and are now talking about you with their social network.
There are many services across the web that can help you track social mentions. Some will even inform you of positive, neutral, and negative mentions on social media.
Finally, you should also see a spike in traffic to your website as a direct result of your event presence. As people come by your booth, see your banners, or even your pre-event campaign, they will probably go to your website at some point to see who you are.
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We’ve talked about the conventional ways to measuring the results of your event marketing. But now let’s talk about something a bit unconventional.
During the event you were probably part of or attended breakout sessions, seminars, workshops, or panel discussions. You might have even had some great conversations about the industry with attendees too.
As a marketer, you can write content based on what you learned and were exposed to at the event. It’s a great way to generate leads by directly addressing the pain points of your audience and positioning your product as a solution for specific problems.
Measuring and justifying your event experience can be difficult, especially when you aren’t directly generating leads. However, there are many opportunities to show your management exactly how beneficial your event marketing can be.
