When determining event success, you want to look at your overall return on investment (ROI), like this post from Zkipster on ROI. This idea of return means that you have to have specific goals in mind that you can measure. What does this mean for you? Well, that means that you have to move beyond attendance and general engagement with your event. It’s time to dig in deep and figure out how to measure event success beyond attendance and beyond the surface.
What Were Your Goals?
Before you can even begin to measure any sort of success, you have to determine what your goals are. These goals can be vast, or they can be more directed. It all depends on what you are looking into with your event.
For the most part, it is very important to focus on S.M.A.R.T. goals that are defined, direct, achievable, time-bound, and they can be measured. These kinds of goals, the S.M.A.R.T. ones that are, make sure that you are able to figure out what is going on and determine measurable statistics.
Did You Meet or Exceed Those Goals?
The reason that you start with goals is that you have to determine if you met or exceeded those goals. You can have attendance as a goal, or perhaps a general monetary return on investment, but what are your deeper goals? There are three big ones that we’re going to cover here: connection, brand awareness, and leads.
What Connections Were Made?
This is a deep check into your goals and metrics. You are looking at how many people actually made connections between each other, connections between groups, and connections between employees and volunteers!
It’s always hard to measure success with connections, but you can look at this through surveys that ask direct questions, such as:
- Did you meet anyone new?
- Will you reach out to anyone after this event?
- Are there any organizations you learned about?
These types of questions are going to help you have a better view of what your guests are working with and who they are meeting. This is a great way to measure the success of connections.
Did You Increase Brand Awareness?
This is something that you might not have looked at before: brand awareness. Every event you put together is not only a part of your brand, but the brand of the investors and stakeholders that you have as a part of your event as well. One of the big goals of any event is to increase brand awareness, which can be done through media, handouts, and word of mouth.
Did You Generate Additional Leads?
As an event planner, one of your goals is to make sure that you are generating leads for future events and potentially even future investors. There’s so much that can be done here! Creating a lead also requires you to determine what kinds of leads you want to create. Keep this in mind and keep looking deeper!
Attendance and Engagement Matter
Looking deeper than the surface, especially with attendance and engagement, takes time and prioritization. Not every piece of attendance needs to be looked at, and not every element of engagement needs to be highlighted. Here, there are three that you can look into that take a deeper look.
Looking Into Demographics
As a quick review, it’s important to remember that there are plenty of ways to look at demographics. You have age, company association, professional level, and so much more. Looking at this can help.
Satisfaction Rates From Surveys
Surveys are 100% one of the best ways to approach understanding how your guests respond to what you have done in your event. Make sure that you have a well-structured survey that covers information that matches your goals.
Do You Have Future Attendees?
This is part of the idea of creating future events through current attendees. It’s surveying people and asking if they would be able to or want to attend one of your future events. It’s okay to ask a blatant question!
Moving Forward
Once you have all of this information, it can be difficult to parse it apart. My biggest suggestion comes from the idea of how to do you eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time. Take your time with this data and give yourself a few weeks to review everything. Don’t forget, you may have the data, but you still have to process it!
