Event marketing is a fascinating field of marketing that poses an especially difficult measurement challenge. It’s a field of marketing that thrives on the unique. While a traditional direct mail piece depends on tradition and consistency to generate predictable response, the event marketer is often challenged with coming up with something completely new. Over the past four years I have focused on measuring event marketing programs. In that time, I have come to realize that there are three key considerations that seem to work every time.
Regardless of your event marketing, you can always measure it. Here’s how…
The Three Keys to Event Marketing Measurement
Establish Event Marketing Goals
Any event marketing effort will tend to lean toward driving one of two outcomes: Either you’re focused on changing future consumer actions or you’re focused on changing consumer perspective. If you’re focused on actions, then you can typically measure this with a corporate data analysis project such as coupon redemption, register receipts, call center volume, etc. If you’re focused on changing consumer perspective, than a solidly controlled test survey will get you what you need.
Quantify Your Event Marketing Plan
With your goals and a related measurement strategy in place, the next step is to make sure you keep tracking the actual event. Your event is the “cause.” Your results are the “effect.” You need to measure your event activity in order to bring these two together. Key metrics typically include staffing levels, consumer touch-points, venue, and distribution counts.
Combine Event Activity With Goal Measurement to Derive Cause & Effect
When done correctly, the preceding two items can be brought together to complete the cause and effect equation. When you know that handing out fliers at a bus station produced higher call volume than when you handed them out at a sporting event, that knowledge becomes useful and powerful. That power will allow you to deliver better results for your brand, your clients, and your consumers.
There are many different ways to measure your event-based marketing. For a limited time Portland Marketing Analytics is offering a reduced price for on-site workshops to assist your team in understanding how to better measure event marketing. These event marketing measurement workshops may be exactly what you need to make this year the year where you truly demonstrate the impact of your event marketing.