Have you ever thought about how much effort and time you put into planning and designing your trade show booth so your product could shine and capture the attention of a trade show audience? You might have spent days perfecting every word and every graphic in your presentation at a conference. Despite your best efforts, you weren’t completely satisfied with the results of your booth or presentation. You expected that you would receive a much higher return on investment (ROI) from this event, but it was not the case. After the initial rush of leads, they eventually all dried up, but a trickle of them kept coming in. The cost of planning and operating any event should be a serious consideration, to make sure the returns on investment are worth the investment.
You need to be realistic about the changing nature of the return on investment for events if the planning of events was a significant part of your business model. To create value in our new normal, we must think of new, creative ways to create value when planning events. The following strategies will help you get started.
Increase the ROI of your events with these strategies
Decide what your starting point will be.
Since there are so many metrics to track, you can’t get a single, clear picture of where you stand before you make any necessary changes. To enable you to build your improvement plan, Eventbrite has developed an Event ROI Calculator. As soon as you identify which metrics you wish to improve, you’ll be able to maximize your data touchpoints and accelerate your inbound sales, a sales intelligence tool will also help you get more leads.
Attract more online visitors
A virtual or hybrid event can reach a larger audience, as previously mentioned. There is no requirement that your audience can travel to your event or that the venue must meet your needs. As a result, you can reach the largest possible audience with your event promotion. Expanded attendance can have many benefits, including an increase in ticket sales, more potential business leads, and a greater awareness of the brand. You just need to cast your marketing net wider to increase ROI from your online gatherings. In such events, people tend to trust local companies more when they register online, so if you are from outside the United States, make sure your company is registered there. A virtual business address can help you achieve this.
Content Creation That Builds Value
If an event has quality content, you can keep your attendees coming back for more if that content offers value to them. It is therefore recommended for businesses to invest in making high-quality content such as infographics, blog posts, PowerPoint slides and videos posted on YouTube so that their brand image and credibility can greatly improve.
The company’s social media platforms help attract attendees to the event by displaying social media wall. Leads are turned into customers as a consequence of the authority and trust that valuable types of content marketing create.
Invest in the engagement of your audience
An event’s success is determined by the engagement of the audience. You want attendees, not spectators, to be present. Attendees won’t engage on their own so don’t expect them to do it on their own. You have to provide them with straightforward ways to connect with you. To do this, you might consider asking them questions during every meeting. In addition, you might consider sending them a survey that you can choose from. In addition, you might consider creating creative networking opportunities for them.
It is more likely that an audience that is engaged from the very beginning will get more out of the event, will enjoy themselves more, and will view the hosting brand in a positive light as a result. All of these things need to be in place for you to achieve the highest return on investment from your online and hybrid events.
Social media can provide insights.
With the help of social media, event planners can listen to exactly what their attendees are saying about their events on their social media pages. By doing this, every event organizer has an immediate opportunity to take control of potential problems and save face if something disastrous does happen. In addition to the data collected from social media, the data obtained from social media can also help organizers determine where to place their advertising dollars to attract future registrants’ attention.
Put crowd shaping to work.
How does crowd shaping work? By using your attendees’ wearables and devices to shape the way they feel about your event, you can shape how they feel about it. Only can you monitor where people linger, but you can figure out their general patterns of engagement. From promotional materials to your organization’s representatives, you’ll be able to understand where to place everything.
Strategize optimally
As a final piece of advice, we suggest that you use the available information – event analytics, NPS surveys, general audience sentiments – to inform you on how you can improve your event strategy in the future and optimize the performance of every virtual or hybrid event you plan to host. Consider how you can increase event planning, marketing, and execution effectiveness by reviewing the statistics. When you evaluate these stats, you can find ways to improve by asking yourself, “How can we do this better?”.
Conclusion
You should know that ROI may take many different forms such as increased sales, brand awareness, and lead generation. You can continue to optimize your strategy based on the insights that you gain from your event. By doing so, you can create hybrid event strategies that do yield a positive ROI. Analyze your analytics data and find the areas where you generate the highest return on your investment.