Accurate reporting depends on clear and measurable goals and objectives. Setting concrete targets lets you know what data to collect and when to collect it during field marketing efforts. Using proper tools to collect and track data and analytics improves data integrity, which allows for better analysis of results.
Data integrity refers to the level of accuracy and consistency of the data collected. If there is more than one person collecting event data, they may not enter information uniformly into their respective database. Having proper data collection tools and methods — and event staff trained to do so — protects the integrity of data, providing more consistent and realistic insights. When there’s a plan for data collection, businesses can make better sense of the results.
In this article, we’ll review various analytic and reporting insights that companies can gain from key data sources including:
- Comments and reactions
- Metrics and return on investment
- Event/program summary
Comments and Reactions
One way to evaluate experiential marketing success is to analyze comments, customer surveys, and reactions from people attending your event. First, look through customer comments and determine how well they match set goals and standards. At Brand Activate, we can help you develop customer reaction surveys with questions that enable accurate measurement of key performance indicators (KPI) from an event.
Once your event is done, survey event staff and the event staffing agency. Staff members can help identify potential weaknesses or unforeseen circumstances that hindered an event’s success.
Next, analyze event photos and customer feedback. Use the photos to see how people engaged during the event. For instance, perhaps there was a speaker or guest who inspired more turnout than others and engaged the audience.
Metrics and Return on Investment (ROI)
When planning for experiential marketing events, establish targets for all desired metrics. Brand Activate’s event reporting tools allow you to measure sales, sales conversion, engagement conversion, new leads, distributed samples, and other metrics. Look through the data collected during the event, and examine the results in relation to program costs. By doing so, measurement of the event’s ROI can be shown.
During this process, you might not see immediate success from an event. If you’re launching a new product or hosting an in-store event, measure the event’s ROI based on real-time data. However, established event goals could include metrics that occur weeks later.
If a goal was to improve foot traffic, determine how many people attended and make note of any barriers such as weather that might have impacted it. Yet, if a goal was to improve conversion rates among new leads, measure your leads first then conversion rates later.
Event Program/Summary
To improve the success of future events, it’s necessary to create an event or program summary and a detailed event report. These reports let you benchmark events against each other so you can track an event’s progress. Using event reports to track success lets you make changes to future events and programs. A thorough report shows if the changes have improved the ROI and other successful metrics, or if further modification of events is required.
A thorough program report also helps during event training. You can determine any unforeseen circumstances that impacted previous events and create training exercises to help event staff and brand ambassadors respond to them.
To aid in this, Brand Activate co-founded Benchmark, a tracking and reporting tool that provides centralized collection and reporting tools and reports. You can input desired data into our tool and receive a quality event summary with important data.
Our team offers analytics that review all program execution details, industry trends, and staff/customer feedback. Brand Activate goes beyond data and metrics to provide a detailed program summary. We include the following information:
- Program overview: In this section, restate the goals and objectives for the program or event. Detail these objectives along with the metrics you chose to evaluate. Provide guidelines about how to determine event success.
- Program activity: Summarize the details of the program or event. Briefly discuss how the event was planned and executed. In this section, include a timeline and key highlights from the program. Incorporate photos, social mentions, and other items that showcase the event’s success.
- Program results: Our Benchmark tool lets you track all data and analytics information in one convenient place. Such can be used to generate charts and graphs to include in program results. Discuss the event’s KPIs in relation to set goals to see how successful they were and where event programming may have fallen short.
- Program feedback: Use this section to detail qualitative data including customer surveys and feedback from event staff. Our Benchmark tools let you distribute questionnaires at the event, making it easy to collect and analyze feedback from patrons and staff. It’s possible to also track who took each questionnaire and where they took it, increasing data integrity.
- Goal delivery: In this section, wrap up event performance. State the goals and how the program delivered or fell short with each target. Starting with clear, measurable objectives will improve your data, making it easier to write this section. With specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based goals (SMART), you can collect the right data necessary to provide valuable analytics.
- Program summary and recommendations: Your data analysis to this point will provide an idea of the highs and lows of the event. Conclude the event report, summarizing what went well and what can be improved for future events.
While analyzing the data, there may exist points of improvement on which you can build future recommendations. Use all data to create these suggestions, and review customer feedback to tweak programs in the future. For instance, the data may show that the timing of an event was inconvenient or that guests didn’t think the speakers added value.
Event staff surveys can provide valuable feedback on how to improve staffing for future programs. Perhaps the staff felt that it was hard to check in or they didn’t know who could answer their questions. This type of information helps to improve event training or could point towards finding different event staffing agencies.
The Takeaway
Detailed event reporting helps to improve field marketing, enhancing your chances of successfully meeting established goals for subsequent events. For a seamless event reporting experience, use Benchmark to collect and report data. All raw data files along with reports can be found on the dashboard, which will improve event reporting and assist with better preparation for future events.