In business, events are the perfect way to introduce your company and its products to a new clientele. Itβs also a great way for you as an event manager to gauge how well your event was received by your audience, and how much impact it has made on their mindsets and actions. To keep track of all these KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), Event Managers rely on metrics such as numbers of people who attended their events, how many social media posts were generated from those attendees, and what kind of feedback they received from those who attended the event in person and online.
This article will help you understand why it’s important for Event Managers to understand what their company’s key performance indicators are so they can measure them against other metrics like attendance rates or social engagement rates before deciding whether or not they should host another similar event in the future.
What is KPI?
KPIs, or key performance indicators, are the metrics that you use to determine success. They’re used to track progress and make decisions about areas for improvement. At the end of the day, KPIs are a set of numbers that tell you how well your business is performing overall.
They can be either qualitative (e.g., meeting with clients) or quantitative (e.g., % increase in sales).
Why is it Important?
You may be wondering why itβs so important to measure your eventβs success. After all, the purpose of an event is to promote a brand and drive sales or leads, so isn’t that enough?
Well, no. The reason you need to track your KPIs is because there are many benefits of measuring how effective your events are. Here are three reasons why they’re important:
- They give you a clear idea of what worked and what didn’t work at each event so that when you plan future ones, you can tweak things accordingly. This way, every time you hold an event, there will be incremental improvements in terms of attendance rates as well as conversion rates (the amount of people who purchase products or services).
What is the Difference Between KPIs and Metrics?
KPIs are often used interchangeably with metrics, but they have very different meanings. A KPI is a measure of success, whereas a metric is a specific measurement to support the goal. KPIs are more granular than metrics because they’re associated with particular target goals for an event. For example, if you want to increase sales of your product at an event, then one way you could measure that would be through the number of people who clicked on your booth during the show (metric). To determine whether or not you met your goal, however, you might also want to consider how many prospects actually converted into leads and customers post-show (KPI).
How Do I Establish Event KPIs?
- Set a goal.
- Define the business problem.
- Create a hypothesis to solve your business problem.
- Test the hypothesis, and analyze the results to see if they support or refute your hypothesis.
If your event’s KPIs do not support (or outright contradict) your original idea for an event, then you need to go back to step one and figure out how you can adjust your strategy accordingly so that it does align with what you set out as goals for yourself when planning this particular event in the first place!
How Many Event KPIs Should I Create?
There is no right or wrong number of event KPIs that you should create. The more relevant and measurable KPIs you have, the better chance your event will have at success. But if you have too many KPIs, it can be overwhelming for your team to track and analyze data from so many different sources.
When creating a KPI, ask yourself some questions: What would make this event successful? How will we measure success? Are there specific metrics that need to be tracked over time so we can see how the event is progressing?
The goal of an effective KPI is for it to provide real-time insights into whatβs happening at your event so you can make changes as needed before any damage has been done.
What are the Most Common Event KPIs?
The most common event metrics are participation, registration and lead generation. These are the primary KPIs youβll be tracking to gauge the success of your event.
- Attendance: This is measured by the total number of people who showed up at an event, including both registered and non-registered attendees.
- Registration: The number of people who signed up for an event as a result of marketing efforts.
- Lead generation: The number of new assets (e.g., leads) generated from an event that can be used in future sales efforts or converted into customers over time via other channels like email campaigns or retargeting ads on social media platforms such as Facebook Ads Manager or Google AdWords Campaigns Manager
How Do I Measure My Event KPIs?
A good dashboard should be able to measure your event KPIs and give you insights into how they’re performing. You’ll want to be able to identify issues that need to be fixed, determine whether or not progress is being made, and communicate results back out to stakeholders.
It’s also important for an event organizer or leader to have access to these dashboards themselves so that they can use them for decision making. If there are no dashboards in place for measuring key performance indicators, it becomes difficult for an event organizer to know if their events are having an impact on the bottom line of their companyβand even if those events are profitable enough for the company’s budget.
Establish a Set of KPIs
Establishing a set of KPIs is one of the most important things you can do to optimize your events. KPIs help you understand how your event is performing and what factors are contributing to its success or failure. They allow you to make strategic decisions about future events, benchmark yourself against competitors, and compare different events within an organization.
In order to establish a set of KPIs, first identify all goals for your event:
- What are we trying to achieve?
- Who is involved in the process?
- What metrics will be tracked?
Conclusion
We hope that this article has helped you better understand the importance of event KPIs. As we mentioned before, they are an essential part of your marketing strategy and they can help you achieve your goals by providing valuable insights into how people respond to your event. We recommend going through the steps outlined above to ensure that you create a set of KPIs that works for your organizationβs unique needs.