8 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your In-Person Events
At the outset of the pandemic, we were so naively optimistic! Two weeks (four weeks MAX) of lock-down, and we’d be back in trade show mode in no time.
Ha!
We’re (finally) cautiously optimistic that in-person events will rejoin the marketing fold two years later. These events are expensive, and as marketers, we’re expected to show that what we invest in results in bookings. But post-pandemic we’re going to feel that pain even more. Our move to digital has the executive team thinking that everything can be tracked.
Before you dive back into the in-person marketing landscape, make sure you’re set up to prove success.
With any campaign, we recommend defining success before kick-off. For trade shows, here are the metrics we use at CaliberMind.
Early Indicators:
- Meetings set before the show
- Names collected (badge scans/sign-ins)
- Meetings set against attendees
- Opportunities created
- Opportunities influences (in-flight deals – using multi-touch attribution)
Final Measurements (North Star):
- Pipeline sourced
- Pipeline influenced (using multi-touch attribution)
- Bookings influenced (using multi-touch attribution)
To get the correct information in your systems, make sure you have the proper campaigns created, upload lists as quickly as possible, and ensure passive tracking is on for salespeople (email and calendar synchronization with their CRM).
It’s also crucial to set proper expectations with your executive team. While we all would love a five-day sales cycle, it’s rarely the reality in B2B. It can take 60 days for pipeline to start showing up and months for that pipeline to book.
Answering whether a conference was worth it when you have these metrics in your back pocket is much easier, but it doesn’t guarantee that your results will match expectations. What if salespeople enjoyed the conference, but it looked like a big swing and a miss–even with multi-touch attribution?
Meet with people who attended and reevaluate your approach. Perhaps it wasn’t the best fit. Making a good impression is about creating the right message (and measurements) for the right audience.
To learn more about how CaliberMind can help you measure the ROI on your events just chat with us.
