Analytics & TestingEvent MarketingSales Enablement

Key Event Metrics Every Executive Should Track

An experienced marketer understands the benefits that come from events. Specifically, in the B2B space, events generate more leads than other marketing initiatives. Unfortunately, most leads do not turn into sales, leaving a challenge for marketers to uncover additional KPIs to prove the value of investing in future events.

Rather than focussing entirely on leads, marketers need to consider the metrics that explain how the event was received by potential customers, current customers, analysts and more. For executives, being able to understand how to improve the overall event experience can help drive better results in the future.

Uncovering these metrics is easier said than done. To help marketing teams secure the future event budget, I compiled three metrics that marketers can leverage with their CMOs.

Brand Recognition

While sales numbers and new leads will always be a priority for CMOs, they still care about other metrics such as brand recognition. During an event, be sure to take note of other metrics such as website visits, number of scheduled press interviews and social media mentions. In order to see the effects of these metrics, take a look at the share of voice pre and post-event to see if you were able to chip away at competitors while attending the event. Lastly, events can be used to gather third-party perspective. Consider hosting a survey during the event to showcase results around overall brand awareness or recognition to share with your CMO.

Amount of Strategic Meetings

Every day, we all have meetings via telephone. However, taking the time to have a face-to-face meeting is significant in order to close deals. Spend time measuring the number of quality face-to-face meetings during your event and compare that number against the following metrics:

  • Customer Retention: Gaining new customers is important, but keeping your current customers can play a significant role in keeping your churn down and increasing revenue. In-person meetings can help strengthen these relationships and initiate needed conversations.
  • Grow Business: With many customers frequenting the same events as you, make it a point to use this opportunity to build relationships and grow business within existing accounts.
  • Deals Closed: Do you have metrics to show how many face-to-face meetings led to closed deals? What else played a role in closing that deal? A specific SME or executive? By having this information you can better plan for future events.

Influenced Revenue

Alignment between sales and marketing plays a significant role in driving leads, closing deals and ultimately, increasing revenue. Events give sales and marketing teams a one-stop shop to impact a company’s bottom line. To showcase this to a CMO, be sure to measure the following revenue-focused metrics:

  • Number of Demos: Of course companies will secure leads at events, but are those leads always qualified? Rather than only tracking the number of leads at events, track the number of demos completed. This can give teams clear insight into which potential customers are truly interested in the product and can save time for sales teams. Additionally, this metric can show CMOs the role that the event played in presenting the demo.
  • Meeting Effectiveness: Tracking the number of scheduled meetings that converted to opportunities can show which sales representatives are most effective at moving deals forward. This metric is not only important to your CMO, but also to the Head of Sales so that they can gain a better understanding of each representative’s strengths. This information can help sellers be better placed throughout the customer journey and provide insight into who should attend future events.
  • Average Deal Size: Success from events is not always measured by the number of deals closed. Rather than focusing all your attention on larger deals that typically have lower success rates and take a longer time to close, keep an eye on the average deal size so that you can help point prospects that are the ideal customer persona in the right direction.

All executives are driven by results. Spending time before, during, and after events to analyze what worked and what can improve will give marketers, event planners and executives a better understanding of what changes need to be made to ensure future events are successful. By implementing a metrics-driven approach, marketers will have an easier time justifying the investment in events, leaving the leadership team no other option but to increase budget allocations for future events.

Ravi Chalaka

Ravi Chalaka is the CMO of Jifflenow and a Marketing and Business Development expert, who creates and executes business strategies, generating demand and raising brand/product awareness in competitive markets. As VP of Marketing at both large and small technology companies, Ravi built strong teams and brands and enabled faster revenue growth for a wide range of solutions based on Big Data, SaaS, AI and IoT software, HCI, SAN, NAS. Ravi has MBA degrees in Marketing and Finance and is an expert industry spokesperson and presenter

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