Calculating Return on Investment for Large Scale Corporate Events

Sept. 26, 2014 - PRLog -- Clients operate on ever-decreasing budgets and it is essential to be able to quantify return on investment. The events company needs to demonstrate an ability to match large scale corporate events to the brand, marketing and / or corporate strategy, and to be able to partner their client in being able to set and meet the key performance indicators for this marketing initiative.

The key to successfully measuring return on investment when planning a large scale corporate event is to clearly identify objectives and key performance indicators up front. The client and the event planning company need to carefully outline what the event has to achieve and tie this to indicators that are measurable and quantifiable.  Clear means of measuring and tracking data also need to be identified and agreed upon.

There are always essentially three “clients” when it comes to a large scale corporate event: the corporate client, the stakeholders and the event attendees.  When setting objectives and performance indicators, the needs of all three of these groups must be considered.

Both corporate client and the stakeholders will be looking for a change in attitude or behavior in the target “consumer” group (whether this group consists of company employees or external clients / consumers).   Stakeholders will be looking at how the event – as part of a larger marketing strategy – is able to positively impact the bottom line and create business opportunities.

One measure of the success of a large scale corporate event will always be adherence to the budget or the ability of the event company to negotiate savings on behalf of the client without compromising the quality and impact of the event.  However, in addition to this, the ability of the event company to efficiently handle the logistics of the event will also be a success factor.  The clients needs to have complete confidence in the event company’s ability to handle the logistics so that they can focus on other areas of the business.

In the case of the “consumer”, it is possible to measure who and how many people were invited to the event, how many people responded (whether positively or negatively) to the invitation, how many people indicated that they would be attending the event, and how many people didn’t show up.

“The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action and reason leads to conclusions.” – Donald Calne, Neurologist

Events are essentially experiential and participative.  Objectives need to be defined regarding in what specific ways the event should have a long-lasting impact on the behavior of the attendee.  Running surveys after the event to measure the impact of the event on the attendee can be a useful, quantitative and qualitative means of measuring the success of the event in this area.

Finally, an event is not complete until its success has been measured and quantified.  Success lies in the ability to set clearly measurable objectives for all three groups of “clients” in the planning stage.