HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR EVENT WAS SUCCESSFUL?

Anna, how do I know if my event was successful? This is a question my clients ask me all the time and generally, they say; "How many people do I need at my event to make sure that it's a success?" My answer is always the same. Understanding if your event was successful, goes back to clarity and understanding the purpose of this event for me in my business because each event may have a different purpose. Therefore, to identify event success, we need to define what success looks like and we do this by conducting a Pre-Event Success Audit to define the purpose of the event for MY BUSINESS.

7 Reasons To Run Your Event For Business Growth

• Brand Awareness

• Thought Leadership

• Client Engagement

• Client Education

• Lead Generation

• Sales

• Marketing Collateral

Once we have identified the purpose of this event for MY BUSINESS. We can work towards fulfilling the purpose by setting goals and critical drivers. From these, we can identify KPIs and create an action plan.

Because different types of events require different ways of organising the events, identifying one of these seven reasons for why you are running an event in the first place enables you to then conduct a pre-event success audit.

How To Conduct A Pre-Event Success Audit

For the purpose of this exercise, let's just say your reason for running the event is to educate your current customers. What does that look like for you, in your business?

Step 1:

Look at your current customer database and understand what it is your customers are looking for. This could be education on how to use your products/services or this could be education on how they can accomplish something new in their lives or their business.

Step 2:

Set yourself some goals around attendance and outcomes for your business. This could be: I want 30 of my best customers in the room and I would like to make 10 in-room sales of my product or service.

Step 3:

Set the critical drivers, identify what will it take in order for us to get 30 people in the room. How many emails will you need to send? How many follow up calls will you need to make? Are you willing to send out an SMS? Setting these parameters will give you an idea of the work involved to make this event successful and enable you to drive towards that success.

Step 4:

Set yourself some KPI’s. These could be: Email my entire database. Call everyone who has opened the email. Send a follow-up SMS to confirm attendance. Add the event to your website. Post about the event on my business social media platforms.

Step 5:

Use the KPIs to create an Action Plan. Your action plan should outline the task, who will complete them (you or another team member), what date they will be completed by and any notes that you may need to add to make the tasks happen.

So remember, how to identify a successful event comes down to clarity and understanding the purpose of this event, for me in my business.

I'd love to hear some comments or your thoughts on how have you identified success in your events for your business in the past. If you have any questions around how to do this in the future or you'd like a copy of the Pre-Event Success Audit send us an email and we will be able to have that conversation. As always, it's a pleasure to share your Evenologists journey and let’s master events for our business growth.