Measurement Tip 31

When all is said and done, what is the single most important thing to measure?

As I wind down a great career helping people like you get the most from marketing events, I find the most important measure for me personally is “Did I make a difference?”  This question is also entirely relevant for you and for your program today.

As I am fond of saying, “Only action delivers ROI.  No action, no ROI.”  So the fruit of my effort can be summed up quite simply, “Did anyone do anything different as a result?"  As you can see, action and change are somewhat synonymous. I have been fortunate that many students and readers have shared with me how they changed their program and their results acting upon the suggestions I gave. I hope you have benefited as well.

And, so it is for you, your program and ultimately your career.  The true measures of success are the specific changes that result from your efforts and your program.  Include accomplishments with customers, prospects, partners, your own team and countless others. 

This is the last measurement tip. I want to thank MC2, and my friends Rob Murphy and Caroline Meyers for the opportunity to share my ideas and thoughts with you through "eConnections Digest" over the past three years.  I sincerely hope you found something to use in your plans and activities that made a difference. I wish you all the best!

Ed Jones

Measurement Tip #4

Trade Shows can be about more than leads and sales. Cost savings tactics such as negotiating with new suppliers, reducing travel, recruitment and generating press all lower the cost of doing business for your company. Reducing cost makes a dollar for dollar impact on profitability. Measure and report the savings as an element of event ROI.

Most events offer many ways to save your company money. Events present “one-on-many” opportunities that are especially effective in reducing sales call costs and travel expense to hold meetings in the future. The reason is hundreds, if not thousands of people who can influence the amount or cost of doing business for your company have paid their own way to be at the event and are available to meet with you. These people include existing customers, potential buyers, suppliers, partners, channels, influencers and many others.

One of our clients hosted over 1,000 meetings that included their own executives and sales teams with customers, channel partners, strategic alliances, technical experts, standards body members, investors and industry press and analysts at their largest trade show. Each meeting they held resulted in the elimination of future time and travel expense to hold that same meeting at the company’s expense in the future. This client was able to report a savings estimate of more than $1,000,000, representing enough return to justify the entire show budget without any estimate of eventual sales impact.

Reducing the number of required field sales contacts and associated cost presents another opportunity for savings. A well-executed event plan accomplishes the same objectives with targeted prospects that would occur in the first few field sales calls. A well-executed program may eliminate up to two or more sales calls in the field required to close a sale. Typically, these calls cost a company from $400 to $1,000 or more dollars each.

There are more ways to impact the cost of doing business that can be listed here. For example, many clients use marketing events as recruitment opportunities thereby reducing the cost of finding suitable candidates and bringing candidates to HQ for an interview. This is also true for supplier and channel recruitment.

The activities at your next event should be aimed not only at the income side of the profit equation, but the cost side as well. Of course to make these benefits happen requires that you initiate a dialogue with those internal managers who can take advantage of the opportunity your event provides. They can also help you estimate the value associated with doing multiple things at an event instead of doing them one at a time.

Reporting these results in your event measurement report will add credibility and financial justification for your investment beyond the primary goal of increasing sales.

Measurement Tip #3

To determine marketing success, you should identify and report these exhibit metrics: 1) who visited, 2) why they came, 3) what they learned and 4) what your visitors plan to do as a result of their visit.

Although many think of an exhibition as a place to put a number of products and services on display to a large number of people, the real value comes from making contact with individuals who are qualified to do business with your company. These people may be prospects, customers, suppliers or other participants in the profit equation of your business. Therefore, in order to identify and justify the value of an event marketing activity, it is essential to know and report who visited your venue and what outcomes are expected as a result of their experience. Marketing exists to create sales opportunities and to increase the probability of sale. In order to create sales opportunities, your program must target specific individuals and persuade them to act in a manner that benefits your company.

To understand the effectiveness of your marketing program it is important to know why participants came to visit and what they learned during their stay. This informs you regarding the effectiveness of your targeting and attraction campaigns and identifies the elements of the event experience that were most successful and likely to influence a visitor’s decision to act on your behalf.

The answers to the four questions listed above can be determined in a variety of ways. A common practice is to conduct live, post-visit intercept surveys. They help you understand how well you connected with your target audience. Intercept surveys provide accurate demographic profiling of visitors to your exhibit or event. This includes targeting criteria such as industry affiliation, company type, company size, individual responsibility, job title, buying readiness, and purchase intent. Post-visit intercept surveys also identify what the participants learned (if anything) and most importantly what they intend to do as a result of their visit. This data can even provide a forecast of expected sales driven from the participant’s view.

More sophisticated measures are possible using post-event survey techniques that pull from the entire event audience which includes those who visited your exhibit or event as a subset. You can identify changes in purchase intent, brand preference, brand fit and Net Promoter* scores for example. These metrics help you understand a lot more about the effectiveness of your marketing activity in creating positive change in perceptions among your target markets that result in an increased probability of sale.

Another method is to utilize technologies such as localized scanning techniques that provide real-time visitor identification and tracking of their movement. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for example, can provide real-time activity reports on session attendance, time on the show floor, and in-booth activity by product interest and for post-event analysis.

Understanding what your visitors plan to do as a result of their visit is one of the most crucial elements. A qualified lead should be committed to take a pre-determined action that sales has defined as a step in the company’s sales cycle. A tight definition of a qualified lead will provide a strong metric regarding generation of sales opportunity.

There are many metrics that are important to exhibit and event managers. As far as ROI is concerned, determining who came, the persuasiveness of their experience and their intent to act provide the clearest measures of effectiveness.

*Net Promoter Score is a registered trademark of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, and Fred Reichheld

Helping Exhibit Managers Find High Value Improvement Opportunities

The Constellation team was invited to develop a workshop on improvement in trade show and exhibit marketing programs for a meeting of the GA TSEA chapter. Our approach was to use our “self-assessment” tool with chapter members and present the results and recommendations at the meeting.

The Constellation Marketing Self-Assessment asks a series of very specific questions related to event marketing best practices. We took the opportunity to update our questionnaire to include questions facing the event marketing industry today, such as effective use of social and digital media. The areas addressed included: Target Marketing, Message Development, Exhibit/Event Effectiveness, Promotion Value and ROI Measurement and Continuous Improvement.

We sent a series of emails to chapter participants encouraging them to complete their self-assessment. Upon completion they received a print-out of their results, showing their individual areas of strength (best practices) and opportunities for improvement. Participants were encouraged to bring copies of their results to the chapter meeting for discussion.

Our team tabulated the results of the group to identify the areas of common strengths and improvement needs. The most consistently identified need was to address the disconnect between the sales and event marketing teams regarding event strategy, tactics and leads.

Once the group understood where they could improve, they wanted to know how to improve and they resolved to use their identified common needs for improvement to determine agendas for future chapter meetings. For example, the lack of effective communication between sales and marketing teams topic led to an idea for a panel comprised of sales managers and marketing managers. The panel would serve to find out how to create a synergy between sales and marketing to effectively achieve successful events and ultimately achieve organizational objectives.

Our study of membership needs was enlightening. We use this same tool to identify likely improvement needs with new clients. You can take this self -assessment of event marketing effectiveness yourself at no cost and without obligation. Just follow this link, complete the assessment and you will be able to print a list of your most valuable improvement opportunities. You might want to use these questions as the basis for internal discussions with your colleagues or management, or as the basis for a team meeting. Asking the right questions of the right people is one of the most effective research techniques an event manager or consultant can utilize.

Call us at +1 (770) 391-0015 to discuss ideas about how to get your team and management on the right path for effective trade show and event marketing.
Visit our website www.constellationcc.com for valuable case studies and tips on improving your event marketing program.

Heather Deloach
Project Coordinator
heatherdeloach@constellationcc.com

Measurement Tip # 1

Be regarded as a manager of the business as well as a manager of trade shows and events.

(This is the first in a series of articles for the MC2 eConnections Newsletter)

Your career opportunities expand rapidly if you are seen as a manager who affects the profitability of the organization and not just your own budget. The best way to do this is to relate the accomplishments you measure to the basic business profit equation.

Revenue – Expense = Profit

In fact, the following two simple concepts will be the underlying basis for this entire series of tips and articles:

1) Your success as an event marketing manager
2) Relating accomplishments to business profitability

So let’s get started. . .

Revenue related accomplishments in a marketing context are usually related to sales. Generating new sales through interactions and resulting leads with potential buyers is the most obvious. Not so obvious, is protecting and growing the revenue you already have through your existing customers. Your event plans should address both.

Expense related accomplishments in an event marketing context are virtually unlimited. Expense reductions (aka cost savings) impact profitability dollar for dollar. When you have your company CEO meet with thirty customers and prospects over three days at a major event, consider the savings to your company.

Would a trip for the CEO to meet with those same customers individually cost $10,000 or more?

If you use the media center at a big show to accomplish a major announcement or product launch, how much is saved compared to doing it independently?

When you reduce the number of sales calls from five to two for qualified visitors reached through your shows, what is the impact on sales expense?

When you develop new digital graphics, video, web pages and social media for a major show, how many times will those assets be reused in the future and for how many purposes?

The examples are endless. Expense reductions are the greatest and most varied opportunities available to you as an event marketing manager. Expense related accomplishments should be a part of every show plan.

Other measures will be discussed in this series as well. Cost efficiencies, such as Cost per Visitor, exhibit efficiencies such as Number of Visitors, communications efficiencies such as Number of Impressions, and even measures on the overall show or event such as Traffic Density.

A good measurement program will show if your events are paying off for the business and if they are being managed for optimum efficiency. Measurement will also show you how to improve your accomplishments in both categories. I hope you tune in each month as we expand on the knowledge and skills to justify and improve your events and elevate your status in the organization.

If you have any questions related to event measurement please call us at 770.391.0015

Ed

Suite of On- Line Tools Now Available to the Exhibit Managers

I was a bit surprised to realize that we now have a complete set of on- line tools to support exhibit managers with some of the most important success steps in their program:

• On- Line Planning and Measurement Tool - (Simple and Full ROI. Joint venture with Exhibit Surveys, The Trade Show Planning and Measurement Tool)
• On- Line Pre- Event Staff Orientation and Training - (Simple and Comprehensive versions, annual license and per user fee, low cost for small shows)
• On- Line Post Event Staff and Stakeholder Survey - (Turn key, providing internal customer feedback, database of results analysis over the event year, by product group or division, 24/7 access to results and analysis)

Our goal is to make inexpensive, automated support for tasks that have a high degree of influence on effectiveness and efficiency of the exhibit program. Exhibit and event managers rarely have time for additional tasks, yet these tool provide essential support for measurement and accountability across a wider range of people in the organization.

Call me if you would like to know more about automated support for your program.

Fear of Negative PR Not the Only Reason for Budget Cuts

An exhibit manager chimed in on a message board recently, to remind us that the perception that shows and events are frivolous or the potential for negative PR exposure are not the only reasons events are cancelled or cut back. "... certainly not because we see the shows as unnecessary, a luxury or some trumped up PR stunt to try and present an image of a socially-conscious corporate citizen - it is simply self-preservation. Significant cuts are necessary to keep many companies in business. The marketing budget is an easy target for quick money - it's a lot harder to carve money out of production if you are already a lean, efficient organization with good strategic sourcing and operations practices in place. It is sad that this has to become politicized. Nothing should be read into the practice of cutting back trade show marketing other than it is simply one of many tools corporations are using to try and get through this recession."

Her response raises the question again, why cut marketing when things are down?

Profit often comes from serving the existing customer base. New revenue is often expensive to obtain and expensive to support, partially answering the question "why do companies cut sales and marketing budgets during an economic downturn?" Leaning out the organization as Karen has indicated and keeping the revenue streams you already have is a common approach.

Many companies are shifting weight to Customer Relationship Management at events in which they continue to participate, aka "putting their arms around their existing customers." Keeping the business you have safe from price attacks by starving competitors, offering solutions to existing customers that help you both mutually deal with the economy, and making sure that you get any additional business that is to be had from your current accounts are productive goals for events in the near term. Scheduled meetings with top accounts, where you offer real support and solutions for weathering the storm are a wise investment of time and resources.

So, if you are still counting leads as a major part of your event measurement, count meetings with high value accounts at least equally in your measure of success.

What Do Other Companies Spend at Tradeshows?

Comparing Total Spending at Trade Shows

Using a Cross Industry Benchmark of Cost per Square Foot

Clients ask us, “How does our trade show spending compare with that of other companies?” Specifically, what are the benchmarks for total cost of a typical trade show appearance, including all activities except staff time and travel expense (items typically not reflected in the trade show budget)?

It is easy to find references on “spending per square foot” as a comparative index. However, the numbers we see significantly under estimate total spending. Many of the references we found indicate a cross industry average cost of approximately $60 per square foot, including space rental. The most often cited number for a "new build" is ~$150/ sq. ft. Many exhibit managers are shaking their heads wondering how this can be true!? The most likely answer is that these indices do not reflect total show budget but a subset of spending directly related to the exhibit.

To address this need, Constellation ran the average “cost per square foot” data on the actual results from several hundred events in our database. These trade show programs were managed by companies in several different market segments.

So What Do Other Companies Spend?

Total Trade Show Spend per Square Foot

(Cross Industry View)

Type of Customer	Cost/ Sq. Ft.	Exhibit Program Size and Scope
Manufacturing (Fortune 100)	$127	Large Domestic
Transportation (Fortune 100)	$137	Medium Domestic
Consumer Package Goods (Fortune 100)	$144	Large Domestic
Medical and Household Goods (Fortune 1000)	$172	Medium Domestic
Exhibit House Clients (Mix of Sizes)	$186	Mixed Domestic
Engineering/Manufacturing (Fortune 100)	$187	Large Domestic and International
Banking (Fortune 100)	$239	Large Domestic
Computer Technology (Fortune 500)	$388	Large Domestic and International

We estimate the average Cost/Sq. Ft. benchmark, on a cross- industry basis, to be $150 - $190/ sq. ft.

This index includes all things that are generally found in an actual event budget, including off-floor activities and expenses such as a customer dinner or event, sponsorships, media, etc. The index excludes staff expenses (time, travel, food and lodging) that are not part of the show budget. Those costs are usually covered by non- trade show budgets based elsewhere in the organization. (Some clients prefer to look at the complete picture and include staff travel cost. This can be estimated by multiplying the domestic traveling staff by $1,000 and the international traveling staff by $10,000. This article deals only with budgets that do not account for staff cost.)

A Second Opinion

As a cross reference, I asked our friend Skip Cox, at Exhibit Surveys, to perform a similar query against their database of hundreds of events. Skip indicated the average spending per square foot, on a cross industry basis was similar to our finding at approximately $170 per square foot.

These numbers are presented as a guideline. They reflect actual results against hundreds of shows. "The index of “cost per square foot” is a useful way to forecast how much money you might need to allocate to do a good job at an upcoming event or to evaluate how well you are managing cost compared to the spending of others."

The average exhibit size reflected in this data is approximately 400 – 500 square feet, i.e. a medium exhibit size. In the table above you will note that some programs were defined as large, where exhibit sizes can average 1,000 square feet or more. Some of the large programs have a lower cost per square foot compared to smaller ones. Other factors you should consider when reviewing this data are 1) the averages reflect excellent, good, fair and poor cost management by different companies, 2) the cost for floor space rental varies by show and industry, 3) the degree of off-floor and off-site activities included varies by industry and company type, and 4) these averages reflect some programs that include international events where cost is almost always 20 – 50% higher. This data represents results from 2007 and 2008 shows.

Using indexes such as Cost per Square Foot is another example of how a good event measurement program can help you manage your company's resources for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.

If you have questions about your specific spending, please contact me and I will be happy to answer them.

+1.770-391-0015, http://constellationcc.com/