Share what you know with millions of people
Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content
0
How do you determine the ROI of a virtual events sytem?
What criteria do you use to determine the ROI of your virtual events system?
Events
- Dos and Don'ts of Small Business Marketing May 29 @ 11 am PT
- Lead Nurturing 202: The Next Generation May 31 @ 11 am PT
- The Tricks to Paid Media June 6 @ 11 am PT
- Display Advertising for Brand Awareness June 20 @ 11 am PT
Related Activity
4 Answers
Jenny, I have worked on a number of ROI initiatives around cost-justifying virtual and hybrid events. Here are some (but not all) of the criteria that should be considered, going into an ROI calculation:
1. Reach - How many additional attendees can you attract by adding a virtual component to your event? This metric depends on your event type and your audience.
2. Cost - As Cece mentioned, the cost equation changes significantly for virtual events. You will be saving travel,hospitality, lodging, booth building, collateral and signage printing, venue rental and a lot more. You may spend more on video, broadcasting and your virtual platform.
Calculate the cost per lead by dividing the total event cost by the number of attendees.
3. Engagement - as opposed to the physical world, you are able to measure the level of engagement of each participant in a virtual environment. Why is that important? More engaged attendees may help you shorten your sales cycle.
To turn this into an ROI comparison, compute your current sales cycle time across the opportunity development cycle
- Attribute a dollar value to each day in the cycle
- Compare the cycle time for virtual event participants with the cycle time of physical event only participants.
4. More Qualified Leads: As you are able to track all activities of your attendees, as well as their demographic profile, you will generate leads with far more marketing intelligence attached to them than any other marketing program would produce. This will impact the number of opportunities you can generate from your virtual event and can be part of your ROI calculation, once you have the data your first event to analyze.
There is an ROI calculator available that will help you with a number of the calculations I described above - just search for "virtual event ROI calculator" on the web.
I hope this helps.
Jenny - Without knowing what your objectives are for a virtual event system, I'm going to answer generically:
1) Cost savings: Most companies look at the initial cost-savings as one area of ROI. For example, exhibiting at a virtual event may require an upfront investment of $5,000 + resources to staff the booth and create the content. This is compared against physical booth, travel, lodging, and food for resources to staff the booht as well as any collateral costs.
2) Cost per lead: Some companies look at the cost to generate a lead. I would recommend looking at cost to acquire a quality lead and track this throughout your sales funnel to determine value per lead.
3) Environmental savings: One other factor is the green aspect of a virtual event system. There are several calculators to help determine the amount of carbon you are saving by going virtual.
Let me know if you have more specifics that may help.
Jenny - to add to Cece's list, here are other ways one can measure ROI - as Cece noted, it all depends on how you're using the virtual events platform:
1) Revenue generated - in some markets, it's possible for exhibitors to generate sales directly from the event.
2) Shift in sentiment or purchasing intent - if you're entering a new market, were you able to educate attendees on your presence in this market - and/or convince them that you're a viable solution provider? May requre pre/post surveys to determine this.
3) Learning/certification - if your goal was to train your audience, did they achieve the necessary learning? A post-event certification test could be one way to measure this - how well attendees do on that test helps determine your "return".
Hope this helps.
Hi Jenny,
most has been said already. I just wanted to add that it is important that you are able to establish measurable objectives beforehand. Define what is the goal of your event and make sure that the platform you are using will allow you to get metrics on the performance of these parameters.
And after the event, be sure of gathering a report of what happened in terms of revenue, costs, lead generation, interaction, marketing results, etc. Learning from one event to the next and implementing little changes in the process, will allow you to get the best ROI of your virtual events, no matter what you are looking for.
Answer This Question