Here are my 6 Steps of Measurement applied to event measurement: (For other applications of my 6 Steps of Measurement, click here.)

Step 1. Be clear about what outcomes the event is designed to achieve

As with any effort, you can’t start to measure success until you know what success means for your organization. For any given event the objectives might be to:

• Sell more product
• Launch a new product
• Generate qualified sales leads (or names that support your cause)
• Position the organization differently in our industry
• Attract new employees/supporters
• Generate good will and improve relationships
• Reduce churn and improve relationships with existing customers

One more thing: Make sure that everyone who expects a report on results agrees on the event’s objectives.

Step 2. Determine parameters

Before you go too far down the event measurement road you need to also make sure you have agreement on who the target audience(s) or stakeholder(s) are, what makes they act, and where they get their information to make decisions.

And, of course, you need to agree on a budget for measurement. We recommend spending at least 10% of your event budget to figure out if the other 90% is working.

Step 3. Define the metrics

Once you’ve agreed upon your objectives, establish the specific criteria of success that you will measure. For example, if your objective is awareness, the criterion might be the percentage increase of unaided awareness of brand or product.

Consider those numbers that best reflect the health of your business, or that best represent characteristics that most affect your business:

• Increase in awareness
• Increase in preference
• Increase in purchase intent
• Increase in customer loyalty
• Percent improvement in customer experience

Once you have agreement on the objectives and the metrics, translate them into SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely). To a certain extent, your choice of criteria is dependent on the type of event you are evaluating. For example:

• If the customer experience you are measuring takes place at a trade show or exhibit booth, you might choose as a key criteria the percentage of new visitors or the cost per minute spent with a client in the booth.
• If the experience takes place at an event such as a concert, you need to count how many people were exposed to your brand’s messages/benefits, if they understand your messages, or if they will now consider or prefer your brand.

Step 4. Decide upon a benchmark

The key point to remember about any event measurement program is that measurement is a comparative tool. You need to compare one set of results to something else. The most meaningful comparisons are between different events, or between you and your peer sponsors at one event. If your fellow sponsors aren’t direct competitors you can learn a lot by sharing information and determining what best practices really moved the needle.

Step 5. Select an event measurement instrument

Each metric listed above may require different measurement tools, so do not pick a tool until after you’ve completed steps 1-4 above. We do not recommend relying on data gathered at the event itself. It is rarely useful or actionable. What you want to know is what the attendees remembered a few weeks afterwards.

There are essentially three basic types of tools that you need to measure events:

1. Surveys

In our opinion, the most reliable way to measure relationships with your customers is to survey them before the event and then repeat the survey afterwards to see if they changed their minds. If that isn’t an option (and I realize getting names ahead of an event may be impossible), the second best way is to collect names at the event and interview attendees afterwards.

Ask them what they can remember of about the experience:

• Do they remember being in your booth?
• Did they even know you were a sponsor?
• Did they remember your brand, and the brand benefits or brand positioning you were trying to convey?
• Did they leave more likely to purchase or to recommend?

2. Web and social analytics

Use unique URLs, and set up conversions in Omniture (now part of Adobe Marketing Cloud), Google Analytics, or WebTrends to track the extent attendees engaged with your brand during or after the event. Track the use of event hashtags to determine the extent that visitors used social media to engage.

3. Media content analysis

When we talk about media analysis, we mean analyzing both traditional as well as social media. What you want to know is did you receive your fair share (or ideally more than your fair share) of the conversation around an event? (Your share of hashtag use is another good metric to use.)

Additionally, you’ll want to analyze the media to see if you got your key messages across, the extent to which your spokesmen or leaders were quoted relative to their peers or competitors, and whether any of your content was picked up or shared.

Step 6. Analyze results, draw conclusions, and make better decisions next time

The purpose of all this research and evaluation isn’t to just demonstrate that “It really was a really great show.” The purpose is to make better decisions for the next event. So analyze the data first to see what didn’t work, e.g. Were there messages that were missed?

Case in point: Several years ago, our analysis of a press event discovered that the reporters who were not at the event picked up more of the client’s key messages than the ones who attended in-person. It turned out that the speakers were long and rambling, and the client’s messages that did come through got lost amidst the shrimp and other distractions. The reporters who just went straight to the press kit got much clearer messages and so were much clearer themselves on what the product benefits were.

Then find out what elements of the event worked best, (See “5 Ways to Calculate the ROI of Your Event”) and contrast them with those that didn’t work at all.

Events are expensive and thus vulnerable to budget cuts, but if you have solid data on what outcomes they achieved, you’ll dodge the cost-cutting bullet. ∞