How to Maximize Event Marketing ROI
December 21, 2024Justifying the marketing budget has become ever more important in a world where every dollar spent is tied to ROI.
If time, effort, and money are being invested into marketing your event, it’s safe to say measurable results are expected. What does a strategic marketing plan for an event need to look like to meet goals? Let’s explore.
Prioritize Your Investments
When people think about the investment that goes into putting on a successful event, often they consider the time, the manpower, and the amount of donations or number of sponsors willing to participate, but it’s not quite as common to consider the marketing investment required to make an event a success. However, prioritizing a necessary marketing budget is arguably one of the most potentially impactful investments an organization can make to host a successful event.
If you can’t spread the word about your event, how do you sell tickets or encourage donations, or drive growth in attendance? Making sure you have a definitive budget directed toward marketing gives you the means to let people know when, where, and why to attend your event.
Budgets should be tied to the event’s size, importance, and geographic draw. For instance, if you have one event a year and it pulls from the entire 50 states, you need more budget per event than if you have four regional events per year. In most cases, don’t plan for less than 5% of your expected gross sales or funds raised for the event. Between %5 and 10% is typical.
Strategy Before Tactics – Always
Once a budget has been decided, it’s time to prioritize strategy. Our approach to marketing strategy for events is not unlike our approach to any other project – strategy before tactics, learn the story inside and out, brainstorm ideas, and then execute a plan.
Since 99.95% of the time we’re dealing with a target audience that is human (*insert joke about the remaining .05% here*), we try to approach strategy with a human mindset. At the end of the day, what will success truly look like for this event? What’s the holistic picture of “we did it!” going to look like? At Crossroads, we take time to get to know you, your event, your story, and objectives. THEN it’s time to set measurable goals.
Here are a few examples of questions we may ask when working to create a strategy for your event:
- What has been successful previously? Where did you shine?
- What were the pitfalls or frustration points of previous events? What made them unsuccessful, or elements of them unsuccessful?
- At the end of the event, who needs to feel like they’ve spent their money wisely and contributed to something special?
- Who is the target audience for this event? Who are its beneficiaries, if any?
- What are your revenue or funding goals?
- What are the funding stats for previous years? Any anomalies or trends?
- What functional areas do you have staff or volunteers available to help in, from a marketing tasks perspective?
- How much hands-on help (on-site time during the event) do you suspect you’ll need, if any?
It’s the sum of the answers to these questions, paired with the process of understanding your story and goals, that fuels the marketing strategy for any event.
Targeting the Right Audience
Without understanding your audience’s needs, interests, etc., you run the risk of talking at them instead of creating a meaningful narrative that piques their interest and pulls them in.
Here are some practical ways to learn more about your audience and understand them a bit more:
- Ask them! If time allows, surveying your target audience is a great way to get a window into their needs and preferences.
- Analyze data from previous years. Unless this is your inaugural event, there’s data that exists from years prior – whether it be social media, website traffic, ticket purchasing data, customer feedback, etc. Previous year’s data can provide insight into customer behavior.
- A/B testing + customized campaigns.
In our experience working with events like the Tulsa Run, Route 66 Marathon, and Scotfest, we’ve learned that the key to audience engagement is understanding what truly resonates with them. The magic happens when you tailor your messaging and approach to what they care about most.
Here are just a few ideas we’ve used to successfully connect with audience members via social media on behalf of our clients:
- Countdowns: Building anticipation and excitement with engaging countdowns on social media.
- Sharing Photos & Videos from Previous Years: Tapping into nostalgia and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) with visual storytelling on social media.
- Highlighting Important Information: Sharing maps with parking locations and/or shuttle routes engages with new guests and seasoned eventgoers alike. Don’t be afraid to reshare often.
Whether it’s the build-up to a festival or tapping into a niche community, it’s all about creating meaningful connections that drive participation and engagement. What resonates with your audience? Beyond social media, public relations, out of home advertising, mass media mails, programmatic, and industry content are all common tactics in event marketing we’ve seen and used.
Use The Data You Have
When it comes to event marketing, data is your friend – before, during, and after. Being able to measure what you’re doing, what you’ve done, and what was missing is important to any marketing campaign – or event.
Here’s how:
Before the Event
First, ensure you’re set to measure what matters. How will you know whether you’ve achieved your goals if you don’t tie them to metrics? Ahead of your event, you’ll be promoting using many tactical channels – including the digital ones mentioned above. Consistently monitoring your promotional data will help ensure you’re aware of the interest building around your event, whether or not your message is resonating with your audience, and whether or not you need to further tailor your messaging or tactical approach long before the gates open on the first day of your event.
Key markers to keep an eye on: engagement, shares, comments, tags
During the Event
During your event, data looks a little bit different. At this phase, focus should shift to those who actually are attending or who are prospects. During the event, you’ll experience an increase in inquiries (via message or comment) and complaints. Ensuring these metrics are being monitored around the clock will help you keep a pulse on your customers’/prospects’ concerns or questions about the event, and it will help you make in-the-moment decisions about information that may need to be communicated en mass.
Ex. Parking is full, a fender bender has traffic backed up at the event entrance, the location of a ride ticket booth, etc.
We’ve been able to make highly engaging posts regarding common questions during events simply by paying attention to comments coming in, in the moment.
After the Event
After the event, you’ll look at all the data you’ve gathered and compare it to last year, specifically anything you attempted to improve, like link clicks or hashtag usage. Your KPIs (key performance indicators) should be chosen before the event starts. Depending on the goal, you’ll want to be able to see whether you increased shares or comments, engagement or audience size. The best measure of success is being able to see year-over-year change and whether you hit your goals for revenue, attendance, etc.
To maximize on this success, you’ll want to follow-up with your audience to ensure they stay engaged and build loyalty with your community. You can do this with recap posts on social media and thank you emails or surveys. We do this with nearly every event to capture the excitement that is still palpable after a successful event.
Make notes of everything that worked well or didn’t this year so you can use that information next year to make changes or improvements.
Maximizing Event ROI is About Being Intentional
Maximizing event ROI is all about being intentional with your strategy, creativity, and partnerships. By taking a holistic approach to marketing and ensuring your marketing efforts are tied to your goals, you’ll realize event successes and learn from your data to help you reach continued success.
Learn more about how Crossroads Communications has helped event organizers maximize event ROI by checking out our case studies. If you’re ready for a marketing partner or your own personalized marketing and PR solutions, call us at 918-236-8300.
