How To Measure the Success of Your Event
- Molly Phillips
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Event hosting involves a lot of consideration, both before and after the big day.
No event should be a one-off, standalone endeavour. It works in tandem with your digital marketing, and within the realms of your brand positioning.
But, in order to slot an event into your business’s big plans, you need to understand what made it successful and, crucially, why.
So, here’s a guide on exactly that topic. What a coincidence!
Define The Goals of the Event
The success of anything is measured against what it set out to achieve.
If your event is intended to improve brand awareness, success looks very different to if your event intended to improve loyalty and engagement further down your marketing funnel. Different audience members, different tactics, different metrics.
That means you’ll need to think, in advance of the event, what you want to achieve, because it will affect the sort of measuring you do, and the sort of exhibition stand you create.
For example, at 2025’s Crufts, we helped pet food brand, Albion, to set up a stand that focused on brand awareness. It was their debut Crufts, so getting their name out there was paramount, as opposed to re-connecting with visitors.
Their stand reflected this, putting their name in lights. Literally.
So, an important step in any event-planning process: define what your business needs, and how you can use the event to help you achieve that.
Ideally, these should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound.
Common Goals of Events Marketers
Brand Awareness and Activation
Lead Generation
Loyalty and Engagement
Re-engagement of lapsed customers
Simple, right? Yes! At its most basic level. But then you have to consider...
Types of Event Goals
There are different types! Exciting!
For all events, there are long-term goals, and short-term.
EXAMPLES: Common Short-Term Goals of Event Marketers
(Definition: immediate objectives, often relating to the event itself)
Drive event attendance by 10% from the last stand.
Get 5% more visitors to sign up for our mailing list
Launch our new product through 1:1 question-and-answer sessions
Sell 25% of the product stocked at the event
EXAMPLES: Common Long-Term Goals of Event Marketers
(Definition: objectives relating to what the event will do for your business’s overall reputation and positioning)
Increase brand recall by 40%, as demonstrated by annual customer surveys, over 3 years of attending [X] event
Increase market share by 5% over the next 5 years, by using this event to network
Test our lead generation methods by generating 100 warm leads in the month following the event
Improve loyalty to our brand by decreasing churn rate over a three-month period, by 10% following this event/series of event
Think About The Key Metrics Needed to Measure That Goal
There are a few common metrics that people use to measure the success of their event:
Registration and Attendance – how many people signed up-vs-how many people turned up. This is also a strong metric when measured in comparison with your previous event. Has the number gone up? If so, can that be seen to reflect greater engagement levels, and a sense of brand community. Speaking of which...
Attendee Engagement - once they arrived at your stall, how many people took the time to actively engage with your brand, products, and services? This can be slightly harder to measure than registration/attendance figures because the word ‘engagement’ will mean different things to different brands. Some good guidelines, however, includes tracking the numbers of conversations you have and how long they are, keeping a tally of people who’ve got involved in your games, and making a note of how many people buy things from your stand.
Satisfaction Levels – sending out surveys to attendees within 24-28 hours after the event is a good way of gauging the event’s success on a practical level. This way, you can get your hands on some valuable qualitative data, and see whether people enjoyed it, whether they learned something, what that something was, and if they’d change anything for next time.
You can even ask them outright about the thing you set out to achieve: i.e. for brand awareness aims, ask them ‘could you summarise what you learned about our work, and what you’ll take away from the event?’ Or, for brand loyalty, you might ask ‘would you attend future events hosted by us?’
New Followers/Social Media Engagement Levels – this is a good one because most social media platforms do most of the legwork for you.
On the analytics page of each of your brand's social media accounts, set the date range to the appropriate time since the event. Then, see if there has been an increase in anything from follower count to engagement metrics (likes, comments and shares). Increased engagement means that your event has gone some way to activating your brand.
Emails, Questions, Queries – since the event, has your inbox been popping off more than usual? An increase in questions, queries, and requests via email is a sign that people are thinking about your brand. They're considering committing to a purchase, which suggests that you’ve raised awareness, and generated some warm leads.
You can also measure lead generation by looking at the number of people who used the event to sign up to your mailing list. It’s even good to look at how many people have signed up to it within a reasonable time-period following the event.
Return on Investment (ROI) - a big part of digital marketing, ROI is often a little less focused-on when it comes to events.
Why? Because the effects of an event can be slow, but that doesn’t mean that they’re any less meaningful. A low ROI on a single event doesn’t mean it was a failure.
Here’s the thing: events are about consistency - your ROI might take a while to get going as you grow momentum within the events landscape and activate your brand. That doesn’t mean any individual event wasn’t a success; they all contribute to the bigger picture.
That said, if you set out to the event in the hope of selling some products, ROI might be a better metric for you, than it would be for, say, a brand looking to increase and measure brand awareness.
The TL; DR
The metrics that you look for depend on what you’re measuring.
For example, to measure brand loyalty, you might track registration/attendance across a series of events, so that you can compare them.
Conversely, if you want to know what people liked about your event, and whether that tempts them to come back for more, you might send out a survey 24-48 hours after the event. In that way, you can measure the success of the event in literal terms: in other words, literally how much did people enjoy attending it?
Measurement Methods
People often get confused about how best to measure the results of their event. We live in a digitally saturated world, after all, where most marketing is undertaken on social media platforms which deliver metrics to you, fully cooked.
With events, you must be a bit more proactive. Thinking ahead, as soon as you’ve settled on the goal for your exhibition stand, to what sort of metrics would reflect the success of that goal, and how you can gather them.
For example, before the big day, you might:
Take Bookings – whether it’s 1:1 advice sessions delivered at your stand, or selling tickets to a live event you’re hosting on the day, taking bookings gives you a record of attendance and, indeed, engagement, which can be tricky concepts to tangibly evidence.
By taking sign-ups, you’ll also collect contact details, which you can use later to
send out follow-ups and surveys- more on this in a second!
Set up a Game – not only does a game help with the immersivity and memorability of your stand, you can also use it to set up a leader board, or a ‘sign up to win’ situation. Just like that, you have evidence of the ways in which people have engaged with your stand, and how many have done so.
Meanwhile, during the event itself, you might:
Offer Lead Generation Forms- you can create an In-Real-Life version of a mailing list. The first option for this is old-school: offer a sheet of paper on a clipboard where people who are interested in receiving updates from you can write their email addresses, names, etc
The other option is to splash a QR code onto the main graphics of your stand, which people can scan, to input their emails.
Whichever method you choose, lead generation is helpful in terms of gauging genuine interest and engagement levels, as well as giving you some ways to improve brand loyalty, going forwards, keeping people engaged for the long-haul.
That way, it will give you metrics for a while to come, after the event.
Social Media Followings – similarly, you can provide a QR code or a handle for your social media on the day of the event. People who follow these accounts can be seen as registering a genuine interest in your brand.
That’s another way of measuring the number of leads generated, but also of noting down brand loyalty statistics. Keep an eye on that follower count for a while after the day itself. It will be a good indicator of how invested followers’ interest is; whether it’s a passing curiosity, or they’re in it for the long haul. In other words, you can use that number to gauge whether the leads you’ve generated are warm or cold, and whether they are worth nurturing.
Successful Stands, Successful Brands
At Image, our events expertise is defined by one thing in particular: our ability to combine your creativity and brand image, with our understanding of the different audiences at different events, and the different ways of connecting with them.
That’s where consultancy with Image sets your brand apart and helps you to make your event a success. More than that, we can also support you to understand what made it successful, so that you can recreate that effect again and again, and slot the event into your overall marketing strategy.
Interested?
Let us know! Whether it’s an exhibition stand, or a brand experience, we’d love to work with you!
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