Prove It!

When your exhibitors, your board members, or even your boss wants to know how well your online event did, how will you answer? What information will you use to prove it? First, of course, as you are planning the online event, you will have to define what the goals and objectives are. What metric will you use to know you’ve succeeded? Viewing attendance? Sales? Virtual booth traffic? Yes? Each stakeholder will have a different definition of success and your analytics list may be long, but no matter what, defining it up front is critical. Without defining success on the front end, you have no idea where the target is once the event is over.

Second, take your list of metrics needed and confirm that the online platform provider you are working with can capture the requested information. If not, perhaps there is a plug-in that can be added or maybe you’ll need to adjust your expectations. Either way, if you don’t find out at the beginning of the planning process whether or not the data your stakeholders are asking for can be captured, you’ll end up at the end of the event without the intended information to be able to “prove” the event was a success and you’ll be doing a song-and-dance routine to deflect questions and spending hours mining for other ways to prove your event was a success.

Third, don’t let stakeholders change their goals after the event is over. Remind them of the goals they set during the planning process and show them how the event met, exceeded, or fell short of the original target. Some stakeholders are gifted at constantly brainstorming and dreaming about the “what if” scenario and don’t stop long enough to execute. It is your job to hold them to the actual goals of this event before letting them run off to the next one. Allowing a dreaming stakeholder to abscond with the target and run away can crush the potential for a success and change the team’s perception of the event’s outcome.

What data have you used to prove your online event was successful? I’d love to hear what metrics you used, you can email me or share them below.

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