The event industry is huge and is also one of the most effective ways of marketing your business. Even though conducting events can be a time and capital intensive process, they are a successful tools for reaching your target audience. Events have stood the test of time, and are much older than digital marketing and social media marketing. In fact, businesses worldwide spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on events.
“US events generated $325 billion of direct spending and $845 billion in business sales in 2016.”- Oxford Economics and Events Industry Council, 2018
“Most (41%) marketers believe that events are the single-most effective marketing channel over digital advertising, email marketing and content marketing. This reflects a 32% increase since 2017”- (Bizzabo, 2018)
50% of companies allocate over 20% of their marketing budget to organizing events.(Bizzabo, 2018)
62% of senior marketers plan on investing more in live events in the future both in budget and number of events. (Bizzabo, 2018)
Organizing an event is a huge task but ensuring that the event meets the objectives is even bigger a duty. Justifying the spend on events by accurately calculating the ROI from the event is a daunting task. It all comes down to structured data collection and clearly defining the event objectives. An event report is an important part of how you calculate and showcase to your sponsors and other event stakeholders the ROI that the event was able to achieve. It also provides you with a data backed list of do’s and don’ts to keep in mind when planning your next event. Event planning and management requires that you clearly define the budget, target audience and objective. An event report contains all this and more. It is a compilation of everything that went into making the event happen and all the outcomes that the event led to. While creating an event report, it’s important to consider a few crucial points, to ensure that it does justice to all involved. Here’s list of things to make sure that your event report works for you:
Continuous Information Collection
Make sure that you collect information in a systematic manner from the start of the event itself. Start with the list of product lines that you are thinking of promoting at the event, the number of standees, flyers and other promotional merchandise that you need your each product line, number of stalls that you are going to put up, the kind of audience that you are planning to target, how much spend budget you are ready to allocate, the amount of money you are planning to raise from sponsors, the kind of ROI you are expecting each stall to raise. Document each pre-event activity, all the data collected during the event and the post event impact on business.
Executive Summary
Each event report starts with an executive summary. This should be a synopsis of all the efforts that went into making the event happen and what came out of it, providing the reader with a snapshot of what the event sought to, and did, achieve. Start an executive summary of an event report by clearly stating the objective of the event. This is a very important part of event planning and management. The executive summary should not be longer than 2-3 paragraphs. It should convey all the information that the event sponsors and other stakeholders would want to know in a structured and concise manner. Make use of graph and charts to display data in a manner that is easy to understand.
Financials
Clearly depict how much it cost to make the event happen. Effective event planning and organization requires that the different categories of sponsors (gold, silver etc.) be clearly defined. The event report should provide details on how much money was invested by the event organizers and how much was pitched in by the sponsors. It should also provide details on the various revenue streams that the event generated and how it justifies the investment made by the sponsors and other investors who contributed towards making the event happen. Smart event planning and management requires that the event planners allocate budget to different aspects of the event judiciously, all the while targeting to maximize the event ROI with every spend.
Studies show that 36% of event planners spend most of their budget on the venue, 34% spend it on catering, 10% spend it on marketing and another 10% of event planners spend most of their budget on speakers. (Bizzabo, 2016)
Leads generated
A very important part of event planning and management is to keep tabs on the leads that get generated from every stall, media coverage, social media marketing and PR related to the event. The event report should clearly provide details on how many leads got generated for every product line that was promoted during the event and the expected revenue from every lead. Keeping track of leads generated is one of the most important aspects of event planning and management that helps in determining ROI. Information on leads generated from different channels during the event and from different product lines provides reliable data on what channels and product lines to invest in at the next event. It also provides data and insights on what efforts yielded most results and what didn’t work during the event. All this data can be used to plan and organize your next event more efficiently and streamline it better to yield higher ROI.
Media coverage
The event report should contain full details of pre and post event media coverage as that is an important factor that determines the success of the event. The event sponsors should know how the event organizers promoted the event before it took place to attract quality target audience and how the event was perceived by the media after it ended. Good event planning and organization requires targeted efforts to promote the event on the right platforms in order to get the maximum leverage.
Create Event Reports that Matter
An event report can determine how the event is perceived by the event sponsors and other stakeholders. A well-documented and easy to read event report provides the event organizers with proof of what works in an event and how they should plan, organize and manage their next event to maximize the revenue that it generates. Make sure that your event report is accurate and sends the right message to all the parties involved in making the event happen to ensure continued success of your future events.
