Increasingly, companies are organizing events to improve their engagement with their potential audience and even with their own workers. This is why we can find different types of events whose organization will vary substantially depending on the objectives pursued.
What is clear is that these types of activities are an extraordinary marketing tool and can bring important benefits directly or indirectly.
What types of business events are there?
The most common classification is the one that differentiates between business events aimed at the public (outsiders) and those aimed at the organisation’s staff (insiders).
In any case, an event is always a meeting with a particular purpose. It transmits to the attendees certain information that will define new models and strategies of work, gain new suppliers, win customers, strengthen the brand image, etc..
Fairs and exhibitions
They are the option most chosen by business organizations when they want to reach the general public, whether to seek new customers, suppliers, investors or partners.
At the fair, the company is made known much more directly, and it is common for this type of action to be focused on a specific sector. A clear example are the franchise fairs that have become so fashionable in recent years.
Conferences or conventions
This includes different types of talks, seminars, workshops or presentations aimed at larger or smaller groups. Their peculiarity is that they can be addressed both to the company’s own personnel and to the general public.
For example, a company can hold an internal convention to present its new growth strategy to its employees, but it can also hold a conference at a university to make itself known and recruit new talent.
Workshop
Among the events for companies aimed exclusively at employees, the workshop should be highlighted. It is an activity aimed at employees of an organisation and its purpose is to train them on a specific subject, always with an intensive character.
Nowadays, many companies are organizing workshops to train their employees in the use of last generation business management software.
How to organize business events?
The success of an event lies largely in its organization. In order to succeed, the first thing you have to be clear about is what purpose you are pursuing and, consequently, what type of activity is best to organize. The type of audience that will attend the event cannot be overlooked either. Knowing the objective, the type of audience and the type of activity to organize, you can start working on its development.
Before starting to look for dates it is essential to know the budget available and make an estimate of the number of attendees to be able to choose the most appropriate place for the celebration, and even choose the catering.
In fact, budgeting for the different types of event a company can organize is one of the most difficult challenges facing the organizer. There are many variables that influence and any small change can alter all the calculations.
Useful tools for organizing business events
Today, technology is the best ally of event organizers. Professionals have a lot to choose from.The classic system involves combining the use of spreadsheets with other tools such as specific applications for sending emails, task organizers to share the work to be done among all those who are participating in the organization, billing software, and so on.
Although this method may work well, today it is not efficient. The slightest change in any aspect of the organization results in having to make changes to all the digital tools that are being used, and this poses a serious risk. It is enough that the data has not been updated in any of the tools used so that the information we have available is erroneous.
For this reason, it is advisable to use specific event organization tools such as meetmaps.com. Its great advantage is that it allows the management of all the tasks to be carried out for the success of the event from a single platform.
For example, create email campaigns to get the list of attendees, manage their information and see in real time any changes made by the team. You can also create personal accreditations or manage access through QR codes on the day of the event, among other options.
How to calculate and optimize the ROI of an event
It doesn’t matter what type of event you hold; whether it’s a trade fair or a symposium, in the end you want that activity to have a positive impact on the company.
This impact can have an economic aspect (generating money), but in many cases it has a less tangible impact in the short term but that can be measured economically in the long term. This happens when the activity manages to reinforce the image of the brand, helps to make itself known to potential investors or manages to train or motivate employees.
In any case, in order to measure the success of an event it is essential to calculate the ROI or return on investment. Not only is it one of the most important KPIs, but it is the only one that can confirm whether or not the effort put into organising events has really borne fruit.
Today, ROI is a fundamental tool when measuring the degree of success of all types of marketing campaigns. To calculate it we apply the following formula:
ROI = [(Income – Expenses) / Expenses] x 100
If the budget has been well prepared, knowing the expenses of an activity does not have much difficulty. The most difficult thing is to calculate income well. The direct ones are simple to compute (amount obtained by the sale of tickets, sales made in the event itself, etc.), it is the indirect or intangible income that is more complex.
It is indirect income that is derived from the impact of an event. For example, that an influence is present in the event and makes it known to its followers. In reality here the company is not a priori winning, but rather saving on advertising.
All this leads us to the conclusion that there are positive effects of the event that, in principle, do not have a predefined economic value (improvement of the brand image, increase in the number of followers, etc.), but it must be given. This quantitative value contributed by the brand itself to the qualitative objectives must also be applied to the ROI formula.
What do we do with the data obtained?
The ROI is not only useful to know if we have won or not with the event, it is much more useful. Analyzing well all the data that we have monitored to calculate the results, we can see which have been the strong points and which have been the weak points of the event.
This information will be especially useful for the future, since it will help to avoid wasting time in actions that do not give a good performance and will allow the organizers to dedicate their efforts to those actions that have really proved to be positive for the company.