How Analytics Can Help You Determine
the Success of Your Conference

Hosting a conference can be a very good idea if you want to increase awareness of your brand, your people, your innovative ideas, and do some valuable networking. However, there is always a cost involved, and just like every other marketing or brand development activity, getting a good return on your investment is important. There are numerous ways analytics help assess the impact of any form of marketing or event after the fact, as long as you have strategies in place to attribute sales or leads to that activity. However, you can also use data to help plan your event to give you the best possible chance of seeing an optimal return on investment out of it.

Here are a few ways to do this:

Planning Your Conference Location and Date

If you know who you would like to attend your conference, then you can use that information to help plan the best location and date for your event. Turnout is one of the biggest factors in determining whether you’ll get a good result from your conference, and you want to make it as easy as possible for people to attend. Look at data from previous events, whether held by your own company or by others, and at data about major industry events. Does there seem to be a time of year, or a day of the week that is especially poor for attendance? How about events in different locations? If you want to hold an event in London, does there seem to be more of a fondness in your industry for events held in the downtown area, or the West End? When you know a promising date and area, then you can look on venuesearchlondon.com and see what is available in the right capacity.

Subject Matter

You may be inclined to focus your conference around aspects where you can more easily push what your business is focusing on. However, by using analytics, you can discover not only the topics your target audience find most interesting, therefore making them most likely to attend, but also the topics you tend to convert the most visitors to leads with on your website when they are discussed by your company. Look at your own web statistics. Which blog posts received the most traffic and the most comments and shares? This will tell you what your audience found to be interesting. You can also break down this information by location to make sure you aren’t creating a conference in London about something only your American customers find interesting. Do some analysis and find out the best topics to cover.

Tracking Invites

Use electronic invites that will track who has responded and what their response was. This will help you analyze how well you’re marketing the conference so you can tweak your approach in the run up to the event, or even add extra days if the conference is being received better than you expected.

Always use the data at your disposal to help shape your decisions when you’re planning industry conferences and events to ensure the best turnout and the most engagement.