Source: WARC
Fast-growing companies are investing more in event marketing, either sponsoring or hosting events themselves, according to a new study that highlights the value of this channel in a digital age and the need to develop better ROI measurement.
Splash, a business selling end-to-end event marketing software, partnered with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, to survey more than 700 business executives around the world for its report titled The Event Marketing Evolution: An Era of Data, Technology, and Revenue Impact.
This found that companies that are growing fastest (defined as revenue growing 30% or more over the past two years) had increased their event activity the most.
And more than half (52%) of survey respondents said that event marketing drives more business value than other marketing channels; just 8% said it drives less.
Such activity is more obvious in the B2B space, which allocated around 29% of marketing budgets to events, compared to 19% for B2C businesses. But for both, the physical element is crucial, generating face-to face meetings, driving footfall in stores and delivering a better customer experience.
A particular challenge for marketers, however, has been demonstrating the ROI of this investment – just 23% of respondents were able to track ROI; 55% couldn’t and the rest didn’t know.
Consequently, most companies end up focused on top-of-the-sales-funnel activities; the top four event metrics tracked by survey respondents were: the number of people who attend an event; the number of qualified sales leads generated by the event; brand awareness, and social press mentions.
Splash believes that a new generation of event marketing technology will assist in tracking both sales and branding/event metrics.
