How is Your Meeting Measured?
As promised, here is the link to the slides from our most recent presentation, So…What Business Are You Really In? This presentation was delivered to an audience of senior meetings and events folks from the trade and professional society association community. Marriott hosted this event in Orlando at their World Center Resort.
One of the questions that emerged from the discussion was, “If we’re going to think differently about our meetings, how should we measure the impact of our investment and the time and money our attendees invest in attending?”
Is it reasonable to think that meetings and events can be evaluated and measured with the precision of other media channels? Are you ready to take on this responsibility and put your reputation on the line to measure the outcomes, results and performance of an event that you plan? This is a big question and one that is increasingly being asked by trade association CEO’s, board members and corporate chief marketing officers.
In today’s hyper-competitive environment, all media must be measured. Gone are the days of hoping a message would reach the desired audience with the desired frequency. Conventional mass media is measured by the reach of the message to a target audience, the frequency with which the audience sees/hears the message and the weight of the media-buy against all of the other communications options. Sound complicated? It is. That’s why today, Google has become the world’s largest advertising agency. Guess why? That’s right, every click is measured and the impact of that click is calculated and evaluated against the cost to achieve that click.
What does all of this mean for us in the meetings and events business? – remember, we are really in the media business so we need to begin to think about how our media stacks up to the other options our organizations use to get a message across.
How do you measure your meetings? What ideas do you have to add new metrics to the discussion with your team so that in 2010 you can begin to measure the outcomes of your events by more than just a satisfaction survey?
Hope to hear your ideas and learn about how you can use the attached presentation to open a discussion in your organization about how to use meetings more effectively.
