According to 83% of brands, the best way to increase sales is to push event participation. But this is just one of the many reasons why understanding the ROI of your upcoming event is essential for your business!
Key Takeaways
- ROI is a way to define how successful an event was
- If you want to host an exceptional event, you need to focus on all the essential aspects
- To properly measure ROI, you need to plan your event objectives beforehand
- Calculating ROI can be tricky, but with the right metrics, it’ll be a piece of cake!
Tracking and measuring event ROI is anything but a simple task. Still, regardless of how challenging it is, it’s critical for ensuring the success of your event.
Below, we’ll let you know how you can accurately and effectively measure your event’s ROI with a corporate comedian! You might be surprised to learn just how much these entertainers can improve your return on investment.
See Related: What Makes Up A Happy Workplace In 2023?
#1. What Is ROI?
When planning an event, there’s plenty to worry about. From coordinating with vendors to finalizing event activities, you’ve got a lot on your plate!
But event planning isn’t just fun and games. Though plenty of creativity goes into it, you still need to take time to understand the unique terminology attached to the success of your event.
One term that you’ll need to pay close attention to is ROI. If you’re unfamiliar, ROI stands for “return on investment.”
It’s a rather flexible term that can break down the relationship between the net value of an event and the net cost of producing it. Overall, you’ll want it to come out with a net positive value.
ROI is essential for more than just corporate events. It’s an integral part of business as a whole, and it’s a must-have piece of terminology to keep in your brain.
When it comes down to it, ROI is a performance metric that can be used to determine how worthwhile and profitable an event is.
#2. What Is Event ROI, And Why Does It Matter?
Now that we’ve established a base definition of the term ROI, it’s time to start discussing why it actually matters!
There are many things that can determine an event’s success. And, obviously, if you’re hosting an event, you want to ensure its victory!
You can spend plenty of time focusing on things like the decor and playlist, but you can’t ignore the fundamentals. As boring as it may sound, you need to spend plenty of time analyzing your event’s ROI if you want to pull off a successful event.
Though events are often built on fun things like comedic entertainment and genuine fun, those jovial attributes would never be possible without proper financial planning. After all, you need to build a sturdy foundation if you want the event to stand strong.
The Start Of A Great Event
Even if you fully understand the extent of ROI and what it means, it doesn’t amount to much if you’ve planned a boring, lifeless event. That’s why you need to ensure you check off all the boxes so nothing falls through the cracks!
With a hilarious corporate comedian, you can truly give your event all it needs to thrive. From the moment your guests arrive to the second they leave, they’ll be indulging in an exciting and memorable evening.
More Than Funny Jokes
With a speaker from Clean Comedians®, you can host an event that will leave your guests laughing and feeling truly energized. But our team also knows a thing or two about ROI.
Who else to help you understand how to calculate event ROI than professionals who deal with that kind of stuff on a daily basis? Keep reading, and we’ll dive a little further into the depths of event ROI!
Bonus: Back To Basics With Clean Comedians®: What Is Appropriate Workplace Behavior?
#3. How To Measure Event ROI
We’ve already established the basis of what ROI is all about. But for such a simple term, its true definition can get a little complex.
Simply put, event ROI is the value generated from an event.
A big misconception about ROI is that it is simply the revenue generated from an event. But that’s not the case!
That’s because ROI also needs to take into account the expenses and other metrics of an event to determine its relative success. And the revenue of an event doesn’t always coincide with the success of an event.
Just because you make a bunch of money from an event doesn’t guarantee that it’s successful. That’s why it’s so important to make objectives for your upcoming event that don’t just center around numbers.
Establishing Your Goals And Objectives
Understanding how to measure your event’s ROI begins with establishing your event’s objectives. You won’t be able to shoot for the stars if you don’t know what stars you’re aiming for!
Something to keep in mind is that the terms goal and objective aren’t necessarily interchangeable. Rather, an objective is a measurable action that you can take in order to achieve a long-term goal.
Here are some common objectives for corporate events:
- Facilitate networking
- Increase brand awareness
- Generate leads
- Raise money
- Drive traffic to a website
It’s important to set event objectives in order to achieve long-term goals that you foresee for your event, company, and business. You’ll need to ask yourself the hard questions, do plenty of research, and track progress as you go.
That way, you can ensure the objectives you set will help you work towards your goal ROI. Plus, filling in the hired comedian on your event objectives can go a long way as they’ll similarly help you achieve your goals!
Figure Out The Strategy And Tools You Need
Now that you’re aware of the objectives of your event, you need to determine the tools and methods needed to accomplish them.
Everything you do should be focused on completing your objectives. If you truly want to be able to track and measure your event’s ROI, you need to have an effective way to do so.
You can often measure event ROI with KPIs. KPI stands for key performance indicators and can help you determine if you met your objectives.
Common event KPIs include:
- Event registrations or ticket sales
- Speaker engagement
- Cost to customer acquisition
For example, let’s say an objective of your event is attendee enjoyment. This soft metric can be hard to measure, but you can determine an outcome by analyzing survey responses from your attendees.
#4. Calculating Your Event’s ROI
Now that you’re prepared for your event and ready to measure the ROI metrics, it’s time to do the dirty work.
Event ROI can be calculated in various ways. After all, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to event ROI because each event and its associated objectives will be different.
You’ll need to compare all the metrics of your event to calculate the ROI.
The first metric you’ll need to consider is the total cost of your event. Subtract your expenses from your revenue generated.
Then, consider the outcomes of your event. This will include leads, opportunities, brand awareness, and engagement. All of these positive outcomes will also affect your ROI.
You’ll also need to consider things like baseline data before the event and new data after the event.
To firmly determine your ROI, a great place to start is by determining your total fiscal revenue (revenue minus expenses). Then, consider your other metrics.
Wrapping Up
Understanding ROI can be challenging at first. But regardless of how confusing it can feel, it’s the foundation of a great event. So, if you truly want to host an exciting and worthwhile event, don’t cut these corners!
Keep Reading: 3 Ways To Make Your Event Unforgettable With Clean Comedians®
—
Adam Christing is a professional comedy magician, virtual MC, and the founder of CleanComedians.com. He is a member of the world-famous Magic Castle in Hollywood and a popular corporate entertainer, magician, and virtual speaker.