August is typically a slow month for much of the events industry, so we’re going to take a step back this month too, and focus on measurement and metrics.

It’s a great time of the year to reflect on what is and is not important to your business, so when things ramp up again in September, you’re in a great place to measure what matters – the first step to improving your events.

Measurement is the first step

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” – James Harrington

This is a great quote, and yet in a world where almost everything is trackable, it feels like we’re still not quite up to scratch when it comes to measuring what matters.

Often that’s because it is hard to know what matters.

It isn’t always obvious.  Should you measure revenue at the expense of awareness, when that awareness often becomes a sale (eventually)?  Should you measure social shares, email conversion rates, call times, time on page, conversations at the event, returning customers, absolute numbers, increments and decrements or YoY, MoM or WoW comparisons?

You certainly can’t measure everything!

The key is to understand which 1-3 metrics really matter to your business.  Of course revenue should always be one of them.  Everything else is going to depend on your business model and strategic goals.

Generally speaking it’s good to have one leading indicator and one lagging indicator to give you a complete view of your business, helping you predict future performance and confirm longer terms trends respectively.

If you’re not sure what your top 3 metrics are, why not make August a month where you agree to them with your team, and then get really serious about measuring them?

Measuring event content marketing

We’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about content and inbound marketing for events, and just released a great eBook with Hubspot on ‘The New Age of Event Marketing’ to help provide a strategic roadmap for event organisers to get started with inbound marketing.

In a follow-up piece, ‘How to Measure the ROI of Inbound Marketing for Your Events’ we’ve also provided a guide to measuring its effectiveness and impact on your online ticket sales.

If you’re interested in other top stories from July to inspire and apply to your August events, you should also check out:

  • How To Design Awesome Event Holding Pages
  • 4 Ways to Tie Events Into Your Content Marketing Plan
  • How To Use Influence To Sell More Event Tickets
  • 10 ’90s TV Characters That Would Make Great Event Organisers
  • Mind the Gap: Digital Marketing Skills For Event Professionals

Organising your first event in August?

Why not sell your tickets online with Eventbrite and we can help you every step of the way.