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| Ask an Expert: Auditing Event ROI |
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FROM NEW YORK Glenn Hansen is the president of BPA Worldwide, which audits the circulation of a variety of media, including many magazines and newspapers. BPA’s event auditing division provides marketers with hard data on the outcomes of their events.
What made BPA want to get into event auditing?
More publishers are now content management companies, in that their content is going out through various platforms. We see the opportunity for a content management company to look at its brand and say, “Our brand has many touch points, we need to measure each of those touch points so that we’ll have an audit of our integrated media solution.”
Describe the process of auditing an event.
It starts with having a database of attendees. We’re interested in
those who actually attend, so in addition to the registration database,
there has to be a mechanism by which the attendee is verified as having
been present. At a big trade show, it might be bar-code badges that get
scanned. Then we wish to speak about the demographic vitality of those
attendees, and that is derived from a demographic questionnaire in the
registration process. So for a trade show, we’re looking at what type
of industry, occupation, buying influence. For a small conference or
[other type of] event, it’s whatever the organizer needs to [describe]
to the sponsor the quality of the audience.
How far in advance should you plan to have an event audited?
To do it perfectly, it would be in advance of producing your first
registration materials. If it’s an afterthought, we can accommodate you
up to the day before the event, but there you don’t get the benefit of
a lot of planning.
What are the benefits of auditing an event?
You want to give the person who’s going to decide to sponsor or in some
way financially contribute to your event some accountability. In the
advertising world at major corporations everyone is concerned about ad
spend and that the return on the investment is measured. In the event
world for too long now, there have been very weak tools to measure the
effect of attending, sponsoring, or exhibiting at an event. The
external benefit is a sales tool to help demonstrate credibility and
accountability. On the internal side, it helps organizers have adequate
procedures and systems in place to track attendance and the value of
the attendees.
What’s the value of having an outside auditor?
Credibility. Would you buy stocks in a country that audits its own
financials? You need to have third-party independent work before you
can have accountability and credibility.
—Erin Parker
RELATED TOPICS
Measuring ROI
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