Today on the Demand Gen Pod, Episode 9, Ryan welcomes everyone to the demand gen pod and discusses the importance of
measuring the success of virtual events, including webinars. He emphasizes the
need for businesses to improve and enhance their strategies based on key
metrics and KPIs. Ryan mentions several metrics such as attendee engagement,
session popularity, lead generation, and conversion rates that should be
tracked. He highlights the significance of preparation, goal setting,
analyzing content performance, networking activities, and attendee feedback in
refining future events. Ryan also explains how tracking tools can monitor
attendance rates and session engagement while utilizing CRM integrations for
tracking attendees’ journeys. He concludes by discussing the power of webinars
in establishing thought leadership and brand recognition.
Summary notes from Episode 9:
Ryan welcomes everyone to the demand gen pod and introduces the topic of
measuring the success of virtual events. The conversation includes both big
online conferences and online webinars, as they should be cared about in the
same way. Key metrics and KPIs are important for measuring virtual event
success. Attendee engagement, session popularity, and lead generation are some
key metrics to consider. Effective preparation involves clear goal setting,
aligning goals with marketing objectives, and understanding the target
audience. Tools can be used to track attendance rates, session engagement, and
gather attendee feedback and sentiment. Lead generation and conversion success
can be measured through metrics like lead quality, nurturing effectiveness,
and conversion rates. Content performance can be evaluated by analyzing
session popularity, viewer engagement, and speaker effectiveness. Networking
and relationship building success can be gauged by measuring attendee
interactions and engagement in networking activities. Feedback from attendees
can be used to identify areas for improvement in future events.
Full Transcript:
00:01
Hey, everybody, and welcome to the demand gen pod. My name is Ryan. Today we are talking about measuring the success of virtual events. And I don’t just mean big online conferences, I mean online webinars as well. For the sake of this conversation, they are one and the same because you should be caring about the same things for both. We’re going to talk about what that is and what you should be thinking about when you should be thinking about your key metrics and how to be measuring those KPIs after the fact. Let’s get going. Now, before I forget, if you have an opportunity, it would really appreciate if you could please subscribe to the podcast wherever you’re watching or listening to it. That would be great. We are on YouTube and then we show up on TikTok. And I’m so old for TikTok.
00:49
Oh, my God. Let’s see TikTok YouTube. You can find us on our blog@demandgenpod.com. You can also always reach out to me directly if you wanted to say hello@demandgenpod.com, if you want to shoot me an email, ask any questions. But otherwise virtual Events so, measuring the success of virtual events is so crucial and it’s particularly important for businesses to refine their strategies and enhance any future engagements that they do, right? Because if you are not improving and enhancing after each event, then what’s the point in doing it? How do you know that you couldn’t be doing better unless you’re going back and looking at how you did before and then looking for ways to improve. This really involves understanding key metrics and identifying those KPIs. And let’s just list a couple out like attendee engagement, session popularity, and lead generation.
01:39
Obviously, session popularity is more related to online, larger online events, but that’s okay. Effective preparation entails that clear goal setting and aligning them to your marketing objectives, upfront right and leveraging meticulous planning, understanding the target audience. And you should be able to track attendance rates that session engagement and you can utilize tools for accessing attendee feedback and also sentiment. Now, lead generation and conversion success are measured through metrics like lead quality, nurturing effectiveness, and conversion rates. But you want to put an emphasis on attributing sales to the events that you do and you can do that through different forms of tracking. Right? Now, evaluating content performance involves analyzing session popularity, viewer engagement, and speaker effectiveness.
02:22
And again, if that’s in a broader sense of a conference, if you boil that down to a webinar, it might be per webinar, not necessarily within a single webinar that you have multiple speakers, although you certainly could, obviously. And networking and relationship building success can also be gauged through analytics and measuring attendee interactions and engagement within networking activities too. Specifically though, you can take feedback and use that to aid in identifying areas for enhancement in future events. So measuring virtual event success, it’s so important and overview taking a chance to look over the different key metrics that you have up front and then revisiting them in the future is all that you could possibly ask for. So let’s go back a little bit and talk about preparation and goal setting.
03:12
So you can prepare for the events by outlining clear goals and align those, like I said, to your marketing objectives. Common goals can also include brand awareness, lead generation, and audience engagement. And really, the important part of audience engagement is how many people are participating in a session? Are they asking questions? What are the interaction rates and content consumption rates? Tracking tools can monitor attendance rate, session engagement, and they can really provide valuable data for refining future events. And you can analyze that attendee feedback for the sentiments regarding lead generation, virtual events effectiveness, and lead generation and conversion. They can be measured through metrics like lead quality, nurturing, success, and conversion rates, and attributing conversions. And sales to virtual events involves tracking those attendee journeys, analyzing various touch points, and employing CRM integrations.
04:04
All of these things completely capable within the tools that you are most likely already using, or pretty low cost tools, if you’re not already. The cool thing about the CRM side of it is that you’re able to track the attendance. So if somebody signs up to join a webinar and then they don’t show up, you know that. And you can sync all of that for the most part with your CRM tool or your email marketing tool. And when you know who’s come and who has watched versus who’s come and who’s watched an event versus who signed up and then didn’t come, you can treat them differently, you can email them differently, you can say different things to them.
04:52
You could utilize dynamic content for those who came to say, thanks for coming, here’s a recording, versus those who didn’t come to say, sorry that we missed you, here’s a recording. You could even do that all within a single email. You wouldn’t necessarily have to have two separate emails, one for people who came and one for people who said that they would show up and then never did. Beyond that, though, I think that the really fascinating thing about webinars particularly, is that they are one of the highest ROI tools that you can use, especially within the digital realm. And the reason for that is that it’s a kind of a big ask.
05:30
So you’re asking for somebody to take time out of their day on a specific date, at a specific time, and give that time to you, and in return, they’re expecting something good. The number of webinars that I’ve joined where all that they do is give a really high level overview, to be perfectly honest, like this podcast, right? A really high level overview, rather than diving deep into something, comes away with me feeling as though I’ve wasted my time. That’s because webinars typically are lasting, say, 30 minutes, 45 minutes an hour, versus something like this where I’m trying to do these in maybe six or ten minutes and ultimately the result there is that my hope is your takeaway from listening to me is oh, I should think about these things.
06:17
I should start to think through how I could leverage those ideas versus now that I have thought through how to leverage those ideas, how do I actually do it. And that’s kind of that deeper dive and Webinars should be taking that deeper dive into how to actually accomplish something, not how to think about accomplishing it. I think that the really neat thing about Webinars is that the results, if you do a good job at them, is that they are extremely powerful and they put you in a position to be a thought leader. And they also are really giving you a stage to talk on and to present at. And these people are giving you their time and so you really have their attention.
07:00
You can use that to really make a difference not only for them, I mean they should get something out of it, right? But also for you in terms of lead gen opportunities or at least brand recognition and thought leadership opportunities. Regarding networking and relationship building, let’s focus on that for a minute. Again, this is probably a little bit more outside of Webinars and more focused on larger live events, sort of like a conference equivalent, right? Networking and relationship building is really important for those and you can still measure the success there as well. And let’s think about that. So if you are able to measure engagement and you’re seeing that people are interacting with each other, even if it’s an online conference, you can still absolutely do this.
07:46
You kind of have networking chat rooms that people can go into and talk about specific topics, right? You can follow that engagement. Not only can you see that people are engaging, try not to say engaging anymore, but not only can you see that people are engaging, but you can also use what they are talking about to help to guide what you might do in the future. So if you’re learning that there are specific pain points that they have with your product or you’re learning that they have specific business problems that they have been trying to solve with your product, or just in general, is there a way that you can leverage that to either drive product development or that you can leverage it for the future? On how you want to be able to talk about different sessions later on?
08:36
And what you can take away from that is that if you know what people are struggling with or what they need help with, you can use that to drive your content generation in the future and you have a pretty good idea that those people would come back. The other benefit to the networking aspect is that when they are engaging with others and they’re doing so on your platform, right? So at your conference, again, even if it’s online, that is a huge takeaway and a big win for you as a business when you have the opportunity to get these people to associate you and your brand with their success and their growth. So I learned this at this conference by talking to this person.
09:18
Well, the only reason that they learned it was by talking to the person who may have nothing to do with you as a company, but they learned it through you as sort of that intermediary as a platform. And that’s a huge takeaway. That wraps up today for the demand gen pod. I hope that you’ve learned something and I hope that you consider diving into the wide world of virtual events. Believe it or not, today we’ve got an ad. So I’m going to go ahead and play that at the end. And we’ll see you next time as.
09:49
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