When planning an event, it’s not sufficient to make important decisions based off of hunches. When you choose data over intuition, you’re choosing accuracy and precision.
If you’re planning on using event data as part of your event management strategy, the benefits are immense. Here are four key reasons why data-driven decisions are key to a successful event.
1. Data-Driven Decisions Narrow Your Event Goals
Data forces you to take a good, hard look in the mirror. There’s no way around hard facts. They force you to distill what’s important to your event success ahead of time in order to become effective. And two objectives always bubble up to the top: the event attendee experience and your business objectives.
When you place the event attendee and your business objectives at the forefront of every decision you make for your event, success won’t be far away. And the data you collect before, during and after your event will back that up.
2. It’s Not as Difficult as It Seems
The phrase “data-driven decisions” sounds a little daunting. But it’s really not!
Data, in this instance, is a way of referring to the tons of information that passes us by each day. Data comes from plenty of sources online—social media and search engines are two important areas—as well as in real life. With careful filtering, you can turn that data into something useful for your event.
Data collection is an ongoing process. From the second your event website and app is live, it’s an evolving resource to learn from your audience and optimize your event. Making decisions based off of the information you collect is the obvious move after that.
3. It’s Your Competitive Advantage
Your ability to collect, categorize, comprehend and make decisions based off of collected data is what sets you apart from your competition. When your audience knows you are using data to make decisions on content, product demos, experiences and other facets of your event, they know that their interests are closely guarded, and this will help you stand out.
According to a report by McKinsey & Company, data is “the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity” in nearly every industry, including events. It’s time to embrace data and its benefits for your event.
4. Find Common Ground with Your Stakeholders
Your marketing team is interested in data, and so is your sales team, your registration team, your vendors…and pretty much everyone else. But they’re all interested in different statistics from different aspects of the event.
When you focus on collecting data throughout your event, each party will get what they’re looking for. More than that, each interested party can utilize the other’s data to add more context to theirs. (For instance, event planners may need to gather information from sales to add context to their data.)
For event and meeting professionals, using data to create an effective, engaging event is incredibly important. Don’t let the information your event needs to succeed pass you by—capture the important facts that hone your event goals.
Find out how your event can drive your business strategies and marketing initiatives with strategic events.