The 3 Best Ways to Evaluate Your Event
/0 Comments/in Corporate Events, Event Planning /by Courtney CoulombeThe 3 Best Ways to Evaluate Your Event
Planit Events Inc. shares the 3 best ways to evaluate post-event!
The 3 Best Ways to Evaluate Your Event
In many of my blogs, I’ve shared tips and key learnings to plan an event, but I haven’t gotten the chance to go further in-depth on evaluating post-event. Evaluation is so important in many worlds, but especially in the events world. Why? Evaluation helps us understand what worked well, what did not work, what we want to do differently the next time around, and what we want to keep consistent. Over my years as an event planner in Edmonton and the surrounding area, I have found a pretty good system to help me evaluate an event that I planned and executed. I’m able to apply many of these key learnings to other events that I play a role in and I’m happy to be here today to share my learnings with you!
1. Evaluate Your Budget
This evaluation may seem like the most obvious one, but many don’t evaluate the budget unless it’s greatly exceeded. I think there is great importance in reviewing your budget post-event to see:
- What was over budget?
- What was under budget?
- Where there could have been further savings
- Where I would like to budget more for the future (i.e. on a promotional tactic that worked well)
Although this may seem tedious, go through each line item of your budget and reflect to gain a better understanding of if something could have been done differently to benefit the event more.
Not quite there yet? Check out my blog on how to set up your event budget!
2. Evaluating What Worked
This is my favorite step in the process – it’s celebrating your big wins! When you are evaluating what worked well in your event it’s important to gain insight from attendees, exhibitors (when applicable), sponsors (when applicable), special guests, or the hosting organization. These insights will help you gauge which techniques or aspects of the event helped them achieve their goal! Check out some of the questions that you can ask your different audiences below to gain insight into their successes of the event – these may not apply to all events.
Attendees:
Did you enjoy the event/conference/show?
What aspects did you enjoy the most?
What was your key takeaway from the event/conference/show?
Did you enjoy the networking?
What was unique about this event/conference/show?
Will you consider attending future events?
Exhibitors:
Did you find the event/show/conference beneficial to your business goals?
Did you gain valuable leads?
Was this the right audience for your business?
What did the event host do well for exhibitor promotion?
Were there ample networking opportunities?
Do you feel that you got or exceeded your return on investment (ROI)?
Will you consider exhibiting at future events?
Sponsors:
Did you find the event/show/conference beneficial to your business goals?
Did you gain valuable leads?
Was this the right audience for your business?
What did the event host do well for sponsor promotion?
Do you feel that you got or exceeded your return on investment (ROI)?
Will you consider sponsoring future events?
3. Evaluating What Did Not Work
This step isn’t as fun as the previous one, although it probably carries the most weight in the entire process. Finding out what did not work for your event will help you grow your event in the future. Learning about what not to do, what not to spend your budget on, and what people did not enjoy will create room for you to try new ideas in the future (check out the 2022 event trends here), or expand on what you have already implemented that is working.
I always feel like it’s beneficial to gain feedback from third parties in this situation, such as stakeholders, attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, etc. Check out what people are saying about your event through social media channels. Consider even sending a post-event survey to gain valuable insight into what your audience expects and wants to see from your event.
Planning events isn’t as easy as it may seem on the outside, so don’t be too hard on yourself if your event didn’t quite go as planned. Find those key takeaways and apply them to the next event and I can almost guarantee you will see progress. Planit Events Inc. is here for you throughout the entire event process. Feel free to reach out to us and we would be happy to help you in any way that we can!
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