Good business sense means justifying your expenses. If an expenditure brings in higher sales, it was money well spent. If it out-performs any of the other ways you could have spent that budget, it’s a slam-dunk strategy.
The success of marketing events and campaigns like brand activations can be difficult to measure. They may not lead directly to sales, or the sales they generate are not distinguishable from other businesses. It all depends on the specifics of your business and the goals you set out to achieve. Here’s how you can make sure your next Toronto-based brand activation is a measurable success.
Points to measure and improve the ROI of brand activations
1. Select Your Metrics
Before you even begin to measure the ROI of your next brand activation, you should be clear on your objectivesand use the metrics that make the most sense. Different scenarios lead to different outcomes and must be measured differently. While a trade show might be measurable in leads and hard sales, an experiential marketing campaign at a music festival focuses on brand awareness.
Start by looking at metrics such as:
- Leads
- Engagements
- Foot traffic
- Impressions
- Social media followers
- Website traffic
- Purchase intent
- Consumer lifetime value
- Customer retention
Purchases and leads are not the only goals of a successful marketing campaign. When it comes to brand activations, brand awareness and less-tangible customer relationships are often the targets.
2. Invest in Data
Once you have your objectives and the metrics to measure your success, you need the tools to collect data. The good news is that you may not have to reach far to find a solution that can help with engagement and traffic metrics.
As more and more brand activations turn to digital signage to attract crowds and provide interactive and gamified experiences with audiences, digital signage has become easier to implement, even in outdoor environments. You can now rent portable digital signage in Toronto that includes data collection and analytics.
Digital signage is a great way to engage audiences. They offer marketers an easy way to implement Augmented Reality, gesture-controlled activations, and gamified experiences, quickly making digital signage an integral technology in experiential marketing.
But that same digital signage can also easily collect on-site location analytics such as visitor statistics, dwell times, how many visitors are exposed to your messaging, soft biometrics such as age range, and even live monitoring.
Leverage digital signage to help prove your ROI.
3. Measure Return on Experience
As much as ROI is the definitive measurement for marketing efforts, some forward-thinking marketers are now using Return on Experience (ROE) to evaluate the success of their marketing efforts. ROE is considerably more complex than measuring ROI in a physical space, though the same metrics have been routinely applied to digital campaigns.
ROE is quantifiable using data such as total attendance, conversion rates to invitations, dwell time at the experience, and social media reach or share rate. A good experience generates buzz both online and through word-of-mouth. Capturing that data can change the way that your next brand activation is evaluated.