The Value of Corporate Marketing Events
A recent study by Involve has revealed that almost half (49%) of CEOs see internal events as a cost, rather than an investment. Therefore, this research may be an issue for marketers working on internal marketing campaigns.
There’s still a lot of scepticism, therefore, as to the contribution that events can make to the performance and profitability of corporates. So how do we as an industry meet that scepticism head on?
The answer has to be clearly demonstrating ROI. Nearly half of the directors the study questioned, failed to measure ROI effectively. Despite this lack of robust measurements, businesses are expecting events and conferences to deliver business critical measures. 84% of companies expect to influence employee engagement through events and 81% expect them to influence sales revenue/profit.
However, directors believe that only half of CEOs (51%) see internal events as an investment compared to almost two thirds of employees (67%). Meanwhile, CEOs in low spend organisations (those that spend between £100,000 to £250,000 a year on internal events) see events as more of an investment than those in high spend organisations (with spend of £250,000 to £1 million a year).
CEOs may be critical of internal activities because only 54% of directors claim to measure the ROI ‘extremely’ or ‘very robustly’ for these events. Jeremy Starling, MD of Involve, commented on the findings: “There is a clear disconnect between the CEO’s view of internal events and the views of the rest of the company”. Therefore, the overall study implies that the prime cause of this has to be a lack of proof that internal events are delivering long-term behavioural change or hitting KPI of success. Having an effective ROI strategy is truly the only effective way to successfully delivery against an organisations business goals.
For more information regarding ROI, check out our webinar on: How to Maximize ROI on your Corporate Marketing Events
