By Bruce Jeffries-Fox
The previous article in this series explored how research helps maximize the chances that the events you select will yield the desired outcomes (see PR News, June
22). This article focuses on using research to evaluate the effectiveness of events.
As organizations increasingly strive to develop multi-faceted relationships with their customers and other stakeholders, events have emerged as an excellent conduit. Company
executives associate the development and management of special events almost exclusively with PR leadership who will be requesting and reviewing the results of evaluations, and
with staff members who will be doing the actual assessment.
It is important that the staff that develops and implements such events be aware at the outset that they will be required to answer four questions with hard data and
insights. Any of the accepted evaluation techniques may be used.
- To what extent did the event impact the target audience in the desired manner?
- To what extent, if any, did the event impact the target audience in unexpected ways, desirable or undesirable?
- How cost-effective was the event?
- What was learned that would help improve future events?
In addition, when evaluating an event or sponsorship, three categories of your target audience must be considered: those who attended your event, those who heard about your
event but who didn't attend and those who neither heard of your event nor attended it.
Measuring desired impact: Poll a sample of people who attended your event and then another group who only heard about it. Ask each group to rate your organization
on key perception items and their likely future behavior toward your organization or issue. Ask respondents to indicate how the event has changed their perceptions and likely
behavior, e.g., are they more or less favorable toward you? Are they more or less likely to take the action you hope they will take? Then poll a third group of people who neither
attended nor heard about your event. These folks serve as your control group. Ask them the same perception and behavior questions. Compare their answers with those of the two
previous groups.
Measuring unintended impact: Insert questions in the surveys going to people who attended or heard about your event to learn whether the event cultivated any
unintended perceptions or actions. If you develop your event carefully, any unintended results are likely to be positive, but it is always good check for undesirable results.
Measuring cost-effectiveness: The key idea here is to compare the cost of putting on the event with the value it provided. Costing the event is, of course, no
problem. To put a value on its impact on attendees, we need to translate changes in perceptions and likely behavior into dollars. To translate changes in perceptions, someone in
your organization (typically in marketing) needs to have done a "calibration study" that correlates changes in perceptions to subsequent changes in behavior, e.g., buying your
product. If your staff has not done this kind of study, go to your marketing department and see if it has. To translate likely behavior into dollars, take the
increase in likely behavior found in your survey (e.g., 20% more of the exposed target audience than the unexposed target audience say that they will buy your product or service).
Lessons learned: Review each part of your event development and evaluation program for insights to help you do better next time. Ask such questions as: Did I
reach enough of the right people? Did the impact go in the direction I intended? Did I spend too much? These questions can help point out what you did right and what you can do
better. Successful events are those that cultivate the desired outcomes among target audiences and that yield a good ROI. Intuition and creativity are crucial to
developing event ideas. However, once an event has been fielded, you need solid, objective research to determine its impact on your target audience. PR leadership should insist
that the "normal course of business" includes using research to evaluate events.
Contact: Bruce Jeffries-Fox is president of Jeffries-Fox Associates, a Cape May, N.J.-based PR firm. He can be reached at 609.884.8740, [email protected].