Are You Doing Enough To Collect Data From Your Live Event Attendees?

What is the biggest worry of any business owner, brand manager and CMO before a marketing event? It might seem like a trick question since you are thinking about location, promotion, gifts, merchandise and possibly everything else under the sun. In that case, let us ask you if you have thought about data collection. Research shows that almost all modern brands have the ingredients to make an event marketing campaign work, but what they lack is one wholesome way to collect data from the events.

Why should you think about collecting data?

It is not enough to organize the best music festivals, coolest fashion shows, and even scrumptious outdoor food extravaganzas. At the end of it all, brands have a few things to gain, and that includes customer information. The only reason you should spend money on experiential marketing is to understand your customers better. Opening two-way communication channels might not be easy, even with the rampant use of social media marketing, but that is precisely what experiential marketing gives you. This non-traditional marketing method gives you a chance to set up direct face-to-face rendezvous with your new and existing customers, within their comfort zones. Find out more about event marketing at https://www.roots3productions.com/blog/the-experiential-process-event-marketing-agency/.

Ideally, there can be no better place to set up your data collection instruments. However, very few know which methods to use and how to optimize them for tradeshows, outdoor events, open sets, and mobile tours.

• Think personalization and buyer persona!

Always remember that each customer is different. It becomes difficult not to see your customers as one entity. Since they are paying for the same product and availing the same services, it is challenging to set each one of them apart. Well, you could do that by geography, age, socio-economic factors and other parameters that comprise demography. It is the age of hyper-personalization. You cannot leave mass emails and expect your potential clients open them and respond to them. You need to give them something more than that. You need to understand their unique interest and serve them an exclusive experience on a silver platter. Several websites use customer’s browsing history to suggest products they might find interesting. You can do something similar. Based on how they react to your event, you can offer them some alternative or something similar in the near future.

• Capture data in real-time

Live Events give you something, social media promotions and TVCs can never deliver. They provide you with the opportunity to capture the real-time reaction from your audience. Your brand needs the insight into each customer’s behavior to understand their impulses. Big Data is ruling almost all marketing channels. Even Google has leveraged AI and Big Data to serve their users with more relevant information. There is no excuse for millennial brands to overlook the implications of modern technology in the fields of marketing. There are a few stellar brands and their marketing experts, who use facial recognition to identify returning customers and to follow the expressions of the majority. That gives them a clue as to how many of the crowd are new and how many are satisfied with the experience.

• Step up your technology game

Using the principles of Big Data in coordination with your experiential marketing strategy can give you the key to the prediction of user intent. Big businesses have been spending millions of dollars to understand the “needs anticipation” of their potential customers. Knowing what a person might need the next minute can open up a bunch of selling opportunities for any company. That is where the data collection, data analysis, and predictive analysis become relevant. Through the proper interpretation of the data you collect from your live event, you should be able to predict the buying decisions of your new customers. Isn’t that everything any business needs to keep their cash flow healthy forever?

• Update and maintain your database

At the end of it all, nothing replaces a complete and adequately segmented contact list. A full list is the one with the customers’ name, email address, contact number, purchase preference, activity log, and the likes. A well-segmented contact list is the one that has several groups of customers according to their demographics. Now, one customer might belong to one group or multiple. The idea is to make the shopping experience as personal and customized as possible for each one. To do this, apart from a robust experiential campaign idea, you will need a robust CRM platform.

• Stay visible to stay successful

You cannot let your customers forget your existence after your live event is over. You need to keep the buzz alive through social media. At the same time, you should leverage social media listening tools to find out what they are saying about you. The likes of Hootsuite and Brandwatch are resourceful for businesses of all sizes and budgets. They can alert the user when someone uses their branded hashtags or tags their events or shares their posts on the selected social media channels. You can use one or multiple tools of the niche to follow your posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In doing so, you will come across an imposing amount of data that can tell you a significant amount regarding your event, products and customer interaction methods.

How will social media help you with market research?

You can take a clue from the social media feedback to improve your experience and update your customer contact details as well. Handing out survey forms does not work anymore in the world of mobile phones and tablets. You can spend a little more and set up online or digital registration desks. Share QR codes or links with your visitors to get an instant update of their contact information and social media profiles. Keep your location, and branding décor technology friendly, so your visitors can scan the barcodes and QR codes instantly for social media shares. You can offer website discount and digital coupons to your target customers in lieu of on-spot registration.

It is never too late to start collecting customer data and constructing a complete database. You still have time until the next event, and you should utilize this window to set up a reliable CRM platform. Check out data analysts and data managers, who can help you assimilate and analyze data from the live events.