New CEIR Report Series Offers Survival Guide on How to Grow Attendance

March 22, 2018

The Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) announced today the release of the first report in its newest series for attendee marketers, How to Grow Attendance. This series provides benchmarks for all phases of a marketing campaign and looks forward on where marketers seek to improve approaches in the near future.

Report One: Planning and Goal Setting that Positions Efforts for Success documents the most popular approaches used by organizers for attendee marketing and pinpoints characteristics where attendee growth is achieved.

“The How to Grow Attendance series offers a lifeline to attendee marketers who may feel overwhelmed by today’s fast-changing marketing environment,” said CEIR CEO Cathy Breden, CMP, CAE. “This research offers a road map of the most popular marketing approaches and, most importantly, which characteristics are tied to success in growing attendance. Attendee marketing teams can use these tools to evaluate what they are doing and develop ways to enhance the outcome of their efforts.”

Report One: Planning and Goal Setting that Positions Efforts for Success finds that the differences in approach between organizers that achieve growth and those that do not are nuanced. It reveals that those who are successful focus on achieving goals and metrics defined at the outset of a marketing campaign.

The report also shows that the use of analytics for new attendee acquisition is evident at a higher rate among those who grew attendance than among those that suffered attendance decline. Success rates and other unique characteristics tied to attendee growth are also summarized in the report.

This 18-page report inventories the following:

  • Biggest challenges encountered in striving to grow attendance.
  • Breakout characteristics among those that grew attendance.
  • Planning process for defining a marketing campaign.
    • Which departments are involved.
    • Factors considered.
  • Goals set and used to evaluate the outcome of a campaign.
  • Metrics set and used to evaluate the outcome of a campaign.
  • Use of data analytics to help define a marketing campaign.
  • Use of dashboards to monitor a campaign while in progress.

In addition to total results, this report identifies unique differences by event size and by type of business-to-business (B2B) exhibition organizer, association versus independent.

Remaining reports in the 2018 How to Grow Attendance Report Series to be published in the coming months are:

Part Two: Marketing Channel Mix and Other Tactics that Drive Growth
Part Three: Messaging that Resonates and Delivers
Part Four: Plans on Where to Improve Approach in Near-term Future

About CEIR
CEIR serves to advance the growth, awareness and value of exhibitions and other face-to-face marketing events by producing and delivering knowledge-based research tools that enable stakeholder organizations to enhance their ability to meet current and emerging customer needs, improve their business performance and strengthen their competitive position. For additional information, visit www.ceir.org.

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