Web Analytics: The Value of Insight
The great and the good from the live events industry gathered at ExCeL in London yesterday for the fifth AEO Marketing Forum – a peer-to-peer networking event for event marketing professionals run by the Association of Event Organisers.
Chaired by Rob Nathan, Marketing Director at Media 10 and the guy responsible for turning around the fortunes of the iconic Ideal Home Show, the event featured presentations on a diverse range of topics from graffiti walls to copywriting and smartphone apps to webinars. Over 110 people attended from major venues like the NEC, Earls Court & Olympia and the SECC, as well as those involved in creating and marketing conferences and exhibitions.
I was delighted to be invited along to give a presentation on the “must-know essentials” of Google Analytics. Here are the slides from the presentation, which gives an overview of some key features of the Google solution in the context of web analytics in general and the event industry in particular:
All the presentations were interesting and informative, but for me the highlights were the candid look at working with a design agency by Paula Benson of Form, the application of new technology in events by Tim Stone of Cisco and the entertaining Austen Hawkins of FaceTime talking about their work to promote the events industry.
One of Paula’s key messages was about the value of paying (even modest amounts) for design ideas rather than relying on the goodwill of agencies competing in an unnecessary pitch. This has long been my preferred approach and one that I’ve found to be really effective in past projects.
Tim’s presentation covered a lot of ground and extolled the virtues of Cisco’s WebEx and TelePresence products. He also highlighted a new social media monitoring and customer service product due to become available in the UK during Q1 of 2011 called SocialMiner. His presentation began with this engaging video stats-fest:
FaceTime is the marketing body for the events industry and has recently completed some new research into the psychological influence of live events on brand perception and buying behaviour. CEO, Austen Hawkins, highlighted some of the findings of the Live Events Change Minds research, including how the proportion of people who said they would like to buy from an event rises from only 34% before a show to 63% afterwards.
Congratulations and thanks to Austen, Jim, Sally and the team for pulling together such a high-calibre and very worthwhile conference.
