How to use data to win budget arguments in 2024
Chloe Richardson, VP senior corporate relations at Explori, explores what happens when you pitch falling budgets against rising costs.
Budgets have always been a thorn in the event professional’s side. And in the current climate, with rising interest rates and macro political factors impacting the supply chain, money seems to be keeping senior event marketers up at night more than ever.
According to a CWT study last year, cost-per-attendee for meetings and events was 25 per cent higher in 2022 than in 2019, and this is set to rise by another 7 per cent this year alone. And yet, our budgets are not rising at a pace that can keep up with these increasing costs.
At the same time, event spend is certainly under the business microscope. Splash That reported that event planning makes for 21 per cent of total corporate marketing budgets, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that our senior leaders are now taking more of an interest in tightening the purse strings.
We are seeing this business interest play a part in budgets across the event ecosystem. In the recent Explori Exhibit Leader Insights report that we released in collaboration with EXHIBITOR Magazine and the Exhibitor Advocate, we saw that the key challenges corporate exhibit marketers expect to come up against in the next three years – both internally and externally – are all cost-related. Top of the heap comes internal budget pressures, with 68 per cent of respondents citing this as a major challenge.
Chloe Richardson, VP senior corporate relations, Explori
Chloe Richardson, VP senior corporate relations, Explori
“We don’t lose budgets because what we’re doing is too expensive, we lose it because the business doesn’t see the value in it”
Tricky balance
So what is going to help us overcome this tricky balance of rising costs and flatlining budgets?
Having the right data to communicate event impact and value to the wider business, while seeming an obvious concept, is going to start to rise to the top of the priority list for corporate event teams over the next 12 months. After all, we don’t lose budgets because what we’re doing is too expensive, we lose it because the business doesn’t see the value in it. We need to make them see.
Communicating event performance and impact to your wider organisation in a language the business understands is the only way to demonstrate impact and value, and therefore defend event spend and justify budgets.
How will this work in practice?
First of all, we have to reframe the type of data our event teams are collecting, breaking through the noise and data distractions with a very clear focus on specific data that is both robust and scientific enough to speak to senior leadership, while being adequately driven by event programme objectives to be of real strategic use to the events team.
Sentiment data
In our industry we’ve traditionally collected either too much, too little, or not the right type of data to demonstrate value, but to win budget arguments we need to follow recommended best practice.
New budget defending data collection is going to start to use sentiment data specifically. In a time where we need so much more than revenue generated or attendee numbers to justify event spend – the power lies in leveraging proactive data, and this is where sentiment data comes in.
Sentiment data allows you to understand the thoughts, feelings, perceptions, future behaviours, and attitude of your attendees. This data tells us why people did what they did and what they intend on doing, holding the key to understanding the true impact of your event through attendee experience metrics including NPS, CSAT, loyalty, propensity to purchase and value for time. It is often the missing link in the measurement and stakeholder communication process, but it shouldn’t be - because it compliments and enhances all the other data points you collect, allowing you to quantify event impact. As the single point of truth and collected at a point where your audience is most engaged, sentiment data delivers a level of insight that cannot be gained through analysis of demographic and engagement data alone.
Photo by Júnior Ferreira on Unsplash
Photo by Júnior Ferreira on Unsplash
Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash
Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash
Healthier position
In the next 12 months, as more sentiment data is collected across an entire event programme, if leveraged properly and consistently, moving way beyond the anecdotal feedback we’ve become accustomed to will put teams in a much healthier position when it comes to talking money with the business.
Realistically, I anticipate that as we start to harness our sentiment data to communicate back to senior leadership, we will see a shift in business mindsets. As our c-suite begin to truly understand and appreciate the value and impact our events programmes deliver whilst driving company-wide objectives; we’ll stop having to fight battles to justify event spend and defend our budgets.
One last time - we don’t lose budgets because what we’re doing is too expensive, we lose them because the business doesn’t see the value. It’s up to us to make them see, and that’s why sentiment data needs to be top of the priority list for 2024 – because only data will help you win those budget arguments.
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