No More Winging It: A Smarter Way to Maximize Event ROI
- Karla Margeson
- May 15
- 3 min read
Industry events are a lot like weddings. You spend months planning, you drop a small fortune, and then before you know it, it’s over. And while you could just high-five yourself for showing up with cool swag and a branded tablecloth, most of us want something more tangible to show for it. Namely, a return on the money we spent! The good news? You don’t need a bigger budget. You just need a better plan.
Here are five things to think about before your next big event.
Define What ROI Looks Like for You
Before we talk about how to boost your return on investment (ROI), it helps to define what “return” means for you. Think: What matters most to your business right now? Is it marketing-qualified leads? Sales pipeline? Strategic partnerships? Product hype? Brand traction?
Not every event is going to deliver all of the above. Because when you try to do everything, you end up not doing any one thing particularly well. The trick is to pick one or two priorities and build your event strategy around those outcomes specifically.
Remember: The Booth Isn’t the Main Attraction
The booth is important. But the booth isn’t the event. It’s your home base. What matters more is what happens around it. That might mean scheduling meetings with VIP prospects ahead of time. It might mean sending a super-persuasive follow-up to everyone who attends your session. It might even mean showing up to the happy hour and late-night karaoke party (depending on your goals, yes—that might matter, too).
The point is: ROI rarely walks up to your booth and hands you a business card. You’ve got to go where the action is.
Make Your Content Work Overtime
If your team is speaking on a panel, sponsoring a session, or presenting anything at all, that’s a content goldmine. Don’t let it live and die in the ballroom. Capture the audio, grab a few video clips, repurpose the insights for social posts, blog content, and lead-gen campaigns.
Even if you’re not presenting, events offer a rich environment for quick interviews, soundbites, and trendspotting. Assign someone to capture what you’re learning, hearing, and noticing. It boosts your post-event content plan like you wouldn’t believe.
Don't Let Follow-Up Be an Afterthought
One of the biggest mistakes we see? Waiting until the event is over to think about follow-up. Too many businesses just collect business cards, dump them in their CRM, and cross their fingers they get around to them one day.
The trouble is, your leads aren’t going to sit in suspended animation while you catch your breath. If you don’t follow up fast, someone else will.
Bake follow-up into your event strategy from the start. Create a plan for capturing, segmenting, and nurturing your leads. And draft your post-event emails before you even pack your roll-up banner.
Just remember: Not every lead needs a sales pitch. Some need a nudge, some need an informational resource, others need a relevant customer success story. A little personalization goes a long way at this stage.
Debrief Like You Mean It
The real ROI-boosting lessons come after the event. That’s when you figure out what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve next time. So carve out time for a real debrief. (And yes. We do mean more than a Slack thread that just says, “good job, team.”)
Look back at your goals. Measure your outcomes. Ask hard questions. Did we meet the right people? Did we make the most of our content? Was this the right event for us? If you treat every event like a learning opportunity, your ROI will go up over time, even if you stumble once in a while.
Want to make sure your next event hits the mark? We put together an entire playbook to help you plan, execute, and measure success at your next event:
ROI is more than a number. It’s the result of intentionality, planning, humble learning, and repeating the things that go right. You got this. And if you want it, we can help. Good luck out there!
