Developing Benchmarks, Metrics, and
1. State value using corporate objectives 2. Identify desired outcomes 3. Define convention selection metrics 4. Re-evaluate in-booth results 5. Make data visual Why (and why not) ROI? Most of us involved in healthcare meetings and events have no doubt participated in conversations about return on investment (ROI), that is, the metric that compares monetary benefits to costs. Used as a way to demonstrate value and effectiveness, maintain job security, and appeal to upper management in a commonly accepted language, ROI has much appeal. That s true in theory. In practice within our industry, however, the subject of ROI can engender feelings of confusion and even discomfort, especially in light of a regulatory environment that requires exhibitors to focus on education rather than promotion and selling. In addition, because meetings and conventions are not the exhibiting company s only touch of the prospect moving through the buy cycle, costs for all other marketing efforts, including pre- and post-show messaging, as well as sales rep calls, advertising and direct mail, online messaging and more must share in the credit for eventually converting the prospect to a customer. The result of this required distance between exhibition and the selling effort, combined with an elongated buying process, is often uneasiness about proving the value of the exhibit expense, along with a feeling of defenselessness in the event of threatening budget cuts. Uneasiness and defenselessness need not be the case, however, if you look at the need, and the metric, in a new way. R revisited Let s take a step back and consider the appeal of ROI. ROI is a ratio of sales divided by costs. Where there is a desire for ROI, yet no proxy for sales, it helps to look more closely at what sales represents. Sales, the R, is but one objective of a company. It is universally understood. It is a black-and-white component of shareholder value. Other objectives include profits, market share, community support, respect for the environment, and more. Key for the meeting and events team is to identify the specific objectives of your company. Specific is the pivotal word here. It is not enough to refer to your company s mission statement or broad vision written in lofty, general terms. Specific goals are those articulated by the senior leadership team and those around which departmental strategies are built and teams are put in place to execute. For example, the strategic objective might be to become the industry leader in providing a particular therapy to a certain medical subspecialty. This is an objective that the meeting and events team can help achieve. They now have a framework for thinking about corporate objectives that are the new numerator, the new R taking the place of sales as regards the activities of meeting and events. Again, since these are corporate objectives, delivered by senior leadership, they are spoken in the same language as sales. They are not the fuzzy measures sometimes quoted such as return on objectives, or return on learning, etc. Clarity and buyin are achieved, and credibility with senior management is thereby maintained. 1
TIP #1: State the value you contribute in terms of strategic corporate objectives. Example: Meetings and Events will help achieve the corporate objective of becoming the industry leader in providing therapy X to medical sub-specialty Y. In conjunction with its senior management sponsor, the meetings and events team should identify how their efforts support these specific goals by establishing the desired and measurable outcomes of the meetings. These outcomes must relate back to the stated corporate objectives. The team s efforts are successful when they can fill in the variables in statements such as, Our meetings and events will help us achieve this goal of X by doing Y. That is, when the identified outcome occurs, senior management should agree it is desirable and in support of the defined and understood corporate goals. Let s go back to our example of strategic objective to be the industry leader in providing a particular therapy to a certain medical subspecialty. One desired outcome, then, of the meeting and convention program might be to maximize therapy awareness and education among identified key opinion leaders (KOLs) and among purchasing and purchase-influencing healthcare professionals. All of the sudden, the focus is no longer on why can t we evaluate the meetings and conventions team by using something we all understand, like sales? The focus is now on showing how meetings and events can help reach the strategic goal of market leadership. The focus is now on showing how meetings and events can help reach the strategic goal of market leadership. TIP #2: Using the stated corporate objectives, identify the desired outcomes of meetings and events. Example: Meetings and Events will help achieve the corporate goal of industry leadership in therapy X by maximizing product awareness and education among KOLs and purchase-influencing healthcare professionals. Next, the team has to make sure they have a way to the measure success in reaching the desired outcomes. Continuing with our example, this means the team has to identify metrics that show they have achieved product awareness and education among KOLs and the target HCPs. Identifying these metrics, these ways to measure success, is one of the most important contributions of the healthcare meeting and events team. The metrics not only measure your success as a program manager, but they become the language that does for you and your team what ROI does elsewhere. They demonstrate your value and effectiveness. This task of identifying the correct metrics, while important, need not be daunting. As mentioned in a May 2012 article in McKinsey Quarterly, [Marketing] metrics are rarely perfect. But, the article goes on to say, it should be possible to find metrics and analytic opportunities that take advantage of your unique insights, are understood and trusted by your top team, provide proof of progress, and lay a foundation for more sophisticated approaches to tracking marketing ROI in the future. ¹ 1 Measuring marketing s worth McKinsey Quarterly, May 2012. David Court, Jonathan Gordon, and Jesko Perrey 2
I revisited Back to our example, the team wants to maximize product awareness and education among KOLs and purchasing physicians. As already stated, that s the sales proxy. Now they have to determine metrics that let them, and management, know if they have achieved this goal. Metrics are identified for all areas of the denominator, which is the spend, or investment. This I includes the convention choice itself, sponsorships, booth assets, the activities and interaction within the booth, and the pre- and post-marketing. Convention selection It s critical to look at all the convention spend categories to maximize value against the goal. As an organizing rubric, it makes sense to start with the biggest or a priori expense items and work your way down to the more dependent commitments. Selection of meetings and conventions is a good place to start. It is the commitment to large investment and it supersedes decisions about booth design, engagement technology, booth staffing, and messaging. Drilling down, after selection of metrics for convention choice, the team may develop metrics around outcomes related to booth assets, interactive technology, and booth staff. Additional decisions include metrics for items like literature content and follow-up messaging. Selection of meetings is a high-value exercise, and one that must be scrutinized regularly to ensure its contribution to the goal. Going back once again to our example, the goal is to maximize product awareness and education among KOLs and purchasing physicians. The convention team will first consider metrics related to the selection of conventions and meetings. Selection of meetings is a high-value exercise, and one that must be scrutinized regularly to ensure its contribution to the goal. Therefore, the team may consider the measurement of the following: Society leadership: presence of KOLs on the society board/faculty Among attendees, the number and concentration of physicians potentially or actively interested in the therapy, AND who have a purchasing or purchase-influencing role Concentration of scientific sessions related to the particular therapy Uniqueness of the convention for the target HCP attendee audience After selection of metrics, the team should weight each factor to determine the top few that really make the difference in convention selection. These are the factors that dominate the go/ no go decision on convention investment. Using metrics for the heaviest weighted factors, the team can now score each convention on its fitness relative to the metrics. Investment will be made in the highest scoring conventions. Further, the team can devise strategies to move convention scores higher. In our example, strategies might include attracting more target HCPs, suggesting to the organizing society additional session topics for the purpose of audience education, and determining more accurately which HCPs are actively or potentially interested in our therapy X. 3
TIP #3: Define metrics that let you know if you have reached the desired outcome. Start with selection of conventions. Example: We will maximize product awareness and education among KOLs and purchase-influencing healthcare professionals by looking at each convention in terms of: the presence of KOLs or thought leaders on the faculty; the number and concentration of target sub-specialty HCPs in attendance; and the number and concentration of scientific sessions offered related to therapy X. In-booth experience Once the go/no go decision is made regarding convention sponsorship and exhibition, attention can be turned to ensuring in-booth success. That is, choosing the right meetings is a decision based on their potential to meet objectives, not necessarily the actual outcomes themselves. The show-site experience now must prove its mettle. As with the conventions themselves, the exhibit must have metrics in support of the desired outcome. The mistake many exhibitors make is that they come up with concrete metrics, but the metrics have nothing to do with desired outcomes tied to corporate objectives. In our example, all in-booth activity must relate to the corporate goal of industry leadership in therapy X, and the stated path to this goal of maximizing product awareness and education among KOLs and purchase-influencing healthcare professionals. Metrics that aren t tied to this are outside the relevant pool of consideration. In a recent conversation, a convention manager stated her in-booth analysis consisted of tracking literature. While this is somewhat relevant, it does not reach far enough. Why? It is because a purchase-influencing healthcare professional who received literature may or may not have used the literature to become more aware of therapy X or more educated about therapy X. The outcome must show improvement in the metric. That is, knowledge transfer about therapy X must be demonstrated. Areas of knowledge to be demonstrated might include things like: product specifications, trial results, effectiveness stats, patient testimonials, reimbursement information, and more. Better than tracking literature would be efforts to track knowledge transfer, such as pre-post guided surveys about therapy awareness used with scripted booth staff interaction, interactive games moving the HCP through facts about therapy X, electronic brochures with finger-swipe capability for highlighting and downloading areas of therapy X interest, etc. These actions will provide the needed proof of progress, to use the McKinsey article s term, against the goal. TIP #4: Evaluate in-booth outcomes using the same language as selection of conventions. Example: We will demonstrate product awareness and education among KOLs and purchaseinfluencing healthcare professionals by showing results of knowledge transfer techniques, rather than just results showing who received our literature. 4
Post-show, pre-show: the ongoing conversation Continuing on the path of other expense related to meetings and events, it is important to look at what can be called the ongoing conversation, both with prospects and the convention organizing societies and associations. Again, metrics must be identified that relate back to the desired outcome in support of the strategic corporate objective to become the industry leader in providing therapy X to medical sub-specialty Y. For example, efforts to further identify HCPs that are actively or potentially interested in the target therapy would be advisable, as would efforts to get them to attend the target conventions and visit your exhibit. Presentation determines adoption Which would you rather look at: a spreadsheet of data or a colorful bar graph? The choice is an easy one. We are visual creatures. We prefer a graphical depiction of data to a data table. In the world of data visualization, sometimes called information design, the goal is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. It also stimulates audience engagement and attention. In short, it makes things clear. The world of meetings, conventions, and exhibits is something with which CMOs are often not very familiar. It is a world typically not addressed in business school curricula, and it has its own language, processes, and complexities. Making it easier to understand by upper management can be a huge win for the convention program manager. For example, in a recent conference session on healthcare exhibiting, one participant asked for advice on how to demonstrate to upper management why the team was recommending NOT to exhibit at a particular show. A graph of key metrics shown as the X and Y axes, with the conventions in question plotted in the lower left hand quadrant showing low scores on both axes, could do the job for her. In another example, when asked what he wants from his meetings and events team, a VP of Marketing for a division of a well-known medical device company said, I want them to show me what good is. Interesting comment. Good can best be shown with a graph of key metrics as the X and Y axes and the recommended investments, that is, conventions, plotted on the graph. Then the conversation about what good is becomes much easier, and well understood. TIP #5: Make your data VISUALLY compelling. When possible, use graphs rather than spreadsheets. Example: Conventions selected will be explained using a graph that shows concentration of target HCPs and concentration of relevant scientific sessions. For in-booth results, we will have a graph that shows target HCP knowledge transfer survey scores and stated desire for further engagement. Moreover, we will explain action strategies in terms of moving our results to better locations on the graph, namely, the upper right-hand quadrant. Getting started Most important is for the meeting and events team to speak about convention investment and outcomes in language that is understood and accepted by upper management. Think of all the decisions the meeting and events team makes that involve large sums of money. When the value of these investments is expressed in terms of corporate objectives, it is better understood and more easily accepted. Define results, both expected and actual, in terms of goals that are meaningful drivers of corporate strategic objectives. 5
In planning, begin with the selection of conventions, even if you have always exhibited there, or your competition is always there, or you already know which ones at which your company should have an exhibiting presence. Healthcare conventions are dynamic, and year-to-year changes are not necessarily always fully known unless researched. In a recent study by a major medical device company, ten of their major convention organizing societies were asked what if any audience changes they were planning for the next year s annual convention. More than half said they were planning significant updates and changes to the target audience. Composition of the attendee audience directly affects your expected outcomes. Most important is for the meeting and events team to speak about convention investment and outcomes in language that is understood and accepted by upper management. Finally, whenever possible, show data visually rather than in spreadsheets. Clarity will be improved. Remember those feelings of discomfort, confusion, uneasiness, and defenselessness in the face of ROI? You won t have those anymore because you will have changed the conversation. Kathleen Wilson, President Clearpoint Exhibit Intelligence kathleenw@clearpt.com www.clearpt.com 6