Track How Your Events & Promotions Perform

There is a lot of talk about analytics, metrics and return on investment when it comes to online marketing. Most of the time the focus is on how many clicks your organization gets, how much traffic you see or your number of "Likes" on Facebook. For most organizations, the most important thing to measure is how they actually do in the real world. Squareberry's event and promotion features are designed to help you market real world activities and specials that can lead to greater attendance and higher sales.

Events - Count It

Tracking the effectiveness of your "Events" is pretty straightforward. Simply count the number of people who show up for your event. This can be accomplished by having someone at the front entrance who's job is to count, running a raffle that everyone participates in or by counting "groups" based on number of transactions/checks.

Getting any kind of count can help you in your long term goals. If you track the attendance of your events you will be able to recognize trends and adjust to them. If your numbers begin to drop, you will know you need to mix it up or promote your event in different ways.

Promotions - Count It

For retails stores and restaurants, counting promotions is fairly easy. Your Point of Sale (POS) system should offer a promotion/coupon feature. You can input the promotion manually each time someone shows you their coupon or you can utilize the barcode feature to scan the coupon right off printed coupons and mobile devices. Your POS system should keep track of how many times your promotions was used by customers.

Sales - The Last Word

For businesses, the most important things to track is sales. This is obviously something you will already be doing. You may want to look at sales during periods or on days where you run promotions/events compared with days when no special happenings are going on.

Sales should be the last word and determining factor. You may feel your promotions or events was not as popular as you hoped, but your sales may have still seen a healthy boost and the effects could be ongoing from that boost. Sales numbers will always be king.

Tuesday Tip - Non-Profits, Highlight Your Events

Non-profits are often reliant on member or local participation. Whether it is a community event or a fundraiser, non-profits need more people involved to help spread their message, push their cause or reach their goals. Leveraging social media and online communications is ideal for non-profits who have tight budgets and need to reach larger amounts of people.

Get Better Event Participation

It is important to communicate your events in every aspect of your online presence. Add a full calendar to your Facebook Page and to your website, clearly displaying all your events. Publish reminders about your upcoming events to social media so your followers know what is going on.

You want to remind people about what you have going on and send them easy information on getting involved. Include links in your social messages that send people to your Facebook or website calendar. Add a link to a registration page or even provide a phone number. Make it as clear and easy to get involved as possible.

Encourage Sharing - Multiply Your Reach

You will also want to encourage sharing of your information. This can help multiply the number of participants and drive more traffic to your events.

• Describe the need or mission. This can appeal to different types of people. Telling them your story and what you are trying to accomplish can help motivate.
• Ask people to share. Send messages like "Hey everyone! We are trying to get more participants for our fundraiser tomorrow. Please retweet and share this."
• Share past stories, photos and videos. It is important to show that other people are involved. Sharing testimonials, photos of people in action and videos can help encourage others to get involved or share your information.

Track your Views

Pay attention to what events are being viewed most on your calendar or from social media. If you have an event getting a lot of views but real world participation is lacking, you may need to modify your call to action or how you have presented the event. Once you start seeing what is working and not working, you can optimize your plan to maximize your follower participation.