Trade Show ROI Archives

Tracking Objectives and Measuring Return on Objective (ROO) for Your Events

Event objectives are predefined goals your organization aims to achieve by participating in events. Some examples include: Lead Generation, Sales, Brand Awareness, Customer Retention, Networking, etc.

Tutorial Video (2 mins)

Getting Started With Objectives & ROO

Specifying Objectives for your Events

Objectives for an event are entered under the “Objectives & ROO” section of the event’s “ROI, Objectives & ROO” tab in ExhibitDay.

Objective Importance and Achievement Rating

You can specify a level of Importance and Achievement Rating for each objective.

Objective Importance

The specified level of importance for an objective is a reflection of its significance to your organization for the event. It also plays a factor in the calculation of the event’s ROO Score:

Objectives marked as High importance carry a weight factor of 3x in the calculation of the ROO Score.
Objectives marked as Medium importance carry a weight factor of 2x in the calculation of the ROO Score.
Objectives marked as Low importance carry a weight factor of 1x in the calculation of the ROO Score.

Objective Achievement Rating

The objective Achievement Rating (0-10) reflects your assessment of how well you believe the event objective was met. A rating of 10 indicates that the objective was fully achieved, while a rating of 0 indicates that the objective was not achieved at all. The rating for each objective counts toward the overall event ROO Score.

Note: Unrated objectives (i.e., the ones that have an achievement rating of TBD) don’t count toward the event’s ROO Score.

The ROO Score

The Return on Objective Score is a metric used to evaluate the success of an event based on how well it meets its predefined objectives. It is a number between 0 and 10, calculated as the weighted average of objective achievement ratings.

Example

Consider an event with the following 4 objectives:

Brand Awareness: High importance, achievement rating of 8 (out of 10)
Competition Research: Medium importance, achievement rating of 6 (out of 10)
Lead Generation: Low importance, achievement rating of 5 (out of 10)
Product Launch: Low importance, achievement rating TBD (not specified)

The event’s ROO Score is calculated based on the achievement rating combined with the weight factor of each objective’s level of importance:

Brand Awareness (High): 8 x 3 = 24 (out of 30)
Competition Research (Medium): 6 x 2 = 12 (out of 20)
Lead Generation (Low): 5 x 1 = 5 (out of 10)
Product Launch (Low): doesn’t count toward the ROO Score because it’s achievement rating is marked as TBD (not specified).

ROO Score = 10 x	Weighted sum of achievement ratings Weighted sum of maximum possible achievement ratings
ROO Score = 10 x	(24 + 12 + 5) (30 + 20 + 10)	= 6.8

Comparing ROO Score across your events

You can compare the ROO Score across all your events in a given year from the “ROO Breakdown” section of the “Exhibits & Sponsorships” tab of the Annual Budgets page.

Adding your own custom objectives

By default, ExhibitDay provides a list of most commonly used event objectives (e.g., Lead Generation, Sales, Brand Awareness, Customer Retention, Networking, etc.).

If the objective you’re looking to track is not listed, you have two options:

Option 1: When adding a new objective, simply select “Other” from the objective dropdown list and type in the name of your objective.
Option 2: Add a Custom Event Objective to your workspace so that it’s always available as an option in the dropdown.

You can add up to 10 Custom Event Objectives to your ExhibitDay workspace. To add Custom Event Objective, go to Workspace Settings > Workspace Customizations > Configure Event Objectives.

Charging Expenses to Cost Centers

You can now charge expenses for your trade shows and exhibits to Cost Centers in ExhibitDay.

Cost Centers

Cost Centers are Departments or Business Units within your organization to which costs can be charged (for accounting purposes).

When entering the cost of specific items for your Events (e.g. Booth Reservation, Travel, Shipments, Sponsorship, etc.), you can optionally specify the Cost Center(s) that the cost should be charged to.

Configuring Cost Centers in your Workspace

You can manage your list of Cost Centers under Workspace Settings > Workspace Customizations > Customize Cost Centers.

Manage Cost Centers for Trade Shows and Exhibitions

Charging a Cost to a Cost Center

To specify a Cost Center to charge to (when entering the cost of an item), click the ‘Specify Cost Center’ link next to the text-box for the cost, then select the Cost Center you would like to charge the amount to.

Select the Cost Center to allocate a cost to

Charging a Cost to Multiple Cost Centers

If the amount being entered should be charged to multiple Cost Centers, use the ‘Split Amount’ link to specify the Amount/Cost Center breakdown. For example, if the total amount for an item is $750, and that amount should be charged evenly across three Cost Centers ( ‘CC1’, ‘CC2’ and ‘CC3’), enter $250 and select ‘CC1’, then, click ‘Split Amount’ and enter $250 and select ‘CC2’; do the same thing for ‘CC3’…

Split Expenses Across Multiple Cost Centers

Expenses by Cost Center Report

To view a report of your annual expenses broken down by Cost Center, click on the Annual Budgets (all events) link in the top-right navigation menu. Then, click on the Expenses by Cost Center tab.

You can filter the report by Cost Center and export all expenses (for the budget year) to a spreadsheet (in .csv format).

Trade Show Expenses by Cost Center Report

Note: The ability to specify Cost Centers for expenses is only offered to ExhibitDay Workspaces that are on the ‘Enterprise’ plan. If you wish to enable this feature, please contact us about setting up a custom Enterprise engagement with your organization.

Sign up for a free ExhibitDay account to plan your trade shows, manage your trade event budgets, and collaborate on tasks with your event team.

Tracking Event-Specific Miscellaneous Expenses and Credits

Miscellaneous expenses (e.g. iPad giveaway, or Membership fees) and credits (e.g. partial booth service refund) for an event can be tracked under the [Misc. Expenses & Credits] tab of an event; this tab can be accessed via the extended menu on the event page tab strip.

Tracking Misc. Expenses and Credits for Trade Shows

Expenses entered under this tab will count towards the total actual costs of the Misc. Expenses line-item in the event-specific budget. Credit entries will show as negative amounts and will count against the total actual expenses for the event.

Sign up for a free ExhibitDay account to plan your trade shows, and manage budgets, engagements analytics & ROI for your events.

Track Your Trade Show Annual Budget Based on Fiscal Year

Just launched — new ExhibitDay feature to track annual costs and budgets for your trade shows and sponsorships based on your Organization’s Fiscal Year in.

Setting up your Fiscal Year

You can now define your organization’s Fiscal Year under your Workspace Settings in ExhibitDay. Once you switch your budgeting basis from Calendar Year to Fiscal Year, the date range for all your annual budgets in ExhibitDay will automatically adjust to the Fiscal Year start date you choose.

Trade Show Budgets based on Fiscal Year

When you use a Fiscal Year as your Budgeting basis, the date range for your Fiscal Year is displayed on the Annual Budgets page as well as the Event-Specific budget allocation tab in each event.

How to Measure ROI for Trade Shows and Exhibits

The new ROI Calculator in ExhibitDay helps you measure the Return on Investment for exhibiting at trade shows and sponsoring events.

How it Works

After entering the actual costs for your event (in the “cost” field for booth reservation, booth services, shipments, sponsorships, travel, etc.), under the [ROI & Analytics] tab of each event in your ExhibitDay workspace, you can enter the Actual and Potential revenue amounts attributable to the event:

As you enter the attributable revenue figures, ExhibitDay automatically calculates the Return on investment for your event in the summary section:

Comparing ROI Across Your Events

You can compare the Return on Investment across all your events for a given year under the [Annual Budgets] link:

Compare Engagement Metrics and ROI Across events

Sign up for a free ExhibitDay account and start measuring the return for your investments in trade show exhibits and event sponsorships.

Category: Trade Show ROI