Measure return on marketing investment (ROMI)

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) offers advice and financing opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses. For over 75 years, BDC is devoted to support entrepreneurs in all industries and at all stages of development in Canada. Since 1944, over 56,000 entrepreneurs have been supported with financing or advisory services.

As an important actor in Canada, BDC attends several events as exhibitor to both promote and support the local entrepreneurial scene. However, events with large visibility and opportunities require a significant presence – like the Collision conference.

Collision is the “fastest growing tech conference in North America” according to Inc. Magazine. After three editions in New Orleans, Collision moved to Toronto in May 2019, a first in Canada. Organizers of Collision, also organise Web Summit in Lisbon and RISE in Hong Kong.

BDC’s challenge

For its first participation at Collision, BDC settled on an open booth design to facilitate talks, encourage investor meetups and welcome entrepreneurs. Evaluating the Return On Marketing Investment (ROMI) of a new event is difficult as there is no benchmark for evaluation. The perception of success is mostly based on the level of expectation held by stakeholders.

In order to get an unbiased evaluation of their participation at Collision, BDC asked EATech to answer the following questions:

• What is the overall visibility for the BDC brand at the show?
• How effective is the messaging? Are these effective at getting entrepreneurs to engage with the BDC staff and invited investors?
• How long are visitors engaging at the booth?
• Are visitors coming back?

The gathered evidence is to be delivered as an in-depth report which will be used as a reference benchmark for all future events.

Solution by Event Analytics

To achieve this, Event Analytics Technologies equipped the BDC booth with…