Industry events like Baselworld or SIHH have always been a staple in the Luxury sector – just as fashion week has been for the fashion industry. They’re a time when industry professionals come together to meet and build business opportunities, and when brands launch new products and build buzz around their name.
Yet, with attendance of these affairs shrinking – thanks to an increasingly interconnected, digital world that facilitates meeting more often or participating in events virtually – and the costs of fashion week rising, you may be wondering whether investing in these events is still as relevant today as it was ten years ago.
What is the real ROI of these industry affairs? To find out, be sure to effectively measure the impact you generated (and compare it to your competitors’) with the right metrics. Follow the 3 points below and download your worksheet here.
3 Ways to Benchmark Performance at Industry Events
1. Calculate your Share of Voice during industry events
Industry events are a great opportunity to capture the global spotlight. But, that often means you’re competing against many other brands for your share of media coverage. That’s why it’s important to calculate Share of Voice, making sure to track these metrics during the event, and shortly after as well.
Share of Voice is the percentage of media coverage your brand generated around the event. For example, if we look at six watch brands during the lead-up to Baselworld, we can see that IWC has generated 22% of the coverage which is nearly double Breitling’s 12%.
Tracking Share of Voice is a great indicator of how strong your brand is performing at an industry event. After all, the more journalists or influencers are writing about your brand means the less they’re writing about your competitors.
2. Understand who your top voices are
In addition to Share of Voice, it’s important to track who is contributing the most to your brand equity during the events. How much value is coming from traditional media publications? What about influencers, celebrities, retail partners and your owned media accounts? These are the five main Voices that build brand equity during industry events and it’s important to calculate who is driving the greatest impact.
To start, you’ll want to identify key contributors by calculating the number of times these individuals mention your brand. This could uncover new brand ambassadors or even target audiences. It will also help you see who the most active Voices were during the event.
To understand which Voices were the most powerful, you’ll want to compare the total Media Impact Value™, which takes into account factors such as content quality and source authority. But if you want a simple metric to gauge which individual contributors resonated the most – compare engagement rates. Engagement rates are the number of reactions (likes or comments) divided by the number of followers. They are a great way to not only benchmark the performance but also see how posts about your brand stack up against posts about competitors.
For example, if we look at both Alex Costa and Hugo Philip who both posted during SIHH. Alex Costa’s post about IWC generated almost 63K likes across his 557K followers - an 11% engagement rate. Hugo Philip’s post about Panerai only generated a 4.9% engagement rate.
Keep in mind engagement rates aren’t just for influencers – you can track engagement rates from the social media accounts of publications like Vanity Fair and GQ.
3. Benchmark performance across your owned media accounts
Finally, you’ll want to analyze the performance of your owned media accounts. Brands can often overlook the power of their own social media accounts during events – especially with so many other things going on - but you won’t get a more targeted audience than your current followers. These are consumers that have already established a connection with your brand so it’s important to benchmark which content performs best.
First, identify which channels had the greatest impact. This can be done by comparing the average engagement rates from the platforms you are posting on such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Second, compare which types of posts resonated the most with your followers. Were they product posts, behind the scenes shots or lifestyle focused? For example, Audemars Piguet product posts about their new Sapphire Orbe (at 104K views) greatly outperformed their lifestyle golf posts (at 16K views).
104K views
16K views
View this post on Instagram
Blindfolded golf...what could go wrong? Find out at @audemarspiguetgolf #APGolf #MatterOfTrust
Finally, compare your average MIV® per post with top competitors. This will help you evaluate your overall social media strategy. For example if you have a high number of posts but low MIV per post you might be oversaturating your followers as posts are getting lost. Or if you have a low number of posts but a high MIV per post perhaps you are missing opportunities to connect with your follower base. By posting a few more times you could significantly increase the impact your owned media accounts have on your brand equity.
Now that you're aware of the three main factors that should be taken into account when measuring success after events, you can download your free worksheet via this link to help you breakdown all the buzz.
*Header image Courtesy of Baselworld.
By Launchmetrics Content Team
The Launchmetrics content team is always on the lookout for new trends in the fashion and technology sector. We are geeks with style and lovers of good stories!
Celebrities
This is the proper weblog for anyone who needs to seek out out about this topic. You understand so much its nearly hard to argue with you (not that I really would want匟aHa). You positively put a new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Great stuff, just nice!
Anne-Cecile Boize
Hi Celebrities! thank you for your great feedback on this article.