To be fooled or not, by event advertising impressions
You have less than X to capture their Y …

A shark's dorsal fin and your event

One might assume user traffic data varies significantly from one type of event website to another.

Over the last 20 years, I've been collecting data from numerous event web sites. Some of the event niches include beer festivals, ethnic festivals, sporting events, specialty, and not for profit fundraisers.

One of the most fascinating aspects of event web sites is that the observed user traffic trends are atypical. Without data most event organizers incorrectly assume their own website traffic trends. Even if they've been organizing their event "forever!" The logical assumption is that there is a gradual or linear increase in website traffic leading up to an event.

Every event website for the last 20 years has shown very similar traffic trends. And it’s very different from what most event organizers think.

Leading up to the event, user traffic anemically increases. It does not gradually increase as most people assume. Within a week or two of the event, web traffic increases almost exponentially, to a spike. Then rapidly decreases to a trickle of traffic, after the event.

Here's another observation. For the clients that spend between $0 - $150,000. USD cash on advertising, all the traffic curves look very similar. Like a shark's dorsal fin!

To be fair, I don’t have data on the $150,000.+ USD cash advertising campaigns for events. Clients have never spent that much. Hopefully someday!

There is also some interesting data when you segment data within Google Analytics. Here’s a numerical snapshot of 12 months of user traffic data from two completely different events:

Percentage of Total Web Site Users by Date Range for Annual Events

53-60% of Event Website Users visited 25 Days before the event and 5 Days after the event.

35-46% of Event Website Users visited 5 Days before the event and 5 days after the event.

It is essential for event organizers to collect and monitor their event website stats. Knowing your event web site user trends can prove tremendously beneficial for maximizing the effectiveness of all your advertising and marketing.

At a minimum, it tells you when people are most interested in your event. That alone can help you determine when to spend marketing dollars for maximum impact. You can find your data in Google Analytics under the Audience > Overview tab.

Let me know what you find!

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Posted at 13:22 in Event Promotion and Marketing |

Tags: advertising, event promotion, marketing, website traffic