Fast-follower strategies—where your event marketing team quickly adopts successful ideas launched by competitors or industry leaders—can be a smart way for entry-level marketers to prove their value. But how do you show the real return on investment (ROI) when you’re not the first to try an innovation? Measuring ROI carefully and communicating it clearly to stakeholders is where you shine.
In the fast-moving world of corporate events, being a fast follower lets you skip some of the risk and costly trial-and-error. Still, you’ll need solid metrics, dashboards, and reports to demonstrate your impact. Here are six practical ways to optimize fast-follower strategies with a focus on measuring ROI.
1. Start with Clear Goals That Tie Directly to Business Outcomes
Before you copy what’s working for others, get crystal clear on what success looks like for your event marketing. Are you trying to increase registrations, improve attendee engagement, or boost post-event sales leads?
For example, if a competitor’s hybrid event format drove a 15% increase in registrations last quarter, your goal might be to achieve at least a 10% bump with your own hybrid strategy. This target becomes your benchmark to measure ROI.
Set goals that connect marketing efforts to revenue. If your event generates leads, track how many leads convert into paying clients after the event. A 2023 Event Marketing Institute survey found that 84% of corporate event marketers who linked their goals to sales outcomes had stronger ROI visibility.
2. Use Fast and Reliable Survey Tools to Capture Real-Time Feedback
You can’t measure ROI without data, and attendee feedback is gold. Quick, easy survey tools make this manageable.
Tools like Zigpoll, SurveyMonkey, and Google Forms let you ask attendees what worked and what didn’t immediately after sessions or the entire event. For instance, use Zigpoll to create a two-question pulse survey during the break—ask, “Did you find the keynote relevant?” and “Would you attend this event again?” These responses help quantify engagement and satisfaction.
One event team tracked feedback with Zigpoll and increased their Net Promoter Score (NPS)—a metric showing how likely attendees are to recommend the event—from 50 to 68 in just two events. This improvement became part of their ROI report, proving the value of adopting the competitor’s interactive session format.
Keep in mind, surveys capture feelings but not always direct revenue impact. Make sure to combine this with hard numbers like registrations or sales leads.
3. Build Simple Dashboards That Combine Multiple Metrics for Fast Insights
Instead of drowning stakeholders in raw data, create dashboards that show a clear story about your fast-follower efforts.
Your dashboard should combine metrics such as:
- Registration numbers before and after adopting the new strategy
- Attendee engagement scores from surveys
- Lead generation or sales conversion rates post-event
- Cost per lead or cost per registration
For example, one corporate event marketer used Google Data Studio to build a dashboard that refreshed weekly during their rollout of a new event app copied from a competitor. They saw registrations rise 25%, but cost per lead dropped 18% because the app improved check-in speed and session attendance tracking.
Dashboards let you respond quickly to what’s working or not. Just remember dashboards show correlation, not causation—dig deeper when needed and explain limitations to your team.
4. Split-Test Fast-Follower Tactics to Understand What Actually Moves the Needle
Rather than rolling out an entire competitor’s strategy all at once, try split-testing to isolate what drives ROI. This means running two versions of a tactic with different groups and comparing results.
Say a competitor started using personalized email invitations for their corporate gala, which increased attendance by 12%. Your team can test a simple invitation vs. a personalized one with two segments, then measure which gets higher click-through and registration rates.
This approach, also called A/B testing, takes the guesswork out of copying and ensures you’re spending your event budget wisely. A 2024 Forrester report showed companies that tested marketing experiments before full implementation saw 37% higher ROI on their campaigns.
The downside? Split testing takes time and enough attendees to divide into groups without losing statistical power.
5. Translate Metrics into Stories That Matter for Your Stakeholders
Numbers alone rarely motivate your boss, client, or vendor partners. Tie your metrics into a story that explains the value of the fast-follower strategy.
For example, instead of saying, “We increased registrations by 18%,” say: “By adopting the competitor’s successful virtual networking feature, we boosted registrations by 18%, translating into 90 more attendees and $45,000 in incremental revenue, all while reducing marketing spend by 10%.”
This narrative approach connects data to business impact and helps non-marketing stakeholders grasp your contribution.
One junior marketer reported that after framing their post-event lead nurturing program results this way, their leadership approved a 20% budget increase for the next event series.
6. Prioritize Fast-Follower Strategies That Are Easy to Measure and Scale
You won’t have time or resources to copy every competitor move. Focus on fast-follower tactics where ROI measurement is straightforward and results can scale over time.
Examples include:
- Email marketing tweaks (easy to track open rates and conversions)
- Social media event campaigns with clear click-through metrics
- Event app features that track session attendance and engagement in real time
More complex strategies like rebooting entire event formats may offer great promise but are harder to measure quickly and may not fit your current budget or timeline.
A 2023 survey by Event Industry Council found that 62% of marketers first try small, measurable changes (like email personalization) before scaling to bigger changes—because proving ROI sooner builds trust and resources for bigger bets later.
How to prioritize your fast-follower efforts for measuring ROI
- Choose goals linked directly to revenue or engagement you can track.
- Pick easy-to-measure tactics first—like email or surveys.
- Build dashboards that tell a clear story, not just raw data dumps.
- Use split tests when you can to validate your choices.
- Report ROI with concrete numbers and clear business impact stories.
By focusing on these steps, you prove your value as an entry-level event marketer while learning which competitor strategies really move the needle—and why.
Fast-following doesn’t mean blindly copying. It means thoughtfully adapting and tracking what works so you can show the true value of your marketing efforts. With clear goals, real-time feedback, smart data dashboards, and storytelling, you’ll become the go-to person for proving ROI on your team’s fresh ideas—even if they’re not the first to try them.
