Generating post-show surveys is an important facet to delivering the best possible on-site experience for exhibitors and attendees—heeding the input of both groups will ensure an event has value by transforming it into a must attend function. Without the input that comes post-show, an event can become stagnant and flat—a combination that will drive people away to competing events.

Chris Brown, executive vice president of conventions and business operations for the National Association of Broadcasters’ [NAB] annual show, says the most important steps in conducting a post show survey is “understanding your objectives and laying out some very clear goals of what you are after. From there, you’ve got to determine your approach and methodology of the who, what and where’s.”

The NAB Show sets key goals with surveys each year to reach the core constituencies of exhibitors and attendees. A satisfaction survey is given out to the groups to, as Brown says, “check the pulse on how we’re doing.” Additionally, the group analyzes the data to see if there are any major deviations from previous results, indicating a change may be in need.

“We look to see if something really resonates or if something all of the sudden falls off the cliff and we really need to pay attention to it,” he says. “We’re looking for data that will support the value of the event—that is primarily where we’re building data to help our sales team sell the show floor and continue to reinforce the value of what we deliver there.”

The group uses the surveys to look for new opportunities across a variety of areas, including new audience and exhibitor opportunities and new programs. Based off survey results the group will test ideas the show has not done in the past as well as testing programs the show recently introduced.

“Part of the challenge in laying these [surveys] out is you want to do whatever you can to design them to give the best possible response,” says Brown. He adds that when conducting a post-show survey it is important to keep the questions and length concise—if a poll is too long, detailed or involved individuals can generate “survey fatigue,” rendering the process ineffectual.

“We’re surveying some of these people other times throughout the year via the association so we always try to have to be careful about that,” says Brown. “Designing a survey that’s simple, short and easy to do is a challenge—there could be a million things you’d like to dive and check into but in reality if you go a little too far you could risk really diminishing the return on a survey.” 

In terms of practice and execution, the NAB Show uses a baseline set of questions the group asks with each survey to have comparability from year to year, which includes show satisfaction and value questions.

“There may be five or six locked questions in those categories that we know we need each year to provide value,” he says. “From there we ask what are the new pieces we want to look at?”

Brown suggests when checking awareness on how many people remembered new areas or surveying how useful people found the new projects, a solid strategy should be employed which includes being targeted and focused in the new question that zero in on the areas events are most unfamiliar with.

“If they’re not resonating, the survey could help indicate to back off or even eliminate those segments or it may suggest we need to do a bit more,” he says. “Some of these surveys tend to just confirm things but it helps in where you’re spending money and where you’re trying to focus.”

One new change implemented in the last post-NAB Show survey, which was released this summer, was questions on mobile application usage, which is designed to help individuals navigate the show floor.

“We’re trying with these surveys to get at what people’s mobile usage is, what kind of phones they’re using, if they’re experiencing any issues with Internet access at the show and which tools from a planning prospective they tend to use the most as it relates to the show,” he says. “We found a fairly significant shift toward mobile this year and away from online.”

The results told NAB Show planners that individuals prefer to have navigation, show and planning information right in the palm of their hand—which will now allow the group to improve its mobile application. While there is a growing popularity in this area, the survey revealed there were also some surprising results that will help the NAB Show plan for the future.

“Another thing we wanted to check specifically was people’s appetite for moving totally away from print to electronic tools,” he says. “We were trying to find out if we could completely eliminate a print show guide, which we talked about for a while and assumed that is has a number of different benefits. I was surprised to find there’s still a very strong affinity with exhibitors for the print guide.”

While attendees were less committed to a print guide, the numbers still surprised Brown, proving the survey to be helpful—the show will continue to use the guide until the numbers reflect otherwise, a strategy the show organizer heeds.

“It was a pretty high percentage that said they’d like us to keep the print directory,” says Brown. “Our interpretation of that is more and more people are getting comfortable with the electronic tools and not feeling the need to have the paper but we’re not there yet entirely.”

The NAB Show posts survey results online for all to see and takes a stance of transparency because the planners feel, “it’s better to be completely upfront because in reality our exhibitors know our show as well as we do, if not better—they’re going to have their own perceptions and the only way to change those perceptions is with real data,” he says. “Some of the satisfaction stuff [organizers] may be a little more nervous about releasing because it could drop or change. I think we had a couple scores that didn’t bounce up as much as we would have hope but that’s fine. You put it out there and in general, we’re comfortable with the strength of our show and that generally means our scores are pretty good.”