Negative target group analysis: What you can learn from the attendees with the lowest engagement

Everybody wants only the super-engaged attendees during their event. Whether you want it or not, the attendees’ level of involvement varies considerably. While summing up the event, it is worth looking at the groups of participants to varying degrees. Also those least interested can be a valuable source of knowledge. Why is it worth running a negative target group analysis and what information to pay attention to? Keep reading and find the answer!

Target customer analysis is an important part of the event organization process. You carry out the analysis at the very beginning of the journey (Read more at The very first step of event planning process: understanding target audience). While the first analysis guides all your further actions, the second one verifies the validity of the assumptions and gives material for the next events.

The importance of the post-event target group analysis

During the post-event audience analysis, example target groups will appear. There will be your fans, people taking part in almost every event attraction, followed by those who are ‘average’ and those least engaged in event activities. Of course, you should look closely at all of the groups. The most involved attendees will ‘tell’ you who is exactly in your target group. Also, this group can serve as a benchmark and become a material to build a buyer persona.

‘Averages’ will show you, on which recipients you should work on in the near future. And finally, the least engaged in the event will give you a great knowledge of people that didn’t have an interest in the form of event or its attractions. Also, it will show you what can be improved during the event itself in the future.

Step one of the negative target group analysis: Who are the least involved participants of the event?

Your first step after separating the group of people least involved in the event should be to draw basic data about this group. Just like when you create an image of the ideal client, learn everything you can about these people:

• their gender
• where they came from
• how old are they
• what do they do
• what interests them.

This will give you a certain picture of who is the person that didn’t engage in prepared attractions. Be sure to check how it looks like when compared to the target profile.

Step two of the negative target group analysis: Verifying your assumptions about the target audience

If it turns out that there is a large gap between the profile of people not involved in the event and the event target group, it means that somehow you have reached the wrong people with your marketing activities. The greater the percentage of attendees in this group is, the more money you burned to promote the event among the wrong audience.

It is worth asking yourself how these people have made themselves known about the event and why they came. Have they been convinced by the advertisement on Facebook, or maybe they came as a plus one of a person interested in the event? Check it, so the next time you can better plan a promotional budget.

What if these people are in your target group? This means that mistakes crept in at the stage of planning attractions and layout of the room. Therefore, this analysis will also provide you with valuable insights that will help you prepare the logistics of the next event.

Step three of the negative target group analysis: picking the right data

Data that you should investigate for a non-target group

If the negative target group varies significantly from the target group, learn how they came to the event in the first place. Analyze their responses in questionnaires (if they have completed them), lead generation sources, coupons that were used at the event, and which were distributed during the promotion.

Follow their paths to know which promotional channels were effectively used by people who did not benefit from the event in any way. Write down these insights and refresh before setting the promotion for the next event!

Data that you should investigate for a group similar to the target customers

People who are in your target group, but do not get involved in the event, are people who can not find their own way through the event. In this group, you should make every effort to find out why this happened.

Of course, the surveys will be a clue, but it is worth looking at how they moved around the venue. Eventory will provide you the so-much-needed help. It allows you to follow the paths of participants moving around the event. Thanks to this you will know where they spent the most time and where they did not arrive at all. Leverage beacon technology. Arm the venue in beacons, that will gather precise data on the paths of attendees, and the time they spent near various attractions. Complete this information with networking data – did they exchange messages with other participants? Did they arrange a meeting in advance? It is also worth checking which lectures they have signed up to, which they have reached and how they participated in them.

Check if you can draw a common denominator about their interests based on the selected lectures. Maybe these people were interested in only one lecture, or misunderstood the nature of the event? Check if any of the lectures got them involved – whether they participated in the votings, whether they rated lectures and so on. If so, you have an idea for the next event and defined target group.

Negative target customer analysis: Lessons learned

“Why do I have to do this target customer analysis?” – you may ask. Well, the purpose of this analysis should be to extract some key conclusions that will help you make better events. In other words, it should provide you with information on how to complete bigger marketing goals within the same budget.

Lesson #1

The first and most important conclusion should be a short summary of who you do not want to target your marketing actions to. The organization of the event costs. Each participant is not only a potential profit but also a cost. You do not want someone completely uninterested to block a place that could be used by a potential customer and waste your resources. Also, remember that attendees contribute to the achievement of the event goals, so the wrong audience can make the event ineffectual.

Lesson #2

Secondly, you should pick out specific data to form some clues on how to handle an event. Find out if the prepared venue plan was as optimal as you expected. Where were its weak spots? Check if you have been involved enough as an organizer. Did you send the appropriate notifications? Did users read them and act according to their call to action? Or maybe you forgot about the right engagement activities for events? And by the right engagement activities for events I mean those that are aligned with attendees’ interests and preferences. Maybe the lectures did not use the potential of the available tools and therefore did not involve attendees as they should? This information will help you avoid mistakes in the future.

Lesson #3

Thirdly, the negative target group analysis will provide you with information on the general satisfaction of people from the event. I know, there are tools for running such analysis, however, since you are already doing a division into less and more involved participants, why not take advantage of it? With this already prepared set of data, you can complete the summary regarding the satisfaction of event participants in the report.

What do you think about this approach? Do you analyze the behavior of people who did not get involved during the event? Share your thoughts.