Research

Article published: January 2007

by Nick Jones, managing director, Nexus Collections

Yes your honour, I am guilty, I am indeed a chartered accountant. Whilst I may have been in the Events industry for more than a decade, I still wake up every morning and look at the bottom line, the top line, the middle line, every line in fact…

Running a business with the mind of an accountant can at times be a frustrating effort. Whilst I can see events affecting my business and have a gut instinct of their impact – I need to know more. I need to know what I am getting in return for the money I invest and so should you. Nexus has spent many thousands of pounds over the years at exhibitions, but for what? To answer these questions I decided to use the time honoured method common to all accountants, research and number crunching.

Research is one of the most powerful tools used in all industries, however the research needs to be well thought out and, if you are looking for really useful data it needs to be planned. Just over a year ago we decided to undertake research over a twelve month period, which would provide us with a snapshot of where our new business was coming from. Please note that I say snapshot because that is all it is; too many people fall into the trap of believing that research taken over such a long period of time is definitive. In fact there could have been a whole host of factors that affected the results in this particular year.

Research needs simple goals, the search for too much data can spoil the overall results. We for example needed to know whether we were spending our marketing budgets wisely so that is what we focused on, nothing more. Every single piece of new business during our research period was questioned and understood; we drilled right down through the layers of advertising, catalogues and direct mail to get the clearest possible picture of where each new client heard about Nexus and what closed the sale.

Getting the data is however only half the battle, the real challenge comes in the analysis and subsequent use. Our headline results did reflect my instincts when it came to successful expenditure but they also taught me a lot about where not to be spending money. The wise use of the results is also vitally important – you might expect Google and Confex to be our top two sources of new business but now I know what percentage of new business was brought to me by each. Should that affect how I spend money next year? Yes, to be honest, I have already altered my budgets for 2007 as a direct result, but I still need to be careful; too much trust in one set of results could be very damaging and so the research needs continual updating – something to keep the accountants happy!

Box
Headline Research Results:

The research identified exhibitions as second only to the internet for generating Nexus Collection’s new business. The overall statistics breakdown the sources of new business into five different sectors:

•   Internet – 32%
•   Exhibitions – 25%
•   Word of mouth – 25%
•   Cold calling – 16%
•   Advertising – 2%

Further analysis of the new business generated by exhibitions includes the following results.

•   56% came from International Confex 06
•   34% came from National Venue Show 06
•   10 % came from other shows

Research

Article published: January 2007

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