Predicting how consumers will move through an event is one of the most pressing challenges that experiential marketers face.

It’s not uncommon to spend countless hours agonizing over the layout of a display, only to discover that once set up, last minute tweaks are required to reduce bottlenecks and long lines.

Making these adjustments are critical to maximizing event ROI; excessively long lines are visible turn-offs that can prevent consumers from stopping by a display.

Conversely, an experience that runs like a well-oiled machine will generate more leads and consumer conversions.

The thing is, the formation of long lines and bottlenecks usually has much more to do with “behind the scenes” strategy rather than a display’s physical layout.

How data gets captured at an event could be one of the first offenders:

·      Are the survey questions too detailed/too many?
·      Is the amount of manual data entry excessive?
·      Is the data capture platform intuitive enough so consumers don’t feel overwhelmed?

Of course, data capture strategy isn’t the only reason that experiential events get bogged down. For example, different activities at displays take different amounts of time to complete, so that inherently can cause a “traffic jam” – very much like the kind experienced on highways.

At eshots, bottlenecks have bugged us for quite some time, so we recently deployed a Throughput Measurement feature. It time tracks a variety of data capture points throughout an experience, giving marketers empirical “behind the scenes” evidence about where their traffic is flowing (and where it’s coming to a hard stop!).

Whether on foot, in the car, or at a major airport, it seems most folks don’t like waiting in traffic. This couldn’t be more true when it comes to experiential marketing events.