Explori Blog

Unlock Exhibit Success: The 7 Data Pillars You Need to Track

Written by Jan Barthelemy | April 17, 2025 at 5:47 PM

Event Success - 7 Data Pillars to Success 



Are you tired of guessing whether your trade show was truly effective? Do you want a clear, data-backed understanding of what's working and what's not? Then you need a robust exhibit measurement strategy and a powerful & easy to use platform developed by Explori. It all starts with their best practice framework of the seven data pillars of our exhibit evaluation tool, Maxbi.


Let's dive into the seven data pillars that Maxbi champions:

  1. Expo Characteristics: It all begins with context. Understanding the "who, what, when, and where" of the event is fundamental. Maxbi's wizard prompts you to record details like the expo's name, date, location, and the industry it serves. This contextual data is crucial for anchoring your results and enabling valuable year-on-year comparisons for specific events.
  2. Booth Details: Your physical presence matters. Maxbi encourages you to capture specifics about your booth, such as its size, whether it was a custom build, and the number of booth personnel on-site. Correlating these booth characteristics with your performance metrics can reveal powerful insights into the impact of your physical setup.
  3. Sentiment Data: Numbers don't tell the whole story. Maxbi recognizes the growing importance of sentiment-based KPIs by prompting feedback from your team about their thoughts and feelings regarding the booth and the overall trade show experience. This qualitative data adds a valuable layer of understanding to your quantitative metrics.
  4. Budget Allocation: Where did your money go? This seemingly obvious pillar is crucial for effective exhibit budget management. Maxbi encourages you to categorize your exhibit spending, allowing for insightful comparisons across your entire exhibit program and providing a clear view of where your investments are being directed.
  5. Strategic Execution: Planning and preparation are key. Maxbi delves into the strategic decisions made before and during the event. This includes how far in advance you booked your booth, your pre-show promotion efforts, and the team you selected to represent your organization. Analyzing the correlation between these strategic elements and your performance scores helps identify winning strategies.
  6. Objectives: Why were you there? This is a core pillar, and a key element of Maxbi's approach, driving its Return on Objectives (ROO) algorithm. Recognizing that lead generation isn't always the sole goal, Maxbi emphasizes defining and weighting all your objectives – be it brand perception, product launches, or customer engagement. Scoring the achievement of these objectives provides a strategically critical ROO score.
  7. Leads: The lifeblood of many businesses. Finally, Maxbi focuses on lead data, prompting you to record targets, actual numbers, and the qualification split (hot, warm, cold). This allows your dashboard to provide robust financial value insights into your leads and different lead types. While not the only measure of success, lead generation remains a vital objective for many exhibitors.

    By embracing these seven data pillars, as outlined by Maxbi, you can move beyond superficial evaluations and build a comprehensive exhibit measurement strategy. This framework empowers you to gain deeper insights into your performance, optimize your future, and ultimately, unlock true exhibit success. Stop guessing and start knowing – the power lies in the data.