Stop measuring footfall! 5 metrics that prove live events drive real revenue
- M&IT
Footfall can look really impressive, but does it really tell you anything about the true ROI of an event or conference?
I argue that we need to stop counting bodies and start counting real business impact. In 2026, if your event report leads with “footfall”, you’re telling the C-suite you optimised for busy and not for buying. What is key is replacing vanity metrics with commercial ones that actually move the revenue dial and in turn drive business growth.
The footfall fallacy
A packed hall can be commercially useless if the right buyers weren’t in the room, or if they left without progressing a single opportunity.
At B2B conferences and premium brand experiences, the cost-per-attendee is simply too high to justify “total attendance” as a meaningful KPI. What we really need to ask is, “did this room move deals forward faster than our other channels could have done alone?”.