Business networking is the single best way of meeting people with a goal to collaborate and achieve success together. You meet new people, generate referrals and, of course, make new friends.
In other words, you need an event marketing solution designed specifically for business networking events. Firstly, let’s hear from owners of two business networks and see how they did it:
How do you grow your business networking group and get people to attend your events?
You need the following:
- You need to create your event on LinkedIn
- You need a separate landing page to capture registrations
- You need a viral / referral form so people who register can refer their friends
- You need a community of people around you (or virtual assistants) to promote and market your event
- You need a countdown of emails leading up to the event and building excitement.
This is what the perfect business networking marketing system looks like:
- A large database that can be sent emails, set-up correctly to avoid the gmail junk mail folder.
- Two ways to register for the networking events:
- An email series of invitations, sent to your existing email database, asking them to go to the landing page to register for the event.
- After they register on the landing page, you need a “refer-a-friend” form that looks like this.
- When someone is referred, they get a really cool email asking them to attend (and cc’ing their friend who invited them) that looks like this:
- Each person that registers for the networking event gets started on an “email countdown” to remind and get them excited
- We set-up a “team marketing” system using the My Most Trusted Chrome extension and show your existing network how to promote and invite extra people to the event!
- It’s quick and easy for each person to add value, build your database and get people to your networking events.
- Bring in VA’s (virtual assistants) into the mix to promote the event using their own LinkedIn profiles. The more LinkedIn profiles that we action, the more successful the event becomes.
If you already do some of this, and want a scaled down service, we can do this. It depends on how many people you ideally want to be at your event.
Do people actually show up?
Here are the statistics:
- If you only use LinkedIn to promote your networking event, you will get a 10-20% attendance rate.
75% of those people who successfully referred a friend to the networking event (and were told their friend is coming) will attend the event to be with their friend. - Over 60% of people who were referred to the event by a friend will attend. This is why referrals are so important!
- People who attended the previous event are about 30% more likely to “get hooked” and will attend the next event.
How do you encourage people to show up to the next networking event?
Email them. Create a series / sequence / journey of emails that counts down to the event. This gets them prepared and gets them excited.
LinkedIn allows you to export email addresses out of LinkedIn so you can email them when people register from the landing page. Those email addresses are captured.
Referral emails should also be captured
SMS them: if you have their mobile number – send them an SMS to remind them the event is on.
DM them: If they came from LinkedIn, you are allowed to message them on LinkedIn to remind them of the event. If the event is large… boy is that time consuming.
The secrets to marketing networking events:
- Mobilise your community and your team/members/staff to promote the event:
- By promoting it on LinkedIn
- Using the My Most Trusted browser / Chrome extension
- Use virtual assistants to promote the event
- Use viral forms so people can refer their friends
- Build a database of attendees that you an re-invite over and over again
If you run networking events, please contact us. We’ll rock them!