How to Promote a Successful Networking Event

Networking is a great way to meet potential clients, progress your career or grow your personal brand in the local community.

Managing a networking event means that you will probably meet even more people.

People who run networking events usually run it as a side hustle from your main job. The end goal is to become more well known in the local business community with potential clients.

If you have ever thought about starting a networking event? Or, are you struggling to get many people along to an existing networking event?

I have run a networking event called LinkedIn Local Hamilton for over four years.

It does alright. The average attendance is around 150 people - which is often restricted by the size of the venue and/or the level of sponsorship. Most of the events have a waitlist of people waiting for tickets.

Here are some key strategies for marketing these events.

The Event Experience

Networking events usually suck.

What REALLY promotes an event? The experience itself.

If the experience is great, word of mouth?will do a lot of the hard work for you. People will tell their friends or colleagues about it and some will invite people along to the next one.

For me, getting the experience right was essential.

Back story: I have a master’s degree in marketing and for?my thesis, I explored the consumer experience of rock concerts. I've been to a lot of concerts and really wanted to understand what makes rock concerts so engaging and addictive.

A key reason many concert consumers want to repeat the experience is the strength of community and the sense of belonging people feel. This experience is unique and the value can’t be replicated elsewhere.

I wanted to create something similar with LinkedIn Local Hamilton. I didn't want it to suck.

The atmosphere of LinkedIn Local Hamilton is more like a cocktail party than a networking event — there is a real buzz.

It's far different from a BNI group or other "hardcore" networking events.

I wanted the events to be less focused on sales and more on a relaxed environment where people can have a good time.

During the events, there is very little promotion.

I make this clear to sponsors and they don't always get it or like it. I've had to tell some sponsors that this probably isn't the right event for them.

I wanted to create an event I'd be excited to go to - and I hate all that self-promotional bullshit.

I wanted to create a networking event people look forward to. Relationship building then feels much more organic.

Do you know what also helps?

Free alcohol and food.

After a long day’s work, you’re hungry and tired. A beer or two and a couple of savouries can help you loosen up and mingle with strangers.

Promoting Individual Events

The next tip is about the event promotion.

A big mistake I feel some events make is launching 2-3 months prior. I know you’ll probably want to give yourself as long as possible to promote the event... But, at this point, people don't care so much as there are 50 million other things they need to think about first.

Give people too long and they’re more likely to procrastinate getting tickets because it's so far away and can easily then forget.

I find that a lead-in promotional period of 3 to 4 weeks to promote your event seems to be the sweet spot.

It’s much easier to keep the buzz high between the launch and event day if you're not promoting the same content for weeks and weeks.

Post content consistently every 2-3 days during the lead-in time to events.

If you need to, set up a marketing calendar for each event to give yourself a plan for your content. This is literally what it sounds like - a calendar with what marketing you will do on specific days.

A small portion of your content should educate your audience about the benefits of attending. However, most professional people understand the benefits of networking — so there's no need to harp on about how amazing your events are and why people should attend!

Instead, use content that showcases how great your events are.

Share videos and photos of people attending with big smiles on their faces, talking and laughing — even better, having fun whilst holding a wine glass!

A great marketing tool is using a videographer to capture these moments from the event to then create content showcasing this experience.

The event should then sell itself! People will feel like they’re missing out if they don’t attend — just look how much fun these people are having!

If you use Eventbrite for your event ticketing, it has the option to automate a Facebook event listing. A Facebook event is a great promotional tool - you can invite your relevant friends along, share content to create a buzz, and drive traffic to the Eventbrite ticketing page.

However, you should edit the Facebook event listing after it is automated, as there can be formatting errors and other things to tidy up.

Event mailing list and email marketing

The next tip is to utilise email marketing for ticket sales.

A key part of having ongoing successful events is building a mailing list. The larger your database grows, the more potential you have for ticket sales.

Even before I launched my first event, I was building a database of people interested in the events.

First, I posted on LinkedIn asking who would be interested in attending a local networking event. I also created a page on my website with a form to take people’s details to then contact them about event details.

After my initial LinkedIn post, the mailing list quite quickly grew to over 100 people. I add all attendees to the database which now has over 1500 people.

To manage a mailing list, use a customer relationship management system?(CRM). You can create custom mailing lists based on people’s characteristics or behaviours and it will integrate with email marketing.

Now, many of the people who attend visit the ticketing page via email marketing. When I launch an event, the first thing I do is send an email out to the database, with a link to the tickets.

When using?Eventbrite?for ticketing, you can export your database of previous attendees and add them to your CRM. You can also use Eventbrite itself to send emails to the database of people who have been to events.

To learn more about email marketing, read this article.

Concluding Thoughts

In this article, I have discussed three key tips for promoting successful networking events.

If you're interested in all five tips, check out the full article below.

If you plan to start your own networking event, I hope these tips are valuable! And, good luck!

Thank you for reading.