How to get visitors to your networking group

Members bring visitors. Everything else is a rounding error

Groups try social media, paid advertising, listing sites and local press. These occasionally produce somebody. In practice the overwhelming majority of visitors to a networking group come because a member asked them personally, usually in a conversation that was about something else.

So the question is not how to market the group. It is how to make asking easy, normal and worth doing for the member.

Make asking take ten seconds

A member offering to bring somebody has about ten seconds of enthusiasm. If the next step is “I will email you the details” they have to remember, then write something, then explain what the group is. Most will not.

Give every member a link they can send from their phone, on the spot, which opens a page explaining the group and lets the visitor register themselves. In NetworkingBadger each member has their own share link, and whoever they bring is credited to them automatically.

Ask for a name, not for effort

“Everybody bring a guest next month” produces nothing. It is too vague and too big. What works is specific and small:

• “Who did you meet last week who would get something out of this?”
• “We have no accountant in the room. Who do you use?”
• “Bring the person you were telling me about. I will look after them on the door.”

Naming an empty trade is particularly effective, because it turns an invitation into a favour to the group rather than a favour to you.

Run two or three visitor days a year

A dedicated visitor day works because it gives members a reason to ask now rather than sometime. Set a date six weeks out, name a target, put a decent speaker on, and tell members what to say. Expect roughly half the promised guests to turn up, and plan the room for that.

Make the registration honest and short

Name, email, what they do, and what they may be contacted about afterwards. That last part matters, and not only legally: somebody who has said yes to hearing about membership is a different prospect from somebody who has not. In NetworkingBadger the answer is recorded and checked on every email that follows, so a guest never gets membership information they declined.

The day itself decides whether they come back

• Somebody meets them at the door. Not the chair, who is busy. Give the job to a member who likes doing it.
• Introduce them by name and trade, and say who brought them.
• Give them sixty seconds like everybody else. Being an audience member is why people do not return.
• Introduce them to two people they should meet, specifically, and walk them over.
• Do not sell membership in the room. Ask what they thought, and ask afterwards.

Follow up within two days, then keep the list

The follow up is where most groups lose the visitor. Two days later, an email from a person, in your own words, saying what happened next: the members they met, an offer of a one to one, and what membership involves if they asked. Then, if they are not ready, keep them on a list and invite them again in a couple of months. Visitors who join often do so on the second or third visit, months after the first.

NetworkingBadger keeps that list for you after every meeting, in your organisation’s words, and only to people who agreed to hear from you.

Credit the member who brought them, out loud

This is the cheapest growth mechanism there is. Read out who brought whom. Keep a running tally for the year. When a visitor finally joins, credit the member who first invited them even if that was five months ago. Groups that do this get visibly more invitations than groups that do not, and members notice quickly whether the credit is real or approximate.

A reasonable target

For a room of twenty five, two to three visitors a week keeps the group growing gently after normal losses. One a month is a warning. None for two months is an emergency, and the fix is always the same: go back to asking members for specific names, not general enthusiasm.

If you want the mechanics handled, that is what NetworkingBadger does for referral groups, from share links to follow up lists to the credit surviving however long the visitor takes. The guide to running a group covers the rest of the job.