How to Use Meetups to Promote Your Business

Meetup.com is a site where people with similar interests can organize offline events. For businesses, it's a way to use the power of the Internet and online marketing to engage customers offline. Meetup.com is the largest social media site for organizing groups offline.

Creating a Meetup Group

The way to use Meetup.com for business is to create a related meetup group.

Pick a topic related to something your business does or an interest your customers have. The key to choosing a good group topic is to pick something narrow. There are already a number of meetup groups in any given area. Yours needs to be something unique.

A good starting point is to ask your customers about their cares and concerns. What would they like help with? Who would they like to network with? If you can find a specific problem your customers need help solving, it will provide a great focus for a group.

Note that your meetup group shouldn't be specifically about your business. You can use meetup groups to promote your business indirectly, but it's unlikely that your customers will want to get together with others and talk about your business. Choose a topic that's related to your business or niche, but still interesting and relevant to customers.

Holding Regular Meetups

Once you've set up your meetup group through Meetup.com, start holding regular events sponsored by your business. These can be informal groups, or they can be workshops or seminars. A meetup can be something focused and tightly organized, or just a group that gets together over coffee for topic-based discussions.

In order to be successful with meetup groups, you need to have an audience already. If you're a new business or brand that doesn't already have a customer base, it will be much harder to attract members.

Promoting Your Meetup Group

There are many ways to promote your meetup group online. Post a notice and link on your website and mention the meetup on your blog. Tell your followers on social media about it. Use the link to your meetup group as a signature in emails.

When you create your group, Meetup.com will give you a logo that you can place on your website and elsewhere online. You can get the logo from your group's ‘Promote’ page. It's an HTML code that you can copy and paste wherever you'd like to put it.

On your group's ‘Promote’ page, Meetup.com offers all kinds of resources for creating offline promotional materials that you can use at your physical location. This includes nametags, flyers, business cards, postcards, tabletop signs, and custom logos. Take advantage of these opportunities to promote your meetup offline.

Promoting Your Business through Meetup Groups

Although you shouldn't make your business the focus of the group, you can promote to the group on the sly. One way to do this is to offer freebies. For example, if you're a pet supply store, create a ‘dog day in the park’ meetup and give away free samples of your products. If you offer fitness products, create a fitness group and give away samples of your products during the meetings.

Networking with Meetup.com

Meetup.com is a social network and you should use it to socialize. Look for similar meetups and network with them. Join them, hang out, interact with them, and focus on forming relationships.