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This week, I attended one of the many business networking groups that we as Keyclicks, are member’s of.

This one runs its events in Leeds on a lunchtime and is generally well attended. The format is an à la carte one with groups of 8-10 people sat at a table. Each person on the table takes it in turn to deliver their ‘elevator speech‘ to the other people sat at the same table. It’s quite a relaxed format with an open networking session being held upon arrival over orange juice or wine.

At this month’s event I’d say about 60 people attended resulting in new contacts being made and the opportunity to catch-up with some existing ones.

For the uninitiated, business networking has nothing to do with ‘linking computers together’ (as someone once asked me); instead it’s all about building relationships with other business owners and managers.

Relationships with these people may result in direct business or it may not. However that’s not entirely the point. Over the last 5 years we’ve built up a substantial number of contacts through ‘business networking’. Some of these people have turned into direct clients, i.e. we’ve done business directly with the person we’ve met through the networking event whilst others have turned into suppliers: our IT and stationery suppliers for instance, we’re obtained through business networking events.

However, where networking comes into its own, is the ability for the people you meet to introduce you to the people they know who are in the market for the services you offer (in our case digital marketing services).

In other words, it’s like working on ‘word-of-mouth’ recommendations. This as we all know, is one of the best ways of gaining new clients and is a great way of getting into companies that may otherwise not even know you exist.

In business networking spheres this method of generating business is often called “word-of-mouth marketing” or “referral marketing”.

If anyone reading this wants to visit the groups that we attend in the west Yorkshire region, to learn how business networking works, drop us a mail through our contact form and we’ll be in touch.

Tags: business contacts, business networking, referral marketing, word of mouth marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Clients, Stuff and Nonsense. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.