With its extensive tools for building and growing community, Meetup Pro is an effective tool for elevating your company’s brand and expanding your customer base. By using Pro’s features for engaging with audiences based on interest, you can develop a sales funnel that reaches prospects and customers, generates qualified leads, and cultivates brand loyalty. Read on for the next article in the series on creating a winning event marketing strategy that takes your company to the next level.
How a sales funnel works
First, let’s recap what a sales funnel is and its role within the lead generation process.
A sales funnel is a marketing system used to acquire and convert leads into customers. The sales funnel comprises four stages—awareness, interest, decision, and action—that a prospect goes through as they consider a purchase and progress to the action phase of the buyer’s journey.
In part one of our series, we discussed awareness, the top and widest part of the funnel. We covered the different ways you can use Meetup Pro to attract and build trust with your target audience. Below, we’ll dive into interest, the second phase of the sales funnel, and share how it plays a key role in generating excitement around your brand and informing prospects why your offering is the product or service of choice.
Stage two of the sales funnel: interest
So how does Meetup Pro serve as a useful platform for nurturing leads that have expressed interest in your brand? At this phase, qualified prospects are aware of your company and ready to explore their problem further, research competitors in the marketplace, and determine if your product or service is the right solution for them.
As a Meetup organizer, this is your chance to provide value that requires group members to spend minimal effort at low or no cost. Whether that’s hosting a free, memorable event, establishing your company as an expert in your field, or creating digital and traditional content that moves them further along the sales pipeline, build interest by engaging leads with useful information and awesome experiences that transform them into loyal brand ambassadors.
Give customers high-quality, high-value experiences with Meetup Pro
Meetup Pro is designed to take your community to the next level, giving you powerful tools that keep group members engaged between events and help you customize hosted experiences based on customer needs and interests. Below are a few ways you can use the platform to strengthen your relationship with your community and deliver a consistent brand voice and message across your channels.
Boost your brand with an event or workshop
As the foundation of the Meetup experience, events enable group members to build connections, discover new venues, and learn about topics that matter to them. Similarly, Meetup enables you to promote and host branded events and workshops, and scale your community as your business grows.
Your goal at the interest stage is not to “sell” your product or service but to build relationships with qualified leads and arm them with targeted, pertinent content that caters to their needs and desires. Here are a couple of fictional scenarios that demonstrate how Meetup Pro can serve as a useful platform for nurturing a community of enthusiastic members:
- A local yoga studio decides to host a meditation session virtually. The owner uses Meetup Pro to create an email list based on past RSVPs and learn more about participants’ interests with Pro’s customized registration forms.
- A tech startup hosts a panel session for developers that is led by their company’s subject matter experts and guest speakers. Following the event, they take advantage of Pro’s MailChimp integration to send targeted monthly newsletters to past attendees as part of their email nurture campaign.
You can use Meetup Pro’s myriad features to get a deeper foothold in your field. For example, displaying relevant sponsors on your Meetup group and event pages add credibility to your brand by associating with renowned partners. Teaming up with other businesses has the added benefit of increasing revenue to support your hosting costs.
Network events are another powerful feature for growing interest. By hosting a single event across multiple groups, you not only make the event hosting process more efficient, you can offer value to more people by scaling your workshops and events across multiple cities and reach a wider audience and unlock new markets.
Bringing in guest speakers lends further credibility to your brand and establishes yourself and your staff as industry experts. Ten percent of all Meetup events include guest speakers, so be sure to leverage Pro’s speaker section to drum up interest and promote speakers’ names, bios, and social media handles.
Establish authority with informational guides and tutorials
During the interest stage, consider promoting content that answers frequently asked questions and continues to build trust with your audience. For example, record how-to tutorials and informational videos that not only promote your Meetup event but also show (not tell) what your brand is about and why prospects should choose your Meetup experience over your competitors.
According to a survey by Wyzowl, 91 percent of respondents use video as an effective marketing tool. To get the most out of your video marketing efforts, get creative by posting informational videos on your group page that create more opportunities for your audience to engage with your brand.
Next up: making your offering desirable to prospects
So far, you’ve helped people discover your brand and explore how your offering can best meet their needs. In phase three of the sales funnel, you’ll show them what their return on investment looks like as your customer. Check out the next part of our series to learn more about the decision phase and how to maintain an active community with Meetup Pro.
Learn more about Meetup Pro, Meetup’s premium subscription offering.
Last modified on June 27, 2023
