How to get more people to your networking event without paying for ads

A networking event lives or dies on who is in the room. Paid ads can bring strangers, but for a local business crowd they are expensive and often bring the wrong people. The people most likely to come are a step away from the people who already do: their colleagues, their clients, the members of a group next door. This guide covers the free ways to reach them, in roughly the order they work.

1. Ask every member to bring one guest

Your members are your best promotion, and most will happily bring someone if asked directly. A general “bring a friend” line in the newsletter rarely works. A specific ask does: “Our March breakfast is on the 5th. Who is one person you could bring?”

Make it easy and worth their while:

• A guest ticket on the event at the guest price, so a member can book their guest’s place along with their own.
• A first-timer discount code for members to pass on. It lowers the step for the guest without discounting the event for everyone. See adding a discount code to event tickets.
• A thank-you at the start of the event for the members who brought someone. Recognition costs nothing.

2. Partner with groups that are not your competitors

An accountants' group, a women in business network, a local chamber, a co-working space’s community, an industry association: each has people who would benefit from meeting yours. Offer a joint event, or simply swap a mention in each other’s newsletters.

To see which partner actually brought people, give each one its own discount code. On One Ticket each code shows how many times it has been used, so you know which partnership is worth repeating. Tracked links, which count each link’s visits and sales, are on our Pro and Team plans. Pro and Team are open now: upgrade any time in Settings › Plan. Limited-time offer: A$1 for your first year (first 100 organisers), then A$29/month for Pro or A$79/month for Team. Cancel anytime. A code per partner does a similar job on the Free plan.

3. Post on LinkedIn the right way

LinkedIn is where business people look, but a post that says “Tickets on sale now” with a link rarely travels far. What does better:

• A post about the speaker or the topic, written as something worth reading even for people who cannot come, with the link at the end.
• The speaker sharing it too. Ask every speaker to post about the event in their own words. Their network is not your network.
• Photos from last month with a line about what people got out of it, posted a week after the event, with the link to the next one.

Once your event is published, the Share card in the app has buttons for LinkedIn, Facebook, X and WhatsApp, each opening with the link ready to post. When the link is shared, it shows the event’s title and cover. See sharing your event.

4. Give people one link that never goes stale

Every link you have shared in the past is still working for you, if it still leads somewhere useful. Two links matter most:

• The series page. If your event repeats every month, the series has one page listing every upcoming date. Share it once, and it is always current. See selling tickets to a monthly networking breakfast.
• Your organiser page. Every organiser on One Ticket has a public page, on every plan, listing your public events to come and gone and your series. New events appear on it by themselves. Put it in your LinkedIn profile, email signature and website. See your organiser page.

5. Let past attendees hear about the next one

The easiest person to bring to your next event is someone who came to the last one. On One Ticket anyone can follow your organiser, on any plan: from your organiser page, or from their ticket after they book. When you put a new event on sale, followers are emailed, no more than once a week. Mention it at the event: “Follow us on the booking page and you will hear about the next one first.” See followers.

After each event, look at who came for the first time and send them a personal note. A second visit is what turns a guest into a regular. See knowing who came back to a networking event.

6. Make your event page something Google can read

People search for things like “networking breakfast Parramatta” or “small business networking Geelong”. To have a chance of showing up:

• Put the kind of event and the suburb in the title. “First Thursday Business Breakfast, Parramatta” says more than “First Thursday”.
• Write a real description, a few paragraphs on who it is for, what happens and where.
• Add a cover photo and keep the date, time and place correct.
• Publish early. A page published two months ahead has time to be found.

On One Ticket, a public event that is live, with a cover and a real description, is included in the sitemap we give search engines, and each event page carries its name, dates, place and ticket prices in the structured format search engines read. Unlisted and private events are not submitted. Nobody can promise a place on the first page, and we do not. More detail is in getting your event found on Google.

7. List it where locals look for events

Free listings that business people actually read:

• Your council’s events calendar or business newsletter. Some councils run a small business program and list local events.
• Your venue’s own channels, if they promote what happens in their space.
• Partner organisations' event pages, especially chambers and industry associations.
• Local business Facebook groups, where the rules allow event posts.

Each listing is a link back to your page, which helps people and search engines find you.

8. Use a waitlist as proof of demand

A sold-out event is good promotion for the next one. Set a cap that matches the room and turn on the waitlist. With it on, a sold-out ticket shows Join waitlist, and when a place frees up it can be offered to the next person in line, held for six hours. See the waitlist.

A long waitlist also tells you something useful: it may be time for a bigger room. And “the last one sold out” is a line worth putting in next month’s post.

9. Keep the people who booked

Getting someone to book is only half the job. Getting them through the door is the other half, and an empty seat is a lost introduction. On One Ticket reminders go to every ticket holder automatically, the day before and on the morning of, with their QR code. See stopping no-shows at a free networking event.

What not to spend money on

• Paid ads before you have a following. Members bringing guests and partner groups are cheaper and bring better-matched people.
• A separate website just for events. Your organiser page or series page does the job.
• Printed flyers for a business audience, unless a venue asks for one.

The short version

Ask members for one specific guest, partner with a non-competing group and give it a code, post about the speaker rather than the ticket, share one link that never goes stale, let past attendees follow you, and make your event page clear enough for Google to understand. None of it costs anything but a little time. For the cost side, see the cheapest way to sell tickets to a networking event and the pricing page.