The Business Circle

Overview

The Business Circle is a local business networking group in Rockland County, New York, 30 miles north of New York City.  The club is designed to help small businesses exchange leads and referrals and allows only one representative from each profession to be a member.

The club did not have a website and needed one to help promote its important messages and to support its growth through new memberships. We built a custom, mobile friendly website that features a member roster, the upcoming Speaker schedule, social media links and directions to the meeting location. The website has been very well received and is a resource for existing and prospective members alike.

The website is The Business Circle.

 

Background/The Problem/Project Goals and Objectives

The Business Circle is a networking group that meets weekly on Thursday mornings from 715a to 830a to exchange leads and referrals. Only one person from each profession is allowed in the group. There are 25 members in the group.

We joined the group as the website company and built the site to demonstrate our commitment to the Business Circle and so website visitors could see who the members were and when and where the group meets.

We wanted to build a site that showcased the members of the club, described the club’s purpose and provided a way for prospective members to get in touch with us.

• Although the group had been in existence for a few years, there was no online presence
• There was no way for anyone to contact the group’s leadership with questions or complements
• meeting dates and times could not be easily publicized, especially when there were special events like evening cocktail gatherings intended to increase membership

Process and Insight

When we joined The Business Circle, we committed to build a mobile friendly website that presented the key benefits and attributes of the networking group as well as a list of its members.  Over the course of several meetings, the group discussed the important functional aspects and information it wanted included on the site and described the key messages to be promoted.

During the same timeframe, an SEO Marketing expert joined The Business Circle and created a Facebook business page for the group. We tied the 2 together.

The membership was excited to have a website for the networking group, especially because it helped to further promote their businesses.

Solution

We built a custom, mobile-friendly website that promotes The Business Circle’s exclusive networking opportunities and presents the website visitor with information about the group.

We created a custom gallery of business cards that shows the contact information for each member. The business card gallery arranges the cards in random order on each page view so that member information is always fairly displayed.

Each week, a different member presents for 10 minutes about his or her business and that speaker schedule is listed on the website. It’s a resource for those contemplating joining the group as well as group members to know who is speaking next.

The Business Circle meets weekly at a local diner and the location and a link to a map for directions is included in the footer of the site.

Social sharing buttons allow website visitors to share The Business Circle site on their social media network and there is a link to like The Business Circle’s page on Facebook.

We built a contact form so members of The Business Circle leadership team could be easily contacted through the site.

Results

The Business Circle website has been well received and is used by members to confirm the speaker schedule and by prospective members to verify the meeting location and get in touch with the club via the contact form.  We describe and promote our special evening network events on the site and the connection to the club’s Facebook business page helps drive traffic to the site.

The website has been cited by new members is one of the reasons for The Business Circle’s professional image and associated success: the club has more members than ever and is continuing to grow!