Marketing
Issue No. 2 - September/October 2001
networking women
The Adelaide Network, founded in April 2000 is difficult to label. The core members are all female, but the group’s activity is neither industry nor gender-specific and the network core has representatives from a broad spectrum of commercial activity.
The network stems from the idea that while businesses spend phenomenal amounts of money on advertising and marketing, which is great for building the brand, not enough work goes into building relationships. A company’s team of employees is its greatest strength, yet often firms have no procedure to leverage business opportunity within their contacts and networks.
Public relations and networking are the most cost effective marketing methods. This, fundamentally comes down to networking — who you know, and who knows you.
The network core does not exceed 20 members, so there are no more than 40 people at any function. The view is that larger groups — most functions have more than 70 — make it impossible to meet and build relationships with new people.
ATTENTION TO DETAIL
Another strong advantage of having such an intimate group is that each guest is personally invited by their host to attend the meeting. Guests invited as part of a large group may feel that it will not matter if they attend or not. At the functions of The Adelaide Network, each person matters.
The decision to have only women in The Adelaide Network’s core was a conscious one, made for t...
