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So you want to interact with your potential customers, build a relationship with them, and get them to build that “know, like, and trust” factor with you and with your business…and you’ve probably come to the same conclusion a lot of entrepreneurs do: “Let’s start a free Facebook group!”
But as many business owners discover, the reality is far from simple. So before you commit your time and energy into a Facebook group, join Nicki and Kate as they explain why this may *not* be the best marketing strategy for your business. You’ll also learn about the more effective, less draining alternatives that offer greater control and better results!
Looking for closed captioning or a transcript? Watch the episode on YouTube!
A Sneak Peek at the Episode
[1:57] Many business owners use free Facebook groups as a marketing technique to get people to purchase their offer—especially if they’re on the launch model.
[4:47] While it’s simple to create and get people into a group page on Facebook, the hard part is managing the group and getting people out of the group.
[6:40] A lot of people focus all of their attention on getting people in the free Facebook group, without fully planning for the impact it will have on their workload.
[7:29] As more people join, it becomes trickier to moderate the group and respond to everyone in a way that is valuable enough, but not so valuable that you are giving away your best information for free.
[9:50] Having group rules is a must inside a free Facebook group to help “police” who joins the group and how people are interacting.
[11:43] Even with group rules, the moderation aspect of creating a free group is often even more time consuming than the content creation itself. You’re always going to get people trying to skirt the rules.
[14:58] When you have hundreds of people bombarding you with questions, it gets chaotic very quickly. Yes, you can hire help to manage the group but that also means paying for something that doesn’t generate revenue.
[16:14] The conversation can become too broad in a free group, where you have people at different stages of the buying process.
[17:54] With new people coming into the group all the time, a lot of the same questions will keep coming up and answering those same questions again and again (for free!) gets very exhausting very quickly.
[21:23] Although it’s great to see interactions between people in the group, you also have to go in and make sure that you are correcting bad pieces of advice.
[24:39] There are all kinds of things that you can’t control when you have a group on Facebook. But you don’t *have* to rely on a Facebook group to interact and build a relationship with potential customers.
[25:54] With Facebook pages, you have more opportunity for more people to see all the value that you’re offering. And that’s the same for all of your social profiles like Tiktok, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
[28:14] Interacting with people through your email can also be a great way to build relationships, as well as through podcasts and video content—remember it doesn’t have to be live to be valuable.
[30:02] Having a chatbot to respond to people (in your tone of voice) can be very impactful and is a great way to save time and energy.
[32:47] Often, the best place for Facebook groups is after people have purchased, where you can truly build a community of people who are literally and figuratively invested in learning, growing, and contributing to discussions.
Related Links
- How To Sell Your Product Online…Without Live Launching or Evergreen
- Teaching Doesn’t Get People to Buy—Here’s What Does
- Why Customers Aren’t Buying—But Are Still Valuable Leads
Must-Hear Takeaways
As with every episode, we highly encourage you to listen to the entire conversation! But, here are a few of the highlights:
“You’re effectively creating a membership, you’re creating a new business for yourself that you don’t get paid for. The whole crux of a free Facebook group is that it’s free but you’re going to be spending all of this time, planning and creating prompts, content, figuring all of this stuff out, maybe doing events, maybe doing lives in the group, all of that stuff you are doing and you are not getting paid for.” – Nicki
“The conversation becomes so broad. People might be coming in with no foundational knowledge of what it is that you’re offering, some people might have some context, unlike a group like ours where people are already bought in to our program and they’re bought in to the transformation. There’s a very different vibe and mindset to that and energy to people who are bought in to something versus people who are still unsure. Not only do you lose people who have purchased your program, you lose people who are further along in the process because they’re done being sold to really. We find in our group it is really valuable the people who have gone on who are living this transformation can inspire the people who are still brand new to the group and there’s a good mix of folks.” – Kate
“The point is, you have to be really judicious with how you use your time and make sure your time is being used in the most impactful way possible. Not just your time, but also your energy. Energy frankly for me is even more of a finite resource than time is. So before you commit yourself to something like a Facebook group, make sure that you understand what it’s going to require of you and make sure it’s not something that’s just. ‘oh this is a great marketing tactic’ but something that is going to be valuable to your audience too. Because if any of us want to have any chance of our audiences becoming purchasers, getting into that smaller community of purchasers, then we need to be providing them value more than anything else, giving them breakthroughs, helping them understand new things, giving them those light bulb moments and that can be a commitment and especially with a [free] Facebook group, it can be a massive commitment.” – Nicki
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About the Energize Your Online Business Podcast
Are you sick of the stress, chaos, and risk of trying to keep up with the next big thing in digital marketing? And what about the confusion of trying to scale, build a team, and still try to make sure your business is worth the effort it takes to run it? You are not alone.
Join Nicki Krawczyk, a 20-year marketing veteran and owner of a multi-seven-figure-per-year digital training company and her co-host Kate Sitarz as they bust through the online business industry echo chamber to talk about how to make consistent, predictable sales and how to scale your business with simple and stress-free systems.
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