Wondering how to promote your products and services in Facebook groups?
Whether you create a Facebook group or join one managed by someone else, you can use groups to position yourself, find new customers, and more.
Whether you create a Facebook group or join one managed by someone else, you can use groups to position yourself, find new customers, and more.
In this article, you’ll discover how to use Facebook groups to support and market your business.
There are two ways the businesses can use Facebook for promotion. On one hand, you can create a Facebook Page which will allow you to use advertising tools. This is a paid option and is useless otherwise except to build your email list.
On the other hand, a Facebook group is more focused on certain interests and aspects. It relies on discussions and participation from its members, which makes it a perfect means to build communication with existing and potential customers. In order to succeed, businesses should use both Pages and Groups in their marketing.
But Facebook Groups can be difficult to nurture and require constant attention and activity. With that in mind, here are the best ways to use Facebook Groups to promote your business.
Why Should I Join Facebook Groups for Business?
Facebook Group bring together individuals who share a common interest. When you join a group that’s made up of people who match your target customer, you’ll have multiple opportunities to improve awareness of yourself and your business by being helpful.
You’ll see that people are asking a lot of questions inside groups. Find the questions that will let you demonstrate your expertise or specialized skills. You can answer the questions outright, share a helpful blog post, or even mention your own products and services.
This kind of marketing is very powerful because it’s highly targeted. People need answers to their questions and if you can provide solutions on a regular basis, you and your business will start to become top of mind with members of the group. People may even start to look to you for answers by tagging you in comments.
Why Should I Create My Own Facebook Group?
While participating in Facebook groups managed by others can help you promote your brand and business, you have to play by others’ rules. Managing a dedicated Facebook group of your own lets you control the entire group experience and use your group for a specific purpose.
Before you begin to build your group on Facebook, you need to decide why and how you’ll use the group. Here are four ways groups are commonly used by business owners.
1. You can actually engage with your followers. You know all those likes and comments that you imagined would happen on your Facebook Page? Well, this will actually happen in your group (assuming you provide valuable content and conversation, which of course you will)! Facebook Groups are designed for commenting, likes, and overall engagement.
2. Teach. You are the leader of your Facebook Group, so you get to decide what the content is comprised of. It’s a place for you to explain, motivate, inspire, and teach the content that you love. It’s where you serve your followers and can have a real influence on people’s lives.
3. Stay top of mind. Have you noticed that not even your mom or best friend see anything you say on your Page? It’s so frustrating. The exciting thing with your Group is that anything and everything you post in your Group WILL appear in your member’s feeds. The more you post, the more you show up in your ideal clients’ feeds. Simple!
4.Curate Content for Your Group. Before launching your Facebook group, take some time to define a long-term content strategy that supports the group’s goal. For example, is the goal of your group to sell to members? Do you want to create a support group for people who’ve already purchased from you?
You’ll also need to decide what type of content you’ll serve. Will you provide inspirational, educational, or entertaining content? Will, you prompt group members to engage?
Finding Content for Your Group
If every post you publish brings value to the group, members will be more likely to engage with your content. Here are a few places to find trending or interesting content to share with your members.
- Buzzsumo.com: Buzzsumo shows users what topics are trending at the moment. You can also search specific topics related to your group to find the most popular articles and which social media platform they were shared on. Here’s what Buzzsumo comes up with when I type in “social media marketing.” These are the top three articles in the past week. I can share this popular content inside my group to support and educate members.
- Google News: The quickest way to find the most recent articles to share with your group members is to type your search query into Google and then select News to filter the most recent articles. Sharing relevant and recent content establishes you as an expert for the group.
5. Build Trust. Your Facebook Group is a collection of private (assuming you created a Closed Group) conversations and no one, other than Group members, can see the discussion. There’s a conversation that happens here that wouldn’t happen if members knew that the whole world could possibly be watching. It’s an opportunity for you to nurture your members so they really begin to know, like, and trust you. And when you’re building a business online, trust is absolutely necessary before anyone will ever take out a credit card.
Build your list. Huh? Yes, you can build your list with your Group. If you have a free opt-in or free giveaway that you give in exchange for a person’s email (usually this on your website), why not offer this to your Group? Create a welcome post and pin to the top with the offer (or post the opt-in as a frequent regular post).
Encourage Members to Engage
- Challenges: Challenges have become a very popular activity in groups. Do you provide a consulting service? Design a challenge and invite members to join it. At the end of the challenge, invite them to work with you one on one if they’re ready to take their learning to the next level.
- Polls: Need new content ideas? Create a poll for your group to vote on. Create polls for your next blog title, logo, or type of content for the next month.
- Daily Theme Prompts: Daily prompts allow group members to post about a certain topic each day. Typically, there’s a promotional day when group members can share their latest blog post or product. Ask members to post photos of your place of business or product. These daily prompts can be a great way to set expectations for members and give them a chance to share about themselves.
Promote Events. A Facebook group is really handy if you organize or promote lots of events. Those who attend the activities will use the group to network & share photos & notes.
- Conclusion . Groups can be a powerful way to establish your expertise; create an engaged community; and find new customers, peers, and partners.
So there you have it: A few ways you can use Facebook groups for your business.
Are any of you members of Facebook groups? Has a group helped you with your business? Which features do you find most useful? Please let me know!