What would you say if I told you that you are probably ignoring one of the most powerful features that Facebook has to offer marketers? Facebook groups – that’s right groups, not pages – have huge potential for marketers that all too often gets completely overlooked. A group has the power to completely transform the way you engage with your audience, massively increasing brand loyalty, conversion rates, and profits.
The power of the Facebook group lies in its more intimate nature. This isn’t a case of bringing lots of followers to your channel. Rather it is about communicating with those existing followers in order to build trust, authority, loyalty, and rapport. Facebook groups provide among the most powerful and effective ways to achieve this. And this is what makes ALL the difference when it comes to business success.
Groups meanwhile create marketing and business opportunities that simply don’t exist with other forms of marketing. They can even be used as an internal tool for managing your organization and creating more of a strong team dynamic among your employees. In terms of pure numbers, there is every reason to create a Facebook group. After all, over one billion people use groups every day, which is just under 1/7th of the entire population of the planet. More than 100 million people describe groups as being the most important part of the Facebook experience. This is a strategy that can completely transform your business fortunes in other words.
Why You Need a Facebook Group
The true power of the Facebook group lies in its ability to engage directly with your followers, fans, and customers. Facebook groups on the surface operate very much like a Facebook page, but whereas posts you share to your page will be seen by non-followers in other networks when they get liked and shared, posts inside your group will only be visible to members. Likewise, a Facebook group won’t use calls to action in the same way as a Facebook page and won’t allow you to make promoted posts. We’ll get more into the nitty-gritty of what sets a Facebook group apart from a page in a moment, but the main thing to know is that a group is ideal for talking to followers and NOT for bringing new people in.
Facebook Group Posts Versus Facebook Page Posts
Posts will appear on members’ home feeds and will be given more importance than posts from pages. That’s because a group is primarily intended for social activities like parties, or groups of people with common interests. The assumption is that if someone has joined a Facebook group, it’s because they want to discuss that topic with people in the community. This is subtly different from a Facebook page which is a much more business-oriented tool that is more likely to contain promotions and marketing that the followers DON’T want to see all over their feeds.
“1000 True Fans” – Creating a Thriving Community Around Your Brand
The essay entitled “1,000 True Fans” by Kevin Kelly, explains that in order for a brand or business to truly thrive and sustain itself, it needs 1,000 “true fans”. What is meant by that? Essentially, what is meant is that as long as you have that many genuinely passionate followers, your brands strength will continue to grow. While this might not seem like a huge number in the grand scheme of things, the reason for this is that TRUE fans are those that consume every piece of content you put out (and buy into it), buy every product, and also act as your ambassadors. These are followers who will tell their friends about your products and will post to forums to share your latest video. When you build this kind of following, you have a guaranteed customer base, but also the speed and momentum that can grow into something huge. Those thousand fans WILL bring in more fans, and those fans will bring in more as well!
The other way this is often described is that it is far better to have a mailing list with 100 people on it that read your emails than it is to have a mailing list with 2 million people on it who never open them. If you have enough engagement and trust with your brand, then you can earn a living with only a very small following. This is where so many businesses go wrong. It’s what so many businesses miss. That’s because a huge proportion of businesses are focused only on numbers, and they, therefore, don’t spend time on ‘aftercare’ or looking after those members. Turn your customers into fans who love your brand, and you will be able to enjoy unprecedented success.
How does a group help with all this? Firstly, by letting your customers and followers become part of a community – which has a profound psychological impact – and secondly by allowing them to communicate with you directly, thereby creating a huge amount of trust. A Facebook group in many cases will act as a kind of “insider’s club”, which in turn can gain you a lot of loyalty and enthusiasm. No longer is yours a faceless organization. No longer do you seem distant and unknowable. And no longer is yours just a bland logo on a useful product they buy. Instead, the customer has become part of a tribe. They have chosen to get behind your message and to take part in the very direction of your brand. In so doing they feel a kind of ownership of that, and they become far more invested in what you have to say. Your brand becomes a part of their identity even.
This might sound extreme, but it is essentially the difference between a company like Apple and a company like ASUS. ASUS does well because it makes good products and has a strong marketing budget. But Apple is one of the biggest brands in the world because people get excited every time a new Apple product comes out. And that’s because Apple is MORE than just an electronics manufacturer to those fans.
– Meghan