Filling the sales funnel is a top-of-mind priority for every savvy marketer. Some try to do it by investing in Facebook ads, others try to produce highly engaging content, and others focus on video. Whatever it might be, marketers are always trying to get more and more people into their sales funnel so they can have a better chance at increasing sales.
But what if I told you that I had a way to keep the leads flowing right through the funnel — and it was all while through virtually building relationships and spending virtually no money?
What if I told you I have been doing this all since 2012 and know (without a doubt) that it works? Not only has it worked for me, but I have taught companies how to do this exact same thing too. Would you be interested in doing it yourself?
Sure you would!
Here’s How To Use Facebook Groups as a Sales Funnel In Your Business:
Facebook groups, like any other piece of marketing, require a strategy. The first question to ask yourself when determining your Facebook strategy is, WHERE in the customer experience will the group be located?
Will it be at the beginning, where people are just getting to know you? Will it be after they know you, but before they are a fan for life? Or will it be once they are a raving fan, and will follow and buy anything that you or your brand does?
To help illustrate this point, I will be relating this to those days when the kids were playing out in the street and you were chatting with the other parents in the neighborhood. After all, Facebook groups are micro-communities, just like our own neighborhoods.
At the Beginning of Your Funnel
You can use Facebook groups at all stages of the relationship, you just need to figure out where you want to start. Logic says to start from when they just first get to know you, because you have a destination you can bring them to.
For instance, I have a general group called “Jump Start Your Pet Business” It is for pet sitters, dog walkers, groomers, trainers, day care, etc. It is free for all group members and the entrance to my Facebook funnel. It is a large group where people are constantly joining.
Think of it like a never-ending block party, around happy hour, with all the kids playing in the street? 🙂
Being a member of this group allows you to get to know me, my brand, and the content that I publish. It helps the group member “get their feet wet” to see if they like it all enough to check back, read, and become an engaged member.
This is the difference between that neighbor that is sharing a beer with the neighbors and having a friendly conversation and then one that is sitting in their house peering through the window, not wanting to join the other neighbors. Ha!
The Facebook groups you will find at the beginning of the funnel are typically free — there is no charge to participate. These groups have regular participation from the business, maybe on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Many times there is a leader or moderator and there is regular content that is very general.
When you have a free group you will want to get as many people as you can into the group — the best way to do this is through asking people to join everywhere.
Having a Facebook group designed for the top of your funnel will really help get you top of the mind awareness and be seen in the cluttered News Feed.
In the Middle of your Funnel
Now is where we are taking this street party into the backyard. We are getting more intimate. Not everyone is invited and we are getting closer with one another. Are you following me?
The middle of the funnel Facebook groups have members that are typically already in the brand’s original Facebook group, and they have made that step forward to say, “I want more.” Maybe they bought a product and got into this group as a result? Maybe the current stage of their business has qualified them to be amongst the other elite members of the group?
Whatever the case, the relationship has progressed from just hanging in the front of the house on the street to a more intimate setting in the backyard. The leadership of the group often shows up more. Starts more conversation. Helps the members on a more intimate basis showing up more frequently in this group than the general one at the top of the funnel.
In my industry, I started a group called “I Own A Pet Sitting Company with Staff.” These are serious business owners who have started to hire and scale their business. This was the exact type of business owner my consulting agency wanted to attract, so it made sense for me to try to gather them all up in one place and provide as much value as I could. These members already knew, liked, and trusted me and I had an attentive and engaged group.
Another way you can know that it is time to niche (funnel) down your groups is when your general group gets to hundreds or even thousands of people. As the group grows larger and larger it is a great idea to segment people out.
If you are involved in your group, you will begin to know what good segments are. Perhaps a segment is a bunch of business owners who have staff — or perhaps the segment is fathers who have special needs children?
A larger group could be people who love social media but then a smaller segment could be people who want to dive deep and only talk about video, or Instagram, etc. It is nice to have a Facebook group in the middle of the funnel because you have qualified people that are in the larger group to a smaller group. They are fully committed, they are engaged, and they are wanting more private attention.
At the Bottom of the Funnel
This is usually a group that has either moved through the larger and medium group, or they have been admitted into this group because they paid for it. Either way, this typically has the smallest numbers of members and they are hyper-engaged.
These also tend to be your brand’s raving fans, the ones that would be great to evangelize the public to come into your company. I highly encourage having an incentive of some sort where they could get a kickback for bringing new members into the group, assuming that it is paid.
You often see these as part of membership, mastermind, high-dollar product sale. I’ve seen this happen a lot online after the purchase of a couple thousand dollar product or experience.
Going back to our street and backyard analogy, these are the people that you will invite into your home and they will bring an expensive bottle of wine to the party. There is this exclusivity element that happens where trust is at its highest and the relationship is often the strongest.
Many Different Ways
Do you see how many different ways you can use Facebook groups to help move people through your customer journey? Clearly, there isn’t one right or wrong way of doing this, and it really depends completely on your broader business strategy. Taking the proper time to think about your intent and desired outcome for building Facebook groups for your brand will be the most important thing that you can do before you create a group. You are now head of the neighborhood “cool kid club” — and you get to decide where people end up.
If you want a vibrant speaker that can motivate, inspire and entertain your attendees, Book Bella to speak at your next conference or contact her at bella@jumpconsulting.net.
