Having a tribe of loyalists to support your business online can supercharge your success and give you a massive competitive edge. But how do you build a world-class Facebook community from scratch? In this article, we’ll give you your step-by-step Facebook Group Strategy.

At Ad World, the world’s largest online advertising conference of 2021, Aaron Krall of SaaS Visionaries presented this proven formula that is guaranteed to help owners and marketers create and nurture a vibrant community of engaged fans. This will not only generate more sales, but also allow you to test new ideas without spending a dime.

With Krall’s five-point strategy for Facebook groups, you’ll be able to position yourself as the go-to expert in your industry even if you have no experience, results, testimonials, or case studies. You’ll manage to approach any cold contact and have them say “YES” to your offer, and create your very own “pond” of prospects where you can source high-quality leads and future employees.

 

A step-by-step guide to building a loyal, engaged Facebook community

 

1.Build your community around a P.P.O

Any successful Facebook community is built around three pillars — a pain, a passion, or an outcome. With those elements in mind, ask yourself “Who’s my dream customer that I want to attract,” “What is the niche they care about with passion,” and “What outcome do they want?”

Invest time in research so that you create a Facebook group that’s specific and passionate enough. Building a general and broad Facebook community will not work, so make sure to remove this from your Facebook group strategy. Moreover, make sure that your targeted audience is accessible. For example, SaaS marketers are easily accessible, while astronauts are not.

Beware of making the rookie mistake of starting a group around your own product or service. That’s a fine practice if you’re only interested in promotion. But if you’re trying to position yourself as the authority and engage in lead generation, don’t build the group around your own product. For example, if your product is a LinkedIn Booster service, instead of naming your group “We Love LinkedIn Booster,” name your community after the desired outcome, such as “7 Figure Closers and Shakers.” A name example that is particularly powerful for a community is “Amazon FBA High Rollers | E-Commerce Strategies, Tactics, & Discussions,” Krall pointed out.


2.Find congregation points and build an email list

Next up, find out where your desired community members hang out online and build a cold email list. There are a few methods to try here. 

  • Google “the best online communities for…” and see who their members are. 
  • Go to LinkedIn Sales Navigator or the ClickedIn tool to source contacts. 
  • Run Facebook Ads to relevant communities
  • Compile your “Dream 100 List” with the one hundred most powerful players you want to invite to your community and approach them one by one
  • Make sure to add an invite to your group to all of your personal social profiles and email

Once you have your list together, send a personalized email inviting them to a conversation rather than a group. 

3. Foster VIP Engagement with personal messages, tags, and shoutouts

Don’t worry if you don’t see engagement right away it doesn’t mean your Facebook group game plan is failing. According to Krall, engagement doesn’t start until there are at least 400-600 members in the group. This gives you the perfect chance to offer a “VIP experience” to all of your community members which will make them stick around. 

To get your group going, welcome every single person with a personal Facebook message inviting them to share a bit about themselves. Do shout-outs for new members using their photo and short bio. Tag members you know can help generate discussions. If you have the time, you can send a physical letter and a gift for maximum impact. 

Make sure not to post a bunch of random articles. Allow anyone in the group to post by turning off “Admin post approval”; otherwise, this perceived barrier will make your audience hesitate to post, which leads to far less engagement in the group. Also, don’t assume what your audience wants. Instead, ask them what kind of content they want to see. Finally, don’t let just anyone in to preserve the quality of your group. Curation is key. Have new members apply to join and quickly check out their Facebook profile to make sure it’s legitimate. 

4.Create Value to keep your community engaged

Download and set up the “Group Convert” plugin. With the plugin, the email of anybody who submits questions to your group goes to Google Sheets and is then fed into a marketing automation tool that builds your list. Set up three intake questions to start. Those could be based on opinions, advice, inquiring about people’s thoughts, or take a contrarian stand to trigger emotion and start a conversation. 

Make sure to create content that will deliver value to the community. You can do so by interviewing group members, publishing step-by-step posts based on insights, or setting up “themed days” that allow members to promote themselves on the thread.

5. Monetizing the group by asking this one question 

You can monetize your group as early as the time your first member joins with this Facebook group tactic. How? Ask them questions such as: “what’s your business,” “what’s your biggest challenge,” and invite them to drop their email to receive a lead magnet such as a short, free guide. 

Once your first group member has shared their biggest challenge, message them asking if they’d like some help overcoming it. Make sure to not use aggressive language so you don’t scare them away. Instead, post about the various challenges and encourage group members to inbox you on Messenger. Once they get in touch, have a conversation and direct them to the solution which can be a product, your business, or somebody who you have an affiliate relationship with.

By following Aaron Krall’s five-point Facebook group strategy, you’ll be able to create a highly-engaged Facebook community where you can monetize your services, pull from a quality pool of prospects, and test new ideas and product concepts for absolutely free. This engagement and sales strategy for Facebook groups doesn’t require you to be a writer or a people-person. All you need to do is follow the steps one by one, and invest the time and passion. Once the community is thriving, you can level up and hire a Community Manager to keep track of all the interactions, research, and member-vetting.

Want to learn more strategies and techniques to take you to the next level? At Ad World October 2021, you’ll get to learn from only the most successful marketers in the world. You’ll get 100+ actionable insights that you can apply to your own campaigns instantly. Join us now.