Before I fell in love with Facebook groups, my life consisted of “Hey Gurl Hustling” coaches. I lived and breathed for finding more of them, and it was a direct message marathon every single day. If DM-ing total strangers and asking to give them a free training sounds familiar, you know what the neverending hustle feels like.
If you’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel and messaged friends you went to highschool with 20 years ago, you’re gonna want to keep reading.
Were you told reaching out to a certain number of people per day is what it took be successful in network marketing? (Nearly everybody tells me YES.)
THE TRUTH
it feels gross and it’s freakin’ time-consuming! Especially when you’re trained to sell authentically like I was. Instead of diving in with “let me do a free training for you,” I’d start by getting to know them first. You don’t ask for marriage on the first date, right? I’ll chat more about that later. (Check out my blog post “The 5 Biggest Mistakes Coaches Make When Inviting” for more on that!!)
I’d find out where they were struggling, then craft an entire training JUST for them. As you can imagine, this took forever and I felt like I could never step away from the biz because I was the only one driving sales.
There was no scalability whatsoever, and it just felt like a consistent “HEY GURL” hamster wheel.
Then I took a look at Facebook groups. What I’m gonna share with you today really changed my life around how I sell, and sell authentically…
8 Reasons I love Facebook groups
(And you should too...)
REASON 01
It’s free.
People aren’t paying to get in, and you’re not paying to utilize it. They’re joining just to feel you out and get a taste of what it’s like to work with you. They’re gonna learn from you, and you’re gonna serve up some value!
REASON 02
You won’t be blowing your air time trying to sell people you haven’t vetted out or qualified as being the right person.
You want people who are already interested in what YOU specifically have to say.
People don’t get on social media to feel sold to. They come for entertainment, education and inspiration. (Facebook is sensitive to that and wants to make sure their users don’t have a negative experience, which is why they’re VERY picky about their ads and other similar things.)
PS,
If you’re constantly selling and not providing free value, they’ll eventually unfollow you
REASON 03
FB Groups allow you to sell outside of your friend group.
Most people don’t want to sell to their friends and family, and it keeps them from trying social selling or network marketing. They also don’t want to feel inauthentic. People don’t usually join a Facebook group unless they’re interested, so you’ll have a group of authentically interested people and a platform to educate them, provide value, and throw in some Calls to Action, too!
We’ve all got friends and family following us on social media, and we don’t want to annoy those people.
Hearing “Hey friend, I’ve got this magic weightloss water you should try,” gets OLD! You can keep that stuff to the privacy of your own Facebook group.
REASON 04
You can duplicate and grow your business MUCH faster.
When you adopt a FB Group system, your future downline can watch and learn what you’re doing… and they’ll be FAR more likely to join you!
REASON 05
You need to move people down your pipeline, and a Facebook group provides warmer leads than social media posts.
Here’s where the marriage proposal analogy comes in.
When I first met my husband Bill, we worked at the same bar and noticed each other. NOW it’s safe for me to say that I had a feeling I’d marry him when I first saw him- but if I’d said that right away, things might have gone differently! Likewise, if he’d walked right up and said “Will you marry me?” I would have ran for the hills.
We have to think about the people we’re speaking to on social media as a relationship. You can’t just skip a bunch of important steps. The curiosity (or “courting”) period is important because it allows you to get to know each other and lets things progress naturally.
You want your ideal customer to understand they have a gap, and that you have a specific solution that can help them. This happens over time.
The relationship CAN progress quickly, for sure… but you can’t skip these steps and expect people to just read a post, then yank out their wallets and throw their hard-earned money at you.
Think of your Facebook group as the second step of your pipeline. The first step is via social media, where people become aware of you and start engaging with you. The second step is joining your Facebook group for MORE engagement with you. (Social media is mostly just “spraying and praying.”). If posting has you wanting to pull your hair out, listen to my podcast episode titled “What to Post Without Sounding Like a Broken Record”.)
REASON 06
It’s on their terms.
I hear ALL the time from network marketers that they’re getting their “100 invites a day” out to everyone and their neighbors, and they’re getting ghosted by 80% of them. (Often more!) Those are some crappy odds for how much effort they’re putting in!
If you’re like me, you’re not in this biz to win a popularity contest with likes, comments and engagement. You wanna actually make money, (because the point of having a business is to be profitable), so you’ve gotta start shifting your strategy.
REASON 07
A Facebook group is a preview of what it’s like to work with you.
They should feel your energy, your education and expertise. It’s your opportunity to go live and say EXACTLY what you wanna talk about! You can get specific.
For example: you can call out your ideal customer right in the group’s name. My Facebook group is called “Business Bootcamp for Fitness Coaches.” I specifically love to work with people in the health and wellness industry, and people trying to grow their network marketing business. If you’re not into fitness or not a coach, you can quickly determine whether or not we’re the right match! In my group, I know exactly who I’m working with and don’t need to generalize or censor anything.
Facebook’s algorithm will also show MORE of your posts to people in your group than it would if they were just another connection on social media. (Only 5% of your posts are typically being seen by your audience!) In your group, there’s a much higher chance they’ll see your content.
The purpose of your Facebook group is for your members to love you, and love each other.
If you can accomplish these two things, you’ve set yourself up for success because they’re gonna like and trust you, and want to do business with YOU over anyone else. If someone else provides the same service but people like you MORE, they’re gonna do business with YOU.
You’ve GOTTA have that likeability factor, and cultivating it is much easier in FB groups
Ways to build likeability in FB Groups:
REASON 08
You become the expert.
You can provide value in your group by doing live videos and trainings. They’ll get their questions on the table and you can answer them! Eventually, they’ll look to you for answers.
Positioning yourself as the expert is an important piece of the authentic selling relationship- the more you do this, the easier it is to make recommendations and solutions, have people go along with them, and want to buy from you.
This is how you can authentically grow your audience. If you want it to grow, it’s all about adding value (showing up). You don’t have to do it perfectly- just show up for your people and listen to what they actually WANT, then give them more of THAT.
Think of it this way: if one or two people have the same question, there are probably hundreds more with the same one
As you build relationships with your audience, you learn their questions so you can answer them… and then it snowballs. You’ll start to authentically grow your audience, because you’re directly answering their exact needs.
You start to learn their ACTUAL problems, so you can provide ACTUAL solutions. People are “salesy” because they don’t understand the real problems of their customers, so they can’t provide real solutions.
The HUGE secret portal to speaking to your audience:
...their language
You have to know what words resonate with them, and their language. When you set up your Facebook group, you can have it collect members’ biggest challenges before they join. (Before I did this, it was tough to truly connect with my ideal customers!) NOW it’s all in ONE place and actively gathering information for me. It’s an AMAZING tool to REALLY understanding their actual problems, and how to word things to provide the right solutions!
THAT is the difference between people who are truly great at sales, and people who aren’t.
Back in the days of 1-on-1 consultations, we were writing down exactly what our people were saying word for word, then using their language when providing a solution because it builds rapport.
A Facebook group allows you to do just that! You can ask or poll your audience: “Would _____ solution be helpful for you?” and get a consensus. I LOVE doing surveys and polls to understand what my audience is feeling, what they need more of, and how I can better help them.
To follow along and see what we’re doing in our Facebook group (and see what having a badass support system is all about!), join us!!
In Sweat & Good-Branding Faith,
