As our latest social media industry benchmarks study has shown, engagement on Facebook slowly decreases year after year.
With many marketers saying Facebook's organic reach is pretty much dead, one may wonder why there are so many brands that still orient so much of their marketing efforts towards keeping a constant presence on their Facebook accounts.
However, some of Facebook's features- like Facebook groups for example - that still offer great marketing potential.
A Facebook group offers any business the chance to create a unified community while also providing the potential to increase brand awareness and even sales.
Truth be told, Facebook groups are a marketing tactic that any brand that wishes to attract loyal customers should try out.
More about what type of Facebook group is suited for your business, how to keep the communities engaged, and so on we'll cover moving forward.
Let's dive in!
Facebook groups guidelines to grow your business' community
1. How to use Facebook groups for business?
Once you've understood the more technical steps of creating groups on Facebook, it's time to develop a strategy regarding how you'll manage them.
Groups on Facebook, especially branded ones, have multiple entry mechanisms.
Based on your purpose for a particular Facebook group, you must decide whether you'll allow everyone to join or a certain subscription or purchase will condition the group's membership.
Whatever the case, the good news is that Facebook groups marketing can help you strengthen and grow your business in a lot of ways.
- You can use your Facebook group as a customer support community
By stepping into a new time, of advanced technologies, businesses evolved a lot. And so did their customers.
When making a purchase, nowadays' consumers are more likely to put in balance so much more than just the simple product or service they would like to acquire from a certain brand for the final buying decision.
Besides exceptional quality, people are looking for experiences and availability to communicate and assist them with their chosen brands.
With social media and the quick spread of news today, word of mouth may be more important than ever for marketing endeavors.
This means that before looking for new potential buyers, any business should try loyalizing the existing ones first. Luckily, Facebook groups are a great way to do so.
A group on Facebook created to act as a customer support community can have several benefits for any business.
For being a place where your current customers could address issues, the technical department is unaware of, for example, a Facebook group for business could fuel future improvements and remarkable development in your product or service.
Regardless of more technical aspects that can be discussed within, creating a Facebook group to build a community around your brand offers you the chance of getting to know and understand your customers better.
- Think of your Facebook group as a helper of turning leads into conversions
Let's say you have nailed it when it comes to the first two stages of the marketing funnel, and you have seen great results for both your awareness and consideration objectives.
As the third step of the funnel demands financial implications, it may be possible for the road between consideration and conversation to be longer than the one from awareness to consideration.
Here is where Facebook groups come in handy.
Just think of this: the most important objective for any business is to increase sales, right?
Well, through Facebook groups marketing, you can do so.
And here's how - you can use your branded Facebook group to offer special offers and discounts that could motivate your prospects to make a purchase.
So, isn't it worth a try?
2. Benefits of Facebook groups
Even though some of the main benefits of Facebook groups have already been addressed above, the list is far from being over.
Among the many more interesting opportunities a Facebook group for business can offer, we must mention the followings:
- building stronger relationships with your prospects and customers;
- increasing organic reach - as it is known that Facebook prioritizes posts from groups in the user's newsfeeds;
- getting market research data and gaining insights about your audience.
Also, compared to Facebook business pages, Facebook groups raise higher engagement levels. They are one of the most effective ways of creating meaningful and authentic connections with your online community.
3. Marketing in Facebook groups
In social media, everything is about engagement. That is why it's called "social" after all.
So, having an excited and engaging community should be the end goal for your Facebook business page and your Facebook group.
What is utterly necessary is not to make the mistake of thinking you should throw posts in your Facebook group as you do on your Facebook business page. In the end, they serve different purposes.
The secret to creating an engaging Facebook group is to encourage conversations - through the content you post - and good community management.
Comment on your Facebook group members' posts, reply to other comments, ask questions about their needs, and answer and clarify every dilemma they may have!
In time you're most likely to create a strong, unified, and loyal community by doing so.
- Go live
Regardless of the social media platform we choose to look at, we'll see that video content rules for engagement.
Actually, according to our latest Facebook videos study, Facebook live videos recorded double engagement values compared to pre-recorded videos. Did you know that?
As an extension to why hosting Facebook live sessions is a good idea, organizing a Facebook live in private groups is also a prominent way to build an engaging community on your Facebook group.
TIP: When you plan on doing a Facebook live video in your Facebook group, announce it in advance and ask your community what they would like to know more about.
What are your fans most interested in knowing from you?
This will give you relevant topics to cover and will enhance your chance of getting significant engagement.
Some few last best practices worth mentioning related to Facebook groups marketing would be:
- discuss current events related to your niche;
- work with brand ambassadors.
4. Examples of engaging Facebook groups
As we've talked about different Facebook groups marketing strategies, we thought it would be even more helpful to point out some examples of Facebook groups that succeed in creating an engaging community.
To help you gain as many insights as possible related to best practices to market your business through a Facebook group, we chose three of the most followed and engaging Facebook groups about social media.
Social Media Pro is a training course for those who desire to pursue a career in social media.
Thought as a place that will encourage people to connect and share their experiences and learnings resulted in working on social media, this Facebook group is daily populated with various posts and questions asked by the members. Hands down for that!
Compared to Facebook groups created by an actual business, Facebook groups created by influencers may gain greater engagement. That’s because the brand's human side is more visible in these cases.
Being launched by Jenn Hermann - an Instagram marketing influencer, Jenn's Trends is one of the most engaging Facebook groups related to marketing.
While Jenn regularly posts social media updates either as articles or videos, the group's members are equally active, posting all sorts of questions or news.
And Jenn does a great job at keeping alive the discussion resulted.
Similar to the previous one, "The Social Media Geekout" is also Facebook group launched by a social media guru - Matt Navarra.
Being centered around social media updates as well, this Facebook group is half populated with posts from Matt, while the other half of the content comes from the members within.
This makes the perfect example of what building an engaged community means.
Final thoughts
Facebook groups deliver more and more opportunities for brands to expand their businesses and are most helpful in creating more compelling customer loyalty programs.
This is why Facebook groups are likely to enable more and more features in the feature, and Facebook group marketing to become an even more powerful tactic used in advertising.
Any thoughts on this?
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