10 Tips for Marketing Your Business with Facebook Groups
The key to marketing success is getting an effective promotional message about your company in front of large numbers of potential customers. Facebook Groups is an excellent tool for making large numbers of people aware of your business, your products or services, and your message. For dramatic increases in the visibility of your company, you might:
- Search Groups for interests that you would expect your customers to have. For example, if you sell camping gear, search for groups using keywords like camping, hunting, or outdoors. You will find many groups that are relevant to your business. Don’t hesitate to join them all.
- Post to those groups, and do it often. Posting more than once a day is helpful. More posts increase the likelihood that any individual member of the group will see your post. Since you may be joining dozens of groups, unique posts for each group would be impractical. Create posts that can be used across the whole range of groups you have joined.
- Use images in your posts. Images get far more interest and response than simple text posts.
- Include links to your website or a call to action (“Click for more information” for example) with images. Your first goal is to build exposure, and a large fan base is evidence of that growing exposure. You want the group’s members to go to your Facebook page, where they will find more information about you, your company and your products.
- Create some item that can be emailed at regular intervals. Whether in posts to the group or on your Facebook page, you should have a call to action – Sign Up For My Newsletter, for example. When visitors sign up for that newsletter you grow your email list, which can become an entirely separate marketing tool.
- Do not post only ads to the groups. Also create posts that actually provide value, whether entertainment or information, to the reader. You want to build a relationship with the reader that makes them more inclined to trust your business.
- Whether posting ads or informative or entertaining posts, address problems that your product or service will solve for them. It doesn’t have to be a blatant cry for their business. Just making people think about the problem and creating an awareness that you can help contributes to the relationship.
- Use giveaways to encourage visits to your Facebook page. Giveaways don’t have to be costly. An informative report that addresses visitors’ interests or can cost you nothing to put together and increase your Facebook fan’s interest in your business.
- In all of your efforts, keep in mind that your success is dependent upon building a relationship with the individuals in the group and with the visitors to your Facebook page. Whether they are a few dozen or a few thousand, gear your campaigns to individuals, not groups.
- Be Honest. Sure, that’s your intention, but don’t let promotional puffery slip over into false statements. Assume that the reader will at some point become aware that a claim or a promise was false. When they reach that awareness, all of your effort toward building a relationship is at risk. It is much better to promise less and deliver on every promise.
For an explosive growth in your Facebook Page’s fan base, and a corresponding growth in sales, there is no more effective single tool than Facebook Groups. Make them a consistent element of your marketing plan