Creating a Facebook Group is key to building up a loyal community around your brand and driving up your sales. Facebook Groups differ from standard Facebook pages in a variety of ways and can be incredibly lucrative and beneficial to various types of businesses.
Visitors are known as members and there are exclusive features that you cannot access using a normal Facebook page alone. If you haven’t yet set up a Facebook Group for your business, and want to know how it works and frankly what all the fuss is about, then sit back and relax as we take you through 6 reasons why it’s a fantastic idea!
It builds trust
Assuming you create what Facebook calls a ‘closed group’, your Facebook Group will involve private conversations that only your group members can see. Not only does this help in encouraging members to be more open about their opinions as they aren’t being shared with the whole world, but it also creates a sense of trust around your brand. You can then build upon this and make people feel close to your business, something which is becoming harder and harder to achieve with modern-day marketing methods. And once you have built that all-important foundation of trust, you are much more likely to turn all of those ‘potential’ customers into ‘actual’ customers!
You can conduct polls
A great feature of Facebook Groups that really comes in handy for businesses is the ability to create polls. This is an incredibly valuable tool to help brands learn what their customers truly want and need. You can make use of polls in a variety of ways and they are such a simple and effective method of what is, essentially, free market research. Polls take seconds to answer so the turnout is usually good. Try asking your group members for their opinions on a new logo you are thinking of introducing, or ask them what they want in a product so that you can tailor your services more closely to them.
It makes the most of Facebooks’ algorithms
If you have noticed a steady decline in the reach of some of your standard Facebook posts, you are not alone. Social media algorithms are constantly changing and one outcome of that is that not all business posts are showing up in people’s newsfeeds all of the time. It’s often hard to tell what to do to ensure that your posts are reaching your fans. Making use of a Facebook Group, however, can be a great solution to this problem. In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the new algorithm will prioritise “posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people”. Well, group posts are the perfect place to do just that, so what are you waiting for?!
It enables you to grow your community organically
You have most likely heard of building a community on social media in order to boost your brands’ sales and engagement. However, it’s not always clear what the best way to go about it is! Well, guess what? Yup, Facebook Groups can help you with that, too. You can use them to carefully build up a loyal group around your brand as opposed to simply sending out ads or posts to a wider, less targeted community. Which brings us on to our next point…
You can target the right people
As we were saying, you can use Facebook Groups to build a loyal community of like-minded people around your brand. And what does this also mean? That you can create an audience around you that are highly targeted. You can use Facebook groups to gently promote your products to people that are much more likely to be interested than if you just send out generic adverts. With so much competition in the world of social media marketing, it makes sense to nail down your target market and be able to focus your efforts on to those that are most likely to turn into sales.
You can use it to build a mailing list
Another great advantage of Facebook Groups is how you can use the information you generate from them to your advantage. More and more businesses are using Facebook Groups to convert into mailing lists which in turn help to convert into sales for your business! Promote your newsletter and blogs on your group page, or try creating a freebie that people will receive if they sign up to your mailing list. Again, as this is a targeted group, you are likely to get a lot of hits!
Not enough businesses are making the most of Facebook Groups. Creating one for your brand can help you to hone in on your target market, create a loyal following around your brand and build trust. If you need some help on where to start, then contact the team at 99social – we are always on hand to offer great value social media advice.