Using Facebook Groups to Grow Your Business

Business Minus the Bullshit. Whether you're new in business or find yourself in a season of change, get ready to build a strategy, create an action plan and crush those goals. I'm Sasha, host a strategy for creatives. And I help female led businesses grow their brands in authentic, measurable and meaningful ways, without the stress. There's no sugar coated here, I'm serving up real tips and actionable steps you can take to help get you organized, get off the path to burnout and grow your brand like a boss. So go ahead, pull up a chair, grab a notepad, and let's talk business. Welcome to Strategy for Creatives: Business Minus the Bullshit. I, of course, am your host Sasha and today we are having a conversation about something that I'm actually pretty excited about. Because it it has been a goal of mine for a while. This was one of my big goals for 2022. And it continues to be a goal of mine in 2023, which is to grow and really utilize a Facebook group not only for a way to build a community with creative women, but also you guys all know this, as a way to do lead generation, right. The people who join Facebook groups are more invested in whatever it is you're talking about and are more likely if you are doing your group in a good way, are more likely to become at some point, actual clients of yours. And so to have this conversation with me today, I am talking to Kim, who is the founder and CEO of the Group Convert software that allows consultants and course creators to collect emails from their Facebook groups. She has over 12,000 subscribers and they hold an unfair advantage of what works and what does not work. So Kim, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Sasha. Happy to be here.

So I guess let's just dive right into it. I GroupLeads. So I hope that's okay. But I use a similar approach. I use a similar program to kind of get data from my Facebook group, because without something like your program or GroupLeads, you don't get the full information of the people who are joining your group. You can't add them to an email list. You can't talk to them. So I guess let's talk a little bit about kind of how you started your business. And then like why you decided to kind of deal with like Facebook groups in particular.

Yeah, I started my business because I wanted to scale something that didn't need inventory. Before this I had like a wrecking yard in California. So everything was very physical. We were selling car parts, we're buying cars. So I came from that world that space, not digital marketers at all. Well, I learned about Russell Brunson and Click Funnels, which my friend told me about because she's like him, you know, another business that you can do where you don't have to deal with all that inventory and that mess and all that, you know, headache, overhead cost is affiliate marketing. And I said, All right, what does that entail? She's like, well go and create a Facebook group. And people will click on your affiliate links as they come on in. And I said, Oh, that sounds great. And so I created a Facebook group. And I told my people to click on my affiliate links. And like, no one's clicked on my link. And I just was like, Okay, this doesn't work. But during that journey, when I was creating the Facebook group, I saw that there were three questions that gets asked that I can say, Hey, what's your email? What's your phone number? And when I did that, I was copying and pasting the data over to a Google sheet. And I thought to myself, wait, there must be an easier way? Is there an easier way to do this? How come Facebook doesn't already store this information. And when I looked a little bit further into that, I saw that there were tools available. And for my mind, I said, Wait, affiliate marketing could be one vehicle, but what if I own code online that people can subscribe to? So I saw that you can either be a user of or the owner of so I took the owner route, which is I'm like, I'm going to create this, I'm going to have a tool. And this will be the vehicle that was that requires very little inventory, no overhead cost. And this will be my way into this world where I don't have all that headache of the E commerce space. So I went on Upwork created a job post, hey, create a Chrome extension that lets me collect emails from Facebook groups. I got it back in a week. And then I launched it to 25 emails. Two people said yes to paying me at the time, $7 a month. And that's when I'm like, Okay, this is validated. I can get to users. I can get 10, I can get 20. I can get like 1000. And, yeah, within like a week and a half, I was making$1,500 reoccurring income from this little tool. In two weeks, I was making over $2,000. Three weeks making over $5,000. And then it just kept on growing and growing from there. Now it's almost three years later. So you can imagine. What's the compounding effect of that? And then, and when I went into that world, that's when I'm like, Okay, now, well, these people are not just collect emails from Facebook groups, they want to figure out how to maybe monetize from their group. And I spoke to a lot of my users. And I created an education based company to help my users not just collect emails from their groups, but monetize from their groups. And we saw because of the unfair advantage of owning the software, I saw that, wow, some of these people, I can help them go from absolutely nothing, no Facebook group, to having them figure out their offer with them, a high ticket offer, to showing them how to pitch into their Facebook group. And in two weeks, in the next two weeks of their life, they're enrolling nine to 15 people into their high ticket offer from a little tiny group, like 100-200 people. So on average, our clients enrolls nine to 15 clients within two to three weeks into our program. Which results in if their program is like if their high ticket offers 5k, they're making an extra $45,000 and on the lower end, and the higher end is like $75- $100,000. And so what I saw was that people would come in, we sit down, we're like, this is your offer, this is how you're going to pitch. You're in the health niche. Alright, here's how it's going to work with health during the relationship. You teach people how to do podcasting, like stuff like that, because we've done this with hundreds of our clients. So they come in, tell them what to do, what to say, how to pitch it, how to fill the group with the right people, they go, they pitch. And we had like, Tyler, who he came to me with a $500 course, super introvert. And he has a group that was dead, at 400 people, and he's like, Kim, whenever I post no one like response. And I said, Well, okay, here's how to do it the right way. And we changed, we didn't change his offer, I'm like, hey, you know, your course is fine. Let's turn into group coaching, let's add an extra zero. And he was like,$5000. I mean, they're struggling to even pay $500. And I said, don't worry about this, just trust me. And two weeks into the program, I told him go launch, pitch. And so he did his launch within two weeks, and he enrolled 13 people into his 5k offer. And he's like, Kim, in two weeks, I made $66,000, pitching into my group that was dead. And as that I know, like, works. So that's what I started discovering that it won't take years and years for these Facebook group owners to figure it out. It could be the next two weeks to three weeks of their life. And it's a consistent method. So that they can go and they could launch from the comfort of their own room and talk to their group members. And there is very specific ways for doing this. I call it my gold method that I teach. But I'm willing to, like get into like the juicy nuggets of how this works, and why it works really well as well. To share with your audience.

Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit about that. I don't want you to give too much away, because you know, I know that that's what you do. But for especially those who have, you know, they, they were told you need to have a Facebook group, you need to start a Facebook group, get people into your group, and they started one, and they may have a couple of people in there, but it's dead. It's - there's no people commenting, there's not a lot of engagement. And they want to use a group as a vehicle to sell. So how do you take a group that isn't having any movement and turn it into people who are engaged in your group, but also making sales in your group?

Yeah, the easiest way to do this, if you have a dead group is to ... and by the way, I'm like, I give almost everything I can away because the people who will take action are going to take action, you're just consuming the information just to learn. And they just want to sit back and relax and just learn are just going to do that. So I don't, I really don't hold back too much. Because there's no point. You know, if I can help you in whatever way, let's do it. So for the groups, for people with dead groups, I say, Okay, the next time you do a training, go ahead and create a smaller pop up group. The smaller pop up group is designed just for the training itself, and don't let anyone in until the day before your training. So the next time you do a free training, or a training of any sort, put them all into that smaller group and announce it to your dead group to your big group and make sure that they're aware but also your email list, if you have any. We have a tool called try group flow that lets you pull leads from other groups into a pipeline. And then every single step of the way have template messages to have a conversation. I call it creating a clear path to purchase to go from absolute cold, random person on the internet that does fit your niche, you know, are part of groups that your buyers would be in and then having that conversation to send them into a free training that exists inside of a smaller group. Now that smaller group, that's where you're converting, because when you open up that group, the day before your training, you can click approve all and of course my software Group Convert will collect all of the questions and answers so you can keep track of them and try group flow, which is my more advanced software will take those leads and put it into a pipeline so that you can go and keep track of them but what that does is it creates a flooding effect when you click approve all. You have a flood of people and you want to make sure your pin posts of your training group. have directions and instructions for having them to engage immediately, or else they're going to be kicked out by day three. And you say it in a nice way, you don't say that threatening way. And you're like, hey, if you don't engage, you're gonna be kicked out, because the training that I'm gonna give you is top notch. And, you know, I'm giving it to you for free. You can have upsells, sell VIP seats and everything like that to liquidate any ad costs. But at the very beginning, you don't want to do ads, you don't need to. You can invite people into that smaller group, and you only open up the doors a day before the training. And what I do with my clients is I show them how to fill up the group with the right people, at the same time, how to ride that momentum into them pitching. So the training itself is designed to first of all sell the vehicle. So let's say that you teach. You teach people how to; one of my clients teach people how to energy heal. So nothing about money making, because one of the biggest things that people talk to me about is like Kim, I'm an energy coach, I am a relationship coach, can this still work for me because you know, it's easy for you to do it, you teach? Well, you know, and I'm like, Don't worry, like, one of my clients, her name is Cheryl, she teaches energy healing. And we had her go from scratch with a group of zero people. Group was about 80 by the time that she pitched, and she booked 60 calls from that, and enrolled 10 clients into her $5,555 offer that we made together at the beginning with her, so and it took her three weeks before she did her launch. But when she did her launch, she booked all those calls. And she's like, I had to cancel a bunch of these because it only handles clients, Kim, I can't do 60 clients. And so and the way that we have her set it up is. And by the way, a lot of times programs make you watch a bunch of videos to figure out like your framework or formula, or you're gonna pitch for us, we have an offer coach sit down with you and literally figure out your offer and exactly how you're going to pitch it and what are you going to teach. So in one call would take care of all that. It's a 27 page document that we put you through, but it's just one call. So she experienced that with the team. And how it's designed is that day one it's selling the vehicle, they are saying yes to the vehicle. And the vehicle for her is mental health, energy healing, making sure that they take care of themselves. So they're saying, they're saying yes to that. So that's out of the way, like you said yes to the vehicle, let's continue. And then that's day zero. Day One would be breaking down all the objections they have to the first part of her formula. So for example, just to give you another example, Adam Dillard, his formula was ACC that we put together for him. And he teaches men how to be empowered. And his program is $4k. So day one would be attract, day two is connect, day three is convert. So attract the right mate can being able to connect with them, being able to have them consistently be in your life as the third piece. And there's going to be objections throughout the way for each part of his formula. But when we have him talk to his people, he's handling all those objections for each piece. They 1-2-3. And then when he handles all those objections on why his method, why this works, it's a question of, do you see, do you see how this can benefit you? Would you like for me to help you do this for the next four months of your life. And then when he pitches, it's a warm invitation to come and work with him. And so it's not a hard pitch. And when that happens, because he's given value. You know, he goes live for an hour a day, you don't have to go nuts. You have to like do a whole three day, you're eight hours a day thing. It's just one hour a day. But what it does is it conditions them to be in a buying state, where in all their psychographics of their emotions of the cost. Because really, when they say yes to him, they're really saying yes to a life for themselves a life that they see themselves having. They they just see him as the very next step in their journey and that they will help them get that life. And so he pitches. Opens cart, closed cart, he did$46,000. It was a very small handful of clients because it's just 4k program. And but $4,000 for some people listening might be Oh man, that's a lot of money. However, would you rather have, would you rather pay$4,000 to learn from an expert who knows how to attract knows how to nurture and really have done this for other people exactly like you and get that help. Or spend $4,000 on like, for iPhones or, or, you know, or like your sofa, you know. So it's putting into perspective, the true value of what these you know, as an expert, what you have to bring, and I call it a self selecting process. By the time they listen to you all the way till day three or day four, whichever day you choose to pitch. They're already in. And the group collapses.

That was my other question. Because I'm like, that's a lot of groups to manage if you're doing this, like, multiple times, but yeah, I imagine the group would go away. But so let me actually just do you think that I mean, you've helped a lot of businesses and your method totally makes sense, you know, to, essentially funnel into smaller groups, that's going to be the more dedicated people. And then it's just a smaller and smaller funnel into that. But do you think that it works better for and I know, you kind of given a whole bunch of different people that you've worked with, but is do you think it works better for different industries, or for more extroverted people, because I know a lot of my, a lot of people who listen to the show are creatives who tend to be somewhat extroverted, like they like to just do their craft, they're not necessarily sellers. Like, they don't like to push things too much.

Oh, man, it works really, really well, for people who are more heart centered, more organic. They don't want to do a bunch of cold DM meetings and, you know, hopping on all these colder calls, because the calls that you booked during in this container, they already understand. They already committed to the vehicle, they committed to every part of your formula, they committed to them. And then with that container, you have intuitive yeses and intuitive knows the conversations that you have with your people when you're talking to them inside of the DMS. Because one of the things I tell my clients to do is say, hey, every single person in this training gets a personal concierge. So check your DM, because we leave no questions left on the answer. No stones left unturned during this training, we're here to help you. So they're open to having conversations. So you have this intuitive feeling out of your people who are way more committed or or not committed at all. And you can tell that during that period. So absolutely. It really resonates with people who are more, who are creatives who want to go that route. Because the alternative is you're just DMing a bunch of people cold online, or you're running an ad to a book a call. And then you have to have multiple calls. And it's the education based call. It's not really like, yeah, I already know what you're about. Let me decide if a price point is good for me. And the only objection that's left is the price, which you can handle with a payment plan. So yeah, you know,

Do you think that your method works better with a group of a certain size? I know you mentioned one of them went from a group of nothing. And you know, she had a relatively small group, but do you? Do you see more success at bigger groups or if it's a smaller group?

we've had people with a group of 20, like Alison and Ryan within their offers $11,000 And they launch within one week to a group of 20 people and they got one client, so they made$11,000 in one week. We've seen others fill up their group like Luis Alvarado. He teaches deep centralized financing. So it's very, like more complicated stuff. But he filled his group to 400 people in three days from his Instagram following. He had 5000 followers on Instagram, and when he pitch he did 10 clients into a $7,000 offer. So he did$70,000 in those, like, in five days. So what I've discovered is if you have an audience of any sort, whether it's on tick tock, we had Antoinette do $60,000 from her tick tock following. If it's YouTube, we had Lambert who she has 250,000 subscribers, not 250 over 200,000 subscribers on YouTube. And she only pitched to a small portion of the audience because she was scared. It was her first time doing a high ticket offer. She's like, I don't know if I should pitch to everyone. So we only like filled up her group to a couple 100 people. She had 42 people buy into her $5,600 offer. She did 200 over $250,000 In five days on a tiny audience. So what I recommend is if you have a desire to teach your people you can start from scratch with absolutely no offer put together. And then you can have that offer put together in like a day. In two weeks, you can build, you can have a group go from absolute scratch to filling to at least, I would recommend at least have about 100 to 200 people, because our script in the way that we teach you converts that three to 5%. So if you have like, you know, 100 people, and you convert 5% of that, that's five people. So you know, five people, you can manage totally fine. And I always recommend having a higher ticket offer. So five people in at 5k. That's $25,000 that you made in like, a week? So there is no, like, perfect number in terms of the group, just understanding that when you're talking to your people, you broke down all their objections. And if all you did was enroll five people into your offer. That's success, you know, to some people, others are like, I want to make a million dollars. Okay.

That's a whole different conversation. That's what that's different beast. Well, thank you so much. It sounds like what you do and the way that you have helped people utilize Facebook groups is amazing. And I just want to encourage our listeners who haven't thought about utilizing Facebook groups, it really can be a way to transform your business. I mean, these are people who have decided they want to hear more about you. They want to know more about your business and they want to they essentially can turn into warm, warm leads and into clients very quickly, if you're going about it the right way. So if you want to learn more about what Kim does, you can find her at groupconvertignite.com/price. I'll put that link in to the show notes. But Kim, thank you so much for being on the show. It was amazing having you on.

Yeah, I I hope that I gave away a lot of like tactics and techniques that you can take home and give it a go. Give it a try.

Definitely. Thank you. Happening next week on the Strategy for Creatives Podcast, I'm talking all about how mastering your client onboarding system can help uplevel your business. So don't forget to tune in next Tuesday to listen to the episode. Thanks for tuning in to the latest episode of the Strategy for Creatives podcast. I hope you enjoyed the insightful discussion, and hopefully found valuable tips that you can put in your business today. If you found the podcast helpful, I'd love it if you take a moment to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps me make a better show and reach more listeners like you. And don't forget to share the podcast with your favorite business owner who could benefit from the strategies and insights I share on the show. New episodes come out every Tuesday, so make sure to subscribe and stay up to date with the latest trends and techniques for growing your creative business. If you want more don't forget to join the Strategy for Creatives Facebook group, or you can follow me on Instagram @strategybysasha have a topic suggestion or question you want to hear answered? Email me at hello@strategybysasha.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week with another episode of the Strategy for

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