Well, just yesterday, a certain FB member and I signed a contract where I would purchase/own 40% of her ever growing FB (250K+ members) group.
Here are the last month or so growth stats:
This group is growing at around 2K+ a day, so it's definitely going to be fun to experiment marketing to this group.
How This All Came About
Interestingly enough, both of us were in another FB group (about creating memberships) and she asked about needing help to start a membership with her decluttering group. I commented, saying I was in the same niche and was interested in collaborating/ sharing what I already knew about FB groups, if possible.
Long story short, we talked a little, and then I sent her a quick video (okay, probably 40 minutes long, haha) of a bunch of stuff I would recommend doing with her FB group (pretty much everything that I've shared with others on how to market on FB).
I literally told her that I just wanted to provide her with as much free and valuable advice as I could (because at the end of the day if what I share helps someone become more successful, then I know I've accomplished my job, regardless of whether I get any financial return out of it).
It was pretty simple stuff like how to optimize your FB group description, how to get your post seen/more engagement and more email sign ups, as well as showing her the funnel that I had and how I optimized it.
She implemented what she learned and was impressed enough to video chat with me about helping her start/partner a decluttering membership with her (which I now need to build out for her and create by the end of July, lol).
Anyways, we were messaging back and forth about something, and I jokingly (sort of, not really, haha) said that I was actually interested in buying her FB group from her, and her response actually sort of stunned me:
I like you and I feel like we csan really do something with this group. Tell me what percent do you want and for how much. You can do some now and later or as we go. I do not want to give up more than 40%.
I mean, honestly, I was pretty blown away. I probably spent the next 15-30 minutes talking with my wife how much we should offer.
After I made her an offer, she counter-offered, which I accepted, and here we are (okay, well actually then I had to quickly use AI to write up a contract that we agreed too, and now here we are).
What's The Point Of All This?
Lead with making CONNECTIONS before trying to make some CASH.
At the end of the day, whether this 40% ownership brings in more revenue or makes me go bankrupt isn't really the point.
The main point is that when I first contacted this FB member, I really had no expectations. At the end of the day, it was someone who needed help business-wise, and I stepped up and helped provide solid answers that she was able to implement immediately (which she did).
And now less than a month (?) later, we're looking at a partnership that will probably span a couple of years (if not longer) and rake in a few hundred thousand within that time frame (if I market it correctly).
This has happened time after time, in more ways that I can count.
It was just earlier this year that I shot a video review of someone's FB groups (who is in this forum), and a few months later she was actually my first web design client (which I'm still working on that course I told you I would create!)
Another lady reached out for potential collab with one of my niche sites (fashion), and while that didn't work out initially, I kept the connection open, sent her a one or two video reviews of her site and products, and then a few months ago pitched a simple idea - that she create and run a membership and I push my audience to it (and we're actually in the middle of the founding member promotion right now).
Let's even use Partha's latest Parasite SEO course. The main reason most of us purchased it was because of how helpful he was for the past 3, 4, 5+ years, giving out free advice whenever and where-ever he can.
So start building those connections!
As you continue to build out your sites (excluding your parasite SEO campaigns those of you running them), make sure to network and help other people in the niche as you are.
You'll be surprised what may just happened if you do.
Thoughts?
A great message Andy! Thanks for sharing the reminder and your story so far on this. I have seen the beauty of this over on LinkedIn over the years (aside from all the me me me DMs)
Wishing you great success with your new venture, partnership and Facebook group.
Tracy
It is impressive that there are so many members. I wonder what interests these people have. Besides, congrats on these achievements.
@nemira Thanks! They're all in the organizing / decluttering niche, which is one of the niches that I'm in. It will be fun to market to them.
Great inspiring story Andy, thank you 🙂
It has been a wild weekend so far. I am such a squirrel watcher that I cannot finish one thing before I get sidetracked by another opportunity. I was doing a lot of catch-up today.
Answered several WA comments. Came here to catch the tail end of a Reddit strategy of commenting on NEW posts, did that for an hour. Then I found an interesting idea. Clickbait idea on Reddit. Posted that one to our Reddit Review Group. I need to increase my Karma to post on other Reddit groups related to my niche.
With Reddit cleared, I moved over to Medium to catch up there and found that a lot of my audience was moving over to Substack. Monkey See, Monkey Do. I am now on Substack. I created my first post there. I did my cross-platform promotions. Released a couple of Instagram posts, and a couple of new YouTube shorts.
While doing that I realized that I needed more Facebook Group knowledge and created an FB tutorial/lesson plan, before making the rounds back here, only to realize that we have an FB Group Savvant in our midst!
Congratulations on your successful bid to purchase a thriving FB community within one of your niches. That has to feel exhilarating!
Can you tell that I have been absent for the last 12 days?
<----------SQUIRREL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@mrdon Thanks! It is pretty exhilarating, though exhausting at the same time, lol. And I just potentially secured working with another group (gardening) that has over 750K members. 😬 Let's hope I actually know what I'm doing 🤣
@andy How can I be a fly on the wall? I would love to absorb what you know about FB Groups. Do you have like a personal checklist of things that are needed? A guide to say ok here are the basics?
@mrdon I don't have any freebies (checklists, etc) yet, unfortunately.
I'm not nessacarily any good at getting a group to grow perse, but if you have specific questions, feel free to ask them. Or drop your group below/DM me it, and I can shoot a video on 'here are the basics'.
In terms of actually marketing to a FB group, you have a lot of factors you sort of have to work with, in terms of getting your message to be seen by everyone on that group (especially when you are dealing with 100K+ members / group sizes). FB likes to show content to the group that the group actually likes viewing. This seams obvious, but what can often happen (like in one group I'm helping), the main admin has accidentally been posting the wrong stuff on the group, and thus (in FB's eyes) their posts just don't get seen by the group (again because of what she's previously been posting/how FB now views her). So you have to make sure that you are continually posting what FB will deem as what the group wants.
How do you know if it's what the group wants/likes? Just look at the engagment. You're basically just shooting for a lot of likes and comments. So, basically, you need to set up your posts in such a way that will evoke a response within your group.
Example: Don't post "Here is the next link to my latest blog post". Post something like "What do you think about my latest blog post?" Or, "What do you think I should have added in the post?" Or even "I was reading/creating Blahblahblah, and it said {input controversial statement}. What do you think?"
Obviously not every post needs to be a question, but the post is just to get a response from your members (again, more engagment on your post shows FB that it needs to be shown to more people on the group. More people see it, and the cycle continues. Do that enough times and then FB will start to recognize you as one of the 'authorities' in the group, and will start to naturally show all your posts to more and more group members.).
That's just one thing, in terms of marketing to FB - you also need to think about how you want to structure your posts, how to add emotion into your posts, how you actually want to target them, etc.
I personally like to use the FB groups to collect emails, and then target the group members through email, since, well, an email service provider doesn't discriminate as to who gets to see your 'post' (in this case email) and who doesn't, if that makes sense. But I'm still working on actually having a 'proven' system set up right now, lol.
I may create a separate thread for this, but I personally follow Dave Smith on FB. He's been working on with FB groups for a long while now, and is very active on pushing out new information when the 'FB algorithm' changes, and how to market better. His last live video was all about marketing/nurture leads within the group (create a 'valley of content' -i.e. a few posts that lead of to whatever you are promoting, and then after words a few posts that point people back to what you just promoted, so that you are targeting your members on both side of the valley, if that makes sense).
But like I said, if you have specific questions, you're welcome to drop them below or create a new thread, and I don't mind sharing what I know, as best as I can articulate it, and time allows, haha.
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