How to Use Facebook Groups for Business – Starter Guide For Brand Marketers

As the number one social networking platform with almost 3 billion users, Facebook is undeniably an indispensable part of the marketing landscape.

For your marketing efforts to be successful, you need to send your messages at the right place, at the right time, to the right people.

The reality is that the majority of your current target market hangs out on Facebook.

Yes, there’s TikTok for the younger audiences and LinkedIn for the more mature business network—but overall, stats don’t lie, and Facebook is still king.

This means that smart money is on betting and investing in Facebook marketing.

After all, the foundation of Facebook rests on building connections and relationships. And if your brand isn’t doing any of that at scale on Facebook, then you’ll find it hard to make social media marketing work for you.

Recently, Facebook has been emphasizing “meaningful interactions.” With the company committing to bringing the world closer by investing in ‘community’.

With this, Facebook Groups finds itself in the spotlight.

1.8 billion people use Facebook Groups every month. That’s an insane number. Adding in the fact that there’s a ‘Facebook Group for everyone, there’s a very high chance that the specific customer persona you are looking for is hanging out a couple of minutes per day on a Facebook Group they are genuinely interested in.

Understanding Facebook Groups For Business

You might be thinking—how can Facebook Groups help my business?

How can Facebook Groups move the needle for your brand awareness, sales, Share of Voice, and other marketing metrics that matter to you?

Before we dive deep into why Facebook Group Marketing is one of the best marketing strategies you can implement this 2021, let’s first take a quick look at the current state of Facebook.

The Facebook algorithm changed, so organic posts get seen by only 1% to 2% of our followers (on a good day, that is).

Yes, that’s the harsh truth. The platform wants us to have more meaningful conversations because the higher it is, the more our posts will appear on users’ timelines. Think of this as a chain reaction.

More involvement equates to more visibility, which entices even more people to get involved when they see your posts. The problem, though, is that with very low organic reach, it’s hard to get people even to see your posts—making that chain reaction tough to accomplish.

The answer? Facebook Groups.

The Facebook algorithm prioritizes content from Facebook Groups that your audience cares about.

When the average Facebook user scrolls through his/her newsfeed, most of the content comes from family, friends, sponsored ads, and groups.

It’s rare for someone to see organic content from a Facebook page they liked (meme and viral pages are an exception).

So as a brand, to convert a Facebook audience into customers, you can either go all-in on Facebook Ads—or diversify and start investing in community marketing.

Generally, there are two ways you can use Facebook Groups for business.

1. Community Marketing
2. Community Building

Community Marketing is done by running ‘campaigns’ inside relevant Facebook Groups in partnership with Group Admins and Moderators, who serve as the community’s key opinion leaders. These campaigns are generally designed to subtly integrate the brand within the group.

Think promo without really being a hard-selling promo.

These campaigns can come in the form of a ‘giveaway’, educational content, contests, user-generated content drive, among others. Ultimately, giving value to the group members makes it the perfect strategy for getting in front of your target customers and winning their hearts.

When Facebook Group Admins create and post content on behalf of your brand, a windfall effect happens, with members engaging more—and in return, resulting in more brand conversations—eventually leading to potentially more sales.

What’s more, is that your brand will find itself with a surplus of one of the most valuable pieces of marketing content today—user-generated content (UGC).

Here’s an example of a community marketing campaign we did with Veet.

We helped by having the Facebook Group Admins of relevant communities leading user-education on Veet Cold Wax Strips & how to use them. There were also live sessions held by experts to address concerns regarding the product inside these communities.

The result?

45X increase in brand conversations about Veet

27% growth in SOV (from 70% to 89%)

41% improvement in positive sentiment (36% to 51%)

818 user-generated content pieces

Generating results like these from only organic social media marketing, or even through Facebook Ads will be tough.

Another example of a community marketing campaign with Facebook Groups is from Indian gourmet grocery brand DiSano.

Their objective was to build awareness for their product line DiSano Olive Oil and Peanut Butter. They also wanted to engage their target audience, in this case, moms, through user-generated content (UGC).

They wanted brand awareness and UGC—and that’s exactly what they got.

What we did was we identified 5 highly engaged Facebook Groups with a combined reach of 1.3M mothers. We then ran Community Influencer and KOL (Key Opinion Leader) campaigns in 5 FB Food Groups reaching 1.3M moms to build awareness of DiSano Olive Oil & Peanut Butter.

Ultimately, we were able to address DiSano’s objectives, driving 680 user-generated content (recipes) from moms using DiSano olive oil.

This is the power of community marketing, and the possibilities are endless.

Next is Community Building.

This is when brands start to build their online community. The popular platform of choice is still Facebook Groups. However, for niche audiences and other parts of the world, platforms like Slack or Discord can also be good picks when building a community for your brand.

Building your own community for your brand is powerful because you can create a platform where your existing customers and target audience can hang out and experience your brand—everything you stand for, first-hand.

An example of this in action would be fitness brand Peloton, which has an exclusive Facebook Group with over 400,000 members. Their customers enjoy having a support group to share their experiences and have that extra love from the brand, making the overall experience more enjoyable.

While starting your online community or Facebook Group can be a savvy marketing play, building, growing, and nurturing a community is not an easy task.

You would need to have a strategy around this while also considering adding some talent like a Community Manager or Head of Community to help build your group and become your brand’s face inside the community.

Now that you have an idea of the different ways you can use Facebook Groups for your business let’s dive a little deeper and take a closer look at exactly how you can get started in implementing this for your brand.

Choosing The Right Facebook Group Marketing Strategy

You can either start your own Facebook Group or run community marketing campaigns with relevant Facebook Groups, or do both.

When starting, though, the lower commitment would be doing community marketing campaigns with vetted Facebook Groups that have the reach, engagement, and relevance that you’re looking for.

For brands who wish to ‘DIY’ this whole process—the first plan of action is to find relevant Facebook Groups where your potential customers hang out.

So if you’re selling consumer tech goods, finding tech-savvy Facebook Groups would be the best move. Likewise, if you’re selling products for babies or kids, identifying relevant and highly engaged Parenting Groups would be the best course of action.

Doing this manually can be time-consuming and can potentially be like shooting in the dark. Though it is possible, you can save countless hours if you choose to work with a company like Convosight, which has done multiple community marketing campaigns at scale.

To learn more about how Convosight can help brands like you scale through community marketing, go here.

Ultimately, if you have the budget and want more immediate results, running a community marketing campaign with relevant Facebook Groups is the best way to go.

If you’re not in a rush and you want to build a new content property that can drive massive ROI overtime, then starting a Facebook Group for your business is the move to make.

While this can also take a considerable amount of time and resources, this Facebook Group marketing strategy’s long-term benefits will prove to be significant.

This isn’t a debate on whether Facebook Page or group for business is more effective. Ideally, you would have both playing major roles in your brand’s marketing. However, if you choose to start a Facebook Group for your business, you will have to build a solid plan in place, from what to name your group to what Facebook Group type to choose from.

You can check these resources to help you get started on how to create a group on Facebook for business:

• How to Choose a Facebook Group Name
• Public vs Private Facebook Group: Which One To Choose

Facebook Group Marketing Strategy Before Going All-In

While community marketing and community building are two effective ways to kickstart your Facebook Group marketing strategy—another low commitment, yet highly effective option is to test the waters by simply engaging in other relevant Facebook Groups for your business.

This is a good strategy, especially for those who don’t have a set budget for community marketing yet, or if a brand simply wants to look around and get a gauge of how effective Facebook Groups for marketing is.

To do this, you can follow these simple steps:

1.) Find one to three relevant Facebook Groups in your industry and join the group

• This pretty much boils down to what your goals are and who you intend to reach. If you’re a brand like Gymshark or Nike, you’d probably want to join Facebook Groups that focus on fitness and sports.

2.) Observe, engage, and feel the community

• Take the time to observe the group. Look at the different kinds of conversations happening inside the community. Get a good understanding of what people are talking about, what questions they ask, and think about where you can come in and add value. If you can, engaging and answering questions and participating in the comments is a good starting point.

3.) Share and become an active member of the community

• Once you’ve gotten a feel of the community, it’s time to become a valued member and start contributing. Answer questions, create content (non-salesy/non-promotional), and genuinely help people out. By doing this, you are getting a deeper understanding of the community, making it easier for you to collaborate with them down the line or serve as an inspiration for the kind of Facebook Group you will start.

Conclusion

At Convosight, we’re super excited about the future of community marketing. We believe that this new brand of marketing can drive massive ROI for brands that can do it right.

With the surge of the creator economy and the fast-growing number of community entrepreneurs (currently over 6,000 Facebook Group Admins with meaningful groups use Convosight), community marketing will be one of the key marketing plays for brands this 2021 and beyond.

If you want to get started with community marketing and need help, you can get in touch with us directly through the chat box on this page. We’re excited to help you achieve your goals this year!

You can also click here to learn more about how we help brands build supercharged communities.

Hope this blog was able to teach you how to use Facebook Groups for business and helped jump start your journey with community marketing!

Nix Eniego

Leads digital marketing and content at Convosight. I’m passionate about all things marketing and growth, e-learning, and community building. If you’re awesome and made it all the way here, could you do me a favor and share/tweet this post too? Forever grateful!