Using Facebook Groups To Drive Customer Retention Pt 1
When we think about using Facebook as a marketing tool we often think of paid advert campaigns, and while these are a great way to drive quick sales and new leads, they are limited in terms of what organic growth they contribute to.Using Facebook groups as a marketing tool is a long-term strategy which can help grow your brand and increase customer loyalty, while also making it easy for your customers to act as brand ambassadors by sharing your content and inviting their friends to your group.
A Facebook group is a different beast to your business page.It's somewhere your customers can gather and talk about your products or services as well as other developments in your industry. If you can make your Facebook group informative, active and friendly you'll have no problem growing your membership. You will soon be reaping the rewards of curating a space where your customers can congregate virtually.
Facebook groups can be one of three types, public, private and secret.Public groups can be searched and joined by anyone with no restriction, and while this openness is great for growing the membership, it's also open to abuse by spammers and bots. Too many “fake” members can make the group an unpleasant place to be, so it's best to use a private group for your business group. Too much spam or too many irrelevant comments gives the group admins and moderators a lot of work to do.
Private groups are still searchable, but members must be approved by a group admin or moderator. You can even set questions for potential members to answer to enable them to join which will give you the chance to weed out spammers and bots, as well as troublemakers. Secret groups can't be found on a search, so while they're the safest setting to use for some groups, such as support groups or ones made to plan a surprise party, they're not suitable for businesses as a marketing tool.A private group is the best type for a business Facebook group, especially if you want to grow the membership and offer exclusive news or discounts to the group.
When you're setting up your group, make sure you take the opportunity to set a custom URL. This means you can use an easy to remember and relevant group name in the URL rather than the random string of numbers that Facebook assigns you. This custom URL must be set before the group reaches 5,000 members, so make sure you do this early while you have the chance. You should also set group rules, so that you have justification for removing members or content that breaks these rules. Standard rules include no hate speech; posts only in a specific language, no adverts or spam and rules about confidentiality but you can set your own according to how you want to run your group.
Join us soon for part 2, where we look at the features you'll get and how to strategize the use of your business Facebook group.
