We know Facebook Pages and organic reach are not what they were a few years ago.
On the other hand, Facebook Groups are alive and well.
They are one of the best ways to use the platform and one of the huge advantages it has over Instagram.
Getting your tribe to join a Facebook group is a phenomenal way to share your content, pitch your offers, and build a thriving community.
The only problem?
You aren’t allowed to pixel your group audience like you could with a Facebook business page.
This made it challenging for group owners and marketers.
There isn’t anything much worse than having a group of your ideal target market in one community and not being able to market to them.
But now, Facebook is finally allowing you to pixel the members of your Facebook group.
Well, sort of.
It’s not like you can log into your group, export user data, and start retargeting (maybe one day).
Luckily, I have found a workaround to help you access some of those users, even if it does require a little more effort on your end.
In this post, I want to teach you why Facebook Groups are a powerful tool to grow your business and one hack to help you pixel groups.
The Power of Facebook Groups
Facebook continues to roll out new features for both users and business owners after their push to clean up the site in 2018.
If you’re like most people, you’re probably using:
- Paid ads
- Facebook Live
- Business pages
- Messenger bots
- Facebook Stories
- WhatsApp Messenger
But groups are still one tool on the social media platform that I think has a ton of potential and will only continue to grow in 2020. If used correctly, they can make a serious impact on your business.
Check out these Facebook statistics that back up my theory:
- 1.4 billion people use Facebook Groups
- More than 10 million groups on Facebook
- Facebook’s research with users aged 18 to 24 shows that they’re open to brands posting in Facebook Groups, as long as those posts provide real value, rather than just promotion.
As you can tell, there is a ton of potential for every type of business to use Facebook groups to increase sales and/or build a community.
Here’s how you can get started with one of my favorite social media hacks.
Step-By-Step Process to Pixel Your Audience
Step 1: Identify a Group
The first step is to identify a group that you want to pixel.
With this step, you have a choice; you can either use your own group (if you have one) or someone else’s.
That’s right, you can even use this page for other groups as well.
Don’t worry, it’s not a spammy method and won’t land you in Facebook jail.
Step 2: Join the Group as Your Page
Once you’ve found your ideal group, you want to log into Facebook and join (or request permission to join) as your business page, not your personal account.
Please don’t skip this step. This will not work with a personal Facebook profile.
Joining as your business page will allow you access your pixel and business dashboard in the following steps.
Step 3: Share Video to Your Group as Your Page
The third step is to share a video in the group from your own business page. Remember, you don’t have to use your group for this hack to work.
Ideally, you want to share a video that isn’t overly self-promotional or content that could get flagged as spam by the admins.
Don’t post a video just to use this trick. Make sure you’re always providing value and helping the community in some way or another.
Try to create or repurpose a video that is useful to the audience and strengthens you and your businesses’ reputation.
Also, one thing to note is that some communities require you to join from your personal account, not your business page. Make sure to read the group requirements and answer any necessary questions to ensure you get accepted.
Bonus tip: If you own the group, make sure to pin the video to the top of the feed, so more people are likely to see it and will help you build a larger audience.
Otherwise, if your group is active, your video will get lost in a sea of posts and conversations among other members.
Step 4: Create a New Audience
The final step is to create a new audience inside your Business Manager account.
To get started, create a new video audience for the video that you pinned or shared from in someone else’s community from the previous step.
It’s as simple as that. As people watch your video, your audience grows.
Now, you will have a lot more data that you can use in a lot of different ways, which I’ll outline below.
Step 5: Rinse & Repeat
If there are multiple groups you want to do this with, go for it. The only thing you need to do is to make sure you create a new audience based on each group.
To conduct an A/B test, you can always post a few different videos in a couple of groups to see which one gets the best engagement as well.
How to Use Your New Audience
Now that you understand how to create this new audience in one or several communities, here are a few strategies to help you make the most of them.
Trigger Ads
The first way to use your new audience is to use trigger ads.
Segment the Audience
If you’re already running ads on the biggest social media platform on the planet, I’m sure you know the importance of segmenting.
This is one of the first steps that I recommend you take when acquiring a new audience. You can start by segmenting from geography, age, and even their personal interests.
By segmenting your audience, you can make sure to create offers and messaging that is more unique to each profile of users.
Build Lookalike Audiences
As I mentioned in the intro, not being able to build lookalike audiences was one of the biggest downsides to running a Facebook group.
But with this simple hack, you can easily create a new audience of similar people to market.
Even though you don’t have their email address (yet), you can still tap into the power of Facebook ads to find and target people with similar interests.
Use #R3MAT
My final tip to help you leverage this new audience is to ensure you are displaying the right message at the right time.
Remember, the goal of marketing is the right message, to the right audience, at the right time.
In most cases, you don’t want to send this cold audience straight to a sales page if they don’t know who you are or what your product is about.
You can’t forget the power of a nurture sequence and the ability to get new people to know, like, and trust you.
By warming up your group members, you can then engage with them as they browse on the social media platform and on Instagram.
That lets you extend the power of your group to grow more mindshare and ultimately, better results!
Conclusion
It’s time to take action and start taking advantage of this one simple hack to maximize Facebook groups.
Remember, Facebook groups are so much more valuable than pages. As an article on Adespresso said:
“When users post to your Page, it gets stashed away under the “Community” tab. When they post in the group, on the other hand, it pops up and stays in the feed, center-stage, for other users to easily see and engage with.”
Take advantage of this center-stage by posting a video and creating a new audience in your Business Manager dashboard.
Whether you have a Facebook group or not, it doesn’t matter. You can get started today and begin to use other similar groups to get more users interested in you or your product.
Also, don’t forget that none of this works if a group doesn’t allow business pages to join as you can’t create an audience from your personal account.
Lastly, once you begin to create your new audience, use one or several of the tips above to get the right message in front of them.
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