Are Facebook Groups Dead?

Whether you've been using Facebook Groups to generate leads or not, you've probably noticed some trends that are happening right now:

• Facebook Groups are overrun with coaches and consultants "providing value" and promoting themselves...almost to the point where they're blindly spamming every group they can find.
• Engagement in Facebook Groups has tanked. Whereas a post 12 months ago could've gotten 300 likes and comments, the same post now gets zero engagement.
• Group Admins & Moderators are tightening up the group rules...and actually enforcing them too.

With all of these things going on, it can feel impossible to use Facebook Groups to get coaching clients.

In this episode, I talk about why Facebook Groups seem to have become less effective when it comes to generating leads, answer the question of whether Facebook Groups are dead (spoiler alert: they're not), and give you four concrete tactics you can do to level up your Facebook lead generation strategy to take advantage of how Facebook Groups are evolving.

In today's episode, we are going to be talking about Facebook groups in a little bit of depth. We're going to be answering the question “Are Facebook groups dead when it comes to client attraction?” and I'm going to be answering this through the lens of someone who has literally just come out with a book that goes into great depth about how to use Facebook groups for lead gen. Maybe I'm a little biased, but I like to think that I bring with me some expertise on the matter. 

Let's dive in with talking a little bit about some of the backstory or background around what's going on with Facebook groups. If you've been using Facebook groups for lead gen, whether you've been doing it for a few years or a few months or a few days, there are a few things that you might have noticed. The first is that a lot of Facebook groups are really being overrun with spammy sales posts, these posts where they're telling their success story, or they're just blatantly promoting their offer, or talking about how great they are, or trying to provide some sort of value by teaching a lesson or otherwise building their authority. I talk more specifically on that piece of things in Episode 6, which is titled “What's more important than building authority?” 

But in regards to Facebook groups, there are just a lot of these spammy promotional posts happening, and as a result, the engagement in these groups is absolutely tanking. People just aren't engaging and commenting like they used to, because the overall quality level of the posts that are happening in the first place is decreasing, and when that quality level decreases, the engagement decreases. The third thing is that group admins are really tightening up and enforcing their rules about what you can and can't post, which makes it feel impossible to leverage groups to get clients in the first place. 

So what happened? What got us in this situation, where so many people are really trying to use Facebook groups to get new clients, and no one is having a whole lot of success anymore? Well, there are several things. The first is that using Facebook groups for lead generation is actually a relatively new strategy. It's only become popular in the past few years, and what that means is that the first people to start using Facebook groups had a whole lot of really, really great success, and in the years since, more and more people have been flocking to this strategy, every single day, so that so many people are trying the same thing right now. And they're being taught by one of maybe five or six giant group coaching programs who are teaching this strategy in the exact same way. 

What happens when you have thousands upon thousands upon thousands of coaches going into these groups, implementing the exact same strategy, using the exact same tactics in the exact same way? Well, it becomes saturated, which means it's so much harder to stand out. It's so much harder for that strategy to be effective in the first place, when everyone is doing the exact same thing. And most of the people who are doing this thing are not doing it very well in the first place. 

It's important to know that group admins and moderators really care, first and foremost, about the community that they're building, making sure that it's a place where members want to be and where other Facebook users want to be members. And if members are feeling like they're constantly being spammed by these value posts or sales posts or whatever, then it stops being that type of space, and that's when the engagement in that group starts to go down. Admins also know that the level of engagement happening inside of their own group directly influences the growth of that group, which means that if engagement in their group drops, Facebook stops recommending that group to other users. That's effectively the kiss of death of a Facebook group, because if you get on the algorithm’s “bad side,” Facebook isn't going to organically share and promote your group to other users who might be interested. 

Now, as you're listening to this, I'm sure you're thinking, “Well, it sounds like Facebook groups are indeed dead, or at least as far as client attraction and lead generation go, because all of these factors, they don't really bode well for this Facebook group strategy, do they?” But I'm here to posit that Facebook groups are not dead, not by any means. They're just changing. The process of getting clients through Facebook groups is evolving, as more and more people start leveraging this tactic. 

Here's what that means for you: It means that you can't just keep doing the things that everyone else in the world is doing. It means that you have to make several adjustments to the way that you approach Facebook groups in the first place. The first thing it means is that you need to focus on engaging first and posting second.

Focus first on engaging people in groups, commenting, liking, starting those conversations in other people's posts even. Maybe, in fact, challenge yourself to use a Facebook group to attract leads without ever even posting in it. Now, this doesn't work if it's your own Facebook group, obviously.

But when you're looking at different Facebook groups that you could potentially leverage for lead generation, perhaps challenge yourself to not post in it, to just comment and engage in that group to start the conversation, and start connecting and building relationships with those ideal clients. You don't even have to post to get the results that you want; you can achieve the same thing in the comments. 

The second thing is that when you do post, opt for posts that are really geared around generating conversation, not posts that “provide value” or tell your story. Now, that's not a hard and fast rule, and it's not to say that you should entirely avoid these posts, because in fact, those posts can actually be really great, but try not to depend on them quite as much as focus more on generating conversation. 

The third thing is that when it comes to the groups that you're in, bigger isn't always better. What I mean by that is a lot of the groups that are feeling overrun with spammy sales posts, and in which everyone is just kind of blindly promoting their own offer, those are usually the really big groups. Try for smaller groups where, sure, you'll get in front of fewer people, but you'll actually have the opportunity to create higher quality connections. For example, a group that maybe even has only 100 members is totally worth the time and effort if you connect with even just 15 of them, or even 10 of them, and their ideal clients. Totally worth it, because as these changes to Facebook groups are really starting to become clearer and clearer, it's moving to where smaller groups are actually going to be what's going to help you get the best results moving forward. 

The fourth and final thing that you'll want to be thinking about as you move forward with Facebook groups is something that's honestly always been a good idea, but now is especially a good idea, which is to be really intentional about connecting with group admins. This isn't about schmoozing, or wining and dining, or getting on their good side. If these admins and moderators are people who are building a community of your ideal clients, it just makes sense to be connected. Start building relationships with these admins and moderators, because chances are that down the line, you'll be able to support them, and they'll be able to support you. It's just a really strategic and smart thing to do right from the beginning. 

To give you a quick example, my Facebook group is not very large. It has about 250 members, perhaps, and there is a massive, massive difference in the messages I get from group members, some of which are, “Hey, can I post this? Can I post this? Can I post this?” asking if they can promote their podcast, or promote their offer, or promote their fundraiser, or whatever it might be. Usually, if those are people who are just always messaging me asking for something, or I have no clue who they really are, or they're just kind of annoying me? Well, they usually don't get a response at all. 

That stands in stark contrast to the people who have actually built relationships with me, who I actually trust and have gotten to know, because when they message me asking for something, they get a resounding yes. I'm happy to support them and let them promote themselves inside my group. Even if you are just getting started, go ahead and start connecting with the admins and moderators. At least make sure they start to see your name and associate it positively with what you're posting and saying in a group. Once you build that relationship, it can become a really mutually beneficial one. 

To wrap up today's episode, the lesson really is that Facebook groups, or at least using Facebook groups to attract clients and generate leads, it's not a tactic or a strategy that is dead or dying. It's just evolving and changing really, really rapidly. If you can be responsive to these changes, and not just keep doing the same thing even though it's not working, you're going to get infinitely better results. 

As always, thank you so much for joining me for today's episode of the Client Attractor Show. Really appreciate you for joining me here today, and I look forward to seeing you for tomorrow's episode. Take care.