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3 Reasons Why Most Facebook Group Owners Aren't Making Enough Sales
Obviously, it’s no secret that we love Facebook groups.
They’re a fantastic platform to serve your chosen audience and help a TON of people along the way, which you should feel really good about.
BUT, let’s address the smelly elephant in the room… the thing that few people will actually admit.
We want to make money from our Facebook group!
In fact, allow me to re-phrase that…
We NEED to make money from our Facebook group.
And we need to not feel in the least bit bad about it.
Yes, we’re here to help people, but we can only help people if we’re not stressing about having enough money to buy the piece of software we need to serve our audience at a higher level ,or having to take on a job just to pay the bills.
In order to serve at the highest level we can, we need to take care of our own needs at a high level, both mentally and physically.
If you’re stressed out and tapped out you’re going to be about as much use to your audience as a chocolate teapot, so let’s dismiss the notion that making money (and as much as possible) from your Facebook group is something of a dirty concept… it’s not!
Quite the opposite.
The more you can earn, the more equipped you’ll be to help others.
As long as what you’re selling is actually something useful and you’re an ethical seller (I’m sure you are 😇) then you want to sell as much as you can, don’t you?
So you might be surprised to hear that one of THE top questions that we get is “How can I sell more stuff from my Facebook group?”
With that in mind, let’s dig into the top 3 reasons I believe most people struggle to sell more of whatever it is they want to sell from their Facebook group.
I’d like to kick off by saying that this list is by no means exhaustive, but we’ll handle the ‘big 3’ here that I believe are responsible for keeping so many online entrepreneurs from hitting their dream goals.
So, without further ado.
Reason #1
Their offer and their messaging is far too vague.
Or even worse, they don’t really have much of an offer at all.
Yes they may have a few products to sell but that doesn’t really constitute an ‘offer’.
Too many people online want to be known as a ‘Jack of all trades’ so they’ll capture as much of the market as possible.
(I get it, by the way… I fell into that trap myself for quite some time because I felt like I had a TON of knowledge to share and I wanted to talk about all the things.)
It took me quite some time to realise that, although you may know a lot, when you’re trying to carve out a slice of Internet audience for your business, especially when you’re trying to get known and build your tribe of followers, you have to go narrow when it comes to what you teach.
You have to be the tip of the spear.
Only then can you pierce the armour that most online dwellers have had to put on to protect them from the bombardment of mediocrity that prevails online.
EVERYTHING changed in our business when we stopped trying to teach all the things and just focused on Facebook groups.
People instantly understood the message and the reason they may need to listen to what we had to say.
If your message is too vague and your offer is devoid of really desirable benefits that solve a very specific problem for your audience, then it’ll be extremely easy to ignore.
Try to answer these 3 questions (and be honest with yourself) to see if you’ve got work to do with your messaging.
1, What’s the prevailing marketing promise that you make to your audience? (Do you save them time? Help them make money? Help them save money? Help them become healthier? Help them get out of physical or psychological pain? Etc)
2, What are the three biggest benefits that your product or service provides. In other words, what will your audience be able to do after they’ve worked with you or used your product that they couldn’t do before?
3, What’s it costing your ideal client every day that they don’t have your product or service? What’s the real world down-side to not taking your offer?
Getting clear on just these three points will set you on the path to having a much stronger message to share with the world.
Initially it will be your message and your personality… your beliefs and core values that attracts your ideal clients to you.
Once someone has become a customer and they know, like and trust you, THEN you can sell them some more stuff and broaden out a bit if you want to.
But when you’re getting there, focussing on building your following and getting your name out there, then you HAVE to know your audience’s wants and needs so you can provide a solution that screams ‘YOU NEED ME’ at them like a dumped psychotic ex.
This means doing a bit of research and deciding who you want to serve.
What chunk of the market can you actually help the most and who do you most want to work with?
Once you know who that is, get really clear on what urgent problems that sector of the market has and work to be able to describe those problems in the same way that your ideal clients would.
Create your solution as THE painkiller for that particular problem and add as much value as you can to it.
Don’t be stingy or scared to give too much. Load up the value train with as many helpful extras as you can and then use your preferred sales process to make your pitch… which leads me to…
Reason #2
They’re using the wrong sales mechanism for their offer.
Or even worse, they’re using hope as a tactic.
Just talking about what you’ve got to sell from time to time isn’t going to be compelling enough to see the big money come rolling in.
You need a sales mechanism… and it needs to be one that suits your business and your offer.
The good news is, it’s not that hard to figure out.
BUT you need to know which is going to be your weapon of choice if you want to see mucho dinero.
*Side note* Whichever option you use, you want to make the process as easy and seamless as possible.
The more hoops your client has to jump through to give you money, the less of it will end up in your account.
Your 3 basic sales process options are:
Passive:
This is where most people who have a group will focus their efforts.
Typically favoured by the physical product seller and it CAN work for low ticket items that don’t need a high level of buyer confidence in order for them to pull the trigger.
This is usually your ‘here’s what I’ve got’ Facebook post where you may talk about your product or service and what it does for your ideal client.
In order to get the best out of these we recommend you use the ‘6 P’s’ formula that we teach our students inside our Tribegeeks Academy. This will greatly increase your odds of getting someone to actually click your ‘buy now’ link.
These types of posts are reasonably easy to put together, and they do work… to a point.
The downside to relying on just these as a main source of selling is that you really can’t control how many people will see your post or click on your link.
Once it’s out there in the ether it’s in the lap of the Facebook gods as to how many people will see it and be interested enough to click, so your copywriting skills will need to be up to snuff to give you the best fighting chance.
You can’t track it and you can’t follow up with someone who maybe saw your post but then clicked off it because the kids were calling (or any of a Million other reasons).
Next up we have the active method:
This is more suited to coaches and consultants and it will involve some direct communication with the client or buyer to build trust and rapport.
Often this will be some kind of consultation call where an offer is made once a person’s needs have been clarified.
These can work great.
Typically though, these are best suited to higher ticket offers as they can be time consuming and it really wouldn’t make sense to jump on a call with everyone who was interested in a really low ticket offer.
There just wouldn’t be enough hours in the day to make it pay off.
This is essentially 1-2-1 selling so it can be pretty tough to scale on your own.
But it can work great if you have the right type of business that would work with this type of sales process.
Event Based:
This method can work exceptionally well with most types of physical or information based products but it’s especially suited to info products such as courses and masterminds.
There are a few iterations of this type of selling… masterclasses, challenges, webinars etc.
The basic premise being that you host an event whereby you deliver some form of value to your market.
That value should ideally reinforce the reasons why a person needs what you’re about to offer them and explain the reasons why they may be struggling now.
I’m oversimplifying, I know, but a skilled presenter will take this time to build trust and put over a logical argument for their offer, all the while building desire for the solution, which is presented at the end.
Cash registers ring, money rains down from the heavens and angels sing! 🤣🤣
Well… if you’ve done things right they do!
The reason this is the preferred method for most accomplished online sellers is it has a few distinct advantages over the previous two.
1, You can (and should) create a registration page for this type of sales process where people have to register to attend, leaving you their email address as part of that process.
This means you can promote your event ahead of time and know how many people will see it… even if it means promoting a replay after the event itself.
This means you get more than one bite of the cherry when it comes to making your offer because, even if the person doesn’t buy on the night… they may buy once we start to follow up with them over email.
Especially if we sprinkle in some scarcity and urgency.
2, You can make your presentation to tens, hundreds or even thousands of people at the same time, making it an incredibly time efficient method of selling.
This type of selling can call for a slightly higher level of technical skill and confidence, but with systems such as Kartra, Zoom and Canva, putting together an offer using this type of presentation based selling is easier now that at any time in our history.
If you have a product offering that supports it, it’d be well worth giving it a go.
Reason #3
They just don’t have the audience… yet.
No amount of clever salespersonship (it’s a real word!) can combat having a tiny un-engaged audience.
It really is a numbers game.
Sadly, the Internet is full of shiny new systems and slick talking Guru’s that promise a shortcut to easy street without you ever having to actually do any of the fundamentals.
Any way you dice it, if you’re looking to build a business online that’ll take care of you and your family for years to come, it comes down to doing three things.
Deciding specifically what audience you’re going to serve.
Building a following with that audience by providing value and generating goodwill with them.
Making useful offers to that audience… regularly.
Notice the words that I hope stand out in those three lines.
SERVE.
PROVIDE VALUE AND BUILD GOODWILL.
USEFUL OFFERS.
If you do these things, your audience WILL grow… and fast!
You WILL be heralded as the go-to person in your zone of genius.
You WILL make more money.
These are the fundamentals and when we see people struggling, it’s usually because they’ve neglected one or more of the above.
Now you may be thinking “that all sounds great, but how do I actually do those things?”
If that sounds like you. I’d invite you to grab a 14 day trial of the Tribegeeks Academy, it’s choc full of resources to help you build your tribe, your business and your bank account.
In the meantime, I hope this article helped.
Talk soon.
Steve Harradine
I help home business owners and online experts build their Facebook tribe, dial in their message and automate their sales process using organic methods so they never have to beg people to buy.
With online false claims and under-delivery of promised results becoming the norm for many right now, I believe that honest, relationship based business promotion is the way forward for anyone looking to build an online brand.
I’ve worked with thousands of business owners to help them ‘find their voice’ to clarify their message, as well as show them how to make offers in the most natural and efficient way.
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