Correctly Leverage Facebook Groups with Christina Rowe
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You don't need a giant group to make money with Facebook groups. That's a big myth. People think you need this big, giant group. I mean, I know people, members of mine who've had very small groups that made millions of dollars. There's maybe 3,000 people or a couple hundred people. They'll do very well. So, you know, it's just the right people. That's the most important thing, getting them into your group, your right target market.

In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast.

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I'm excited to say we've got a really special episode for any of you guys who want to figure out how do we build a list? How do we get more traffic? How do we get a following of people who we can sell to in the future without spending a ton of money? I don't know about most of you guys, but right now, um,

The climate in paid ads is getting harder and harder. It costs more money to get traffic. We used to spend, back when we launched ClickFunnels, we spent $2 or $3 to get somebody to opt into a webinar. Now today it's like $5 to $10 per opt-in to register for a webinar. It's crazy how expensive it's gotten. If you're not really good at funnels, it's getting harder and harder to be successful online. And I've seen that just inside the ClickFunnels community. People who 10 years ago had a lot of success because ads were so cheap, they're not going to get a lot of money.

Um, they had these phones, they blew up and out today because it's harder. A lot of these people aren't able to stay in business right now. And so I've been trying to find who are the people who are having a lot of success getting traffic. That's not,

the typical ways you get traffic. It's not just, you know, buying ads on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, but they're doing things that are different, that are unique. And so I'm excited because the special guest we have for you today is someone who's built a Facebook group of over 850,000 people. Those people who joined the Facebook group also joined her email list. So she's got an email list of the same size. And she's using this in business after business, market after market to grow an audience before someone launches a product. And it's really fascinating. It's using Facebook groups. It's funny because

I don't know about you, but I've had a Facebook group for a long time. In fact, ClickFunnels, when we first launched ClickFunnels, we couldn't keep up with the support demands we had. And so we like created a Facebook group. It was like ClickFunnels, I think it was community support. And so we'd have everyone like submit a ticket and go to the community. Maybe they can help you try and like help us out. And this little community support went from, you know,

five people to 500 people to 5,000 to 50,000 to five, you know, they're not 500,000, I think it's 300 and something thousand people now in this group. Um, and for me, it's been like this thing where I didn't know what to do with it. Like it's an asset, but I don't know how to monetize it. It's this thing. And it's like, uh, and so I've been trying to be like, how do we have success with our Facebook groups? I didn't know. Um,

And what's interesting is in my inner circle, the last two inner circle meetings, everyone here, basically to be in the inner circle, you have to be, have made at least a million dollars. You have to win a two comic award to be able to apply to be in the groups. Everyone here is successful. They've all won a two comic award. They're all successful.

They're doing good things. And everyone has a chance to master my network. And then based on what's happening over the event, the people have the best presentations, come on stage and share what they did, how they did it. And the person I'm going to introduce you guys to during today's podcast interview actually went...

in the last two times in a row won the contest where she was on stage explaining her Facebook group strategy because it's so cool and it's unique and it's different and it's a way to get a lot of traffic for free. Again, she's got 850,000 people in Facebook group on an email list and she didn't pay Zuckerberg anything for that, which is crazy.

This is also something if you're just getting started, that's powerful, right? If you're working on a funnel, working on a product or something and you're like, who am I going to sell this to when it's done? Right? If you follow the process, you're going to learn today's episode. You can start a Facebook group, get people in there. So by the time your product's ready, you already have an audience who's ready and willing to listen to what you have to say. So this is something, if you're a beginner, it's going to be powerful. If you're advanced marketer, it's going to be amazing as well. Um,

And so I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Ms. Christina Rowe. And it's going to be a lot of fun. So let's jump right into how to grow your company with Facebook groups. Thank you.

What's up, everybody? I'm excited today to be talking to you guys about traffic and lead generation through a different, unique method that our guest has mastered. I'm excited to interview her to find out exactly how she's doing it. So her name is Christina Rowe. She's been in my inner circle for a while now. In the last two inner circle meetings, everyone breaks down. We have 100 really high-level entrepreneurs in these rooms and interviews.

Everyone has a chance to go and mastermind individually. And then in each of the rooms, people vote on who had the best idea or the best way to grow their companies and things like that. And two times in a row, you've won. Come on stage and share it with everybody. And I've been in the back, and I kind of hear you talking about it. I'm trying to take notes, but it's hard to understand. And so I pulled you aside today to find out all the stuff for me and for everyone who's listening about how you have done that, which is going to be exciting. So I'm excited. Well, thank you, Russell, for having me. I'm excited. I just love to talk about Facebook groups.

because I believe they're the greatest lead generator that you can have for free organically. It's

It's interesting because most Facebook, at least for us, it costs so much money. And also on top of it, we've built a group. We have like 300,000 people in our group and we're not making any money off of it at all. So I'm like, there's something I'm doing wrong for sure and something you're doing right for sure. I guess my first question is, how did you, I should just go back a little more so people don't know who you are. Tell us about your business, how you got started into the whole world of online marketing. Sure. So in my former life, I call it, I used to own a hair and nail salon way back in New Jersey.

And when I got divorced and sold that, I decided to write a book about divorce. And it was called Seven Secrets to a Successful Divorce. And it was for women. So I had a choice. It was 2006, whether to try to get a publisher and then this thing called online marketing. So I went down that route and loved it. And then other people started saying, oh, can you help me with your business? Help me.

me, coach me, teach me how to do it. And so I've been like, you know, old school back when we had FrontPage. We didn't have ClickFunnels, right? You guys do not realize how it was back then. Because I used FrontPage all the way until ClickFunnels was launched. Like that was the same way. I loved FrontPage. Yeah. It was like, yeah, that was my first funnel builder.

And so then I started a women's organization in South Florida when I moved there. And that's how I got involved with eventually creating the Facebook group. So the original group, it was mainly 1,000 women from South Florida. It's called the Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs.

And then it started to just grow. It started more women started to join lots of conversations. And I know it's all organically or do you do anything to make it grow? Oh, that was just all started all organically. Word of mouth. A lot of members inviting other women. And the key was it was the engagement, because I think two things. It's the engagement and the name of the group.

The group being Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs, when people searching Facebook looking like women are looking for help, they're going to put women entrepreneurs and like Facebook's little bots go out and will show your group based on your keywords. And that's why you'll see in groups you ever notice, you'll see, it'll say, you'd like to join this group. So it's just all, you know, recommending other groups that you may like.

So I think that's what helped kickstart it in the beginning. And then it started taking off. And I realized at the time I was doing coaching, personal coaching, and so were everyone else in my group.

So I was like, okay, I can't compete with my own members. So I took a step back and decided to create a new model for the group. And I did a continuity membership program where I allow the women to promote their businesses in the group. To the other women internally? Yes. And that's what really started making it explode because the women were using it to grow their own businesses. And to this day, that's what they do. So now we're up to 850,000 women.

And, yeah, so all over the world. It's amazing. So many different countries. And it's just been incredible. And, you know, a lot of those women have invited. You know, that's a great way to get members to your group is to ask your members, you know, if you love the group, share it. I've never done a contest, but I know group members who've done contests, you know, invite as many people and get them in.

But you don't need a giant group to make money with Facebook groups. That's a big myth. People think you need this big, giant group. I mean, I know people, members of mine who've had very small groups that made millions of dollars. There's maybe 3,000 people or a couple hundred people. They'll do very well. So, you know, it's just the right people. That's the most important thing, getting them into your group, your right target market. Interesting. So...

So outside of like creating it and it started growing organically and stuff like that, was there ever a spot where you're buying ads or pushing? I know some people do do that, right? We haven't done that, but I think people, there's ways to buy ads as well, also grow the group as well, right? There is now. I have never done that for my group personally, but there are, there's a brand new feature that came out about six months ago. It's called promote your group. Like you'll see it under your manage section. Like you'll look and it'll say promote group. And basically it's like boosting your Facebook group.

So, it'll populate with your about section of your group and then it'll allow you to pick your audience. The key with that, I have a lot of smaller groups as well. Like we have different countries, different states, like we're all over with groups. I've lost count of how many groups I have. I don't even know how many more. But I've tested it out in my smaller groups. And I've gotten some really high quality members. Like for example, right now I'm doing, because we're having an event in London in May. So, I have a UK group.

So I just went into there, did promote group and I changed the about section a little bit up, you know, just made it shorter. And then it mentioned that we're having getting together, made it more like, you know, join this community. And then I targeted, you know, women at a certain age who are in London area. And then I picked like coaches, you know, coaches, that demographic. And I've been getting tons those couple of days, tons of new members. And I put $100 into it.

I did this with my Arizona group, and I think I spent $100 on like a 51 women, women entrepreneurs who make over $100,000 into the group with email addresses. So it could be very powerful. What's that? That's $2 a lead? Am I math right on that? I think, yeah, about $2 a lead. Yeah. I think because it's a newer feature, Facebook isn't charging as much for it. I did try it on being more vague in a different group, and it didn't work as well. So I think you have to really –

but be very specific in location wise. Like don't try to do the ad for like a whole bunch, the whole United States at once, like target it and test it, you know, and be very specific. And then Facebook will go out and show it to people. And then I think a better thing to do, and I haven't done this yet is to put something really irresistible lead magnet in the ad. So, you know, cause they're going to see join group on the bottom. So if you give some ethical bribe and then they can only access it by getting in the group, um,

they'll be more apt to join the group as well. - Interesting. Okay, so I wanna understand your model then. So you've got your huge group

And then you have the little group. Is this all feeding the same business? Are they all different businesses? What's the model look like? Oh, same business. So it's the Standout Online Membership Program. So I started out, for years it was $97 a month. Now it's $197. And that gives them the ability to, you know, they get to promote in the business. They get promotional posts. They go live. They get other features like live.

spotlights and, you know, directory and all that stuff. So that's the main, everything feeds into that. And plus I have courses and all that other stuff, but everything, all the local groups, you know, feed into the, to the big group. So you local group to find the people locally, then you push them from there into the bigger group. Yeah. So like a lot of, yeah, they've all pushed in. They all go into the, you know, into the order responders, you know, every new member comes in, get the emails. Not everybody's going to give you an email, but we still, people ask me, do you still accept them? Well, we do.

And so they all go into the welcome, you know, series of emails. And then in the part of that will be to convert them into becoming a paid member. So that's been the model of just, you know, driving them all back to the main group to promote. So I was actually, before we started the interview, I actually found your sales letters reading it to see how you were doing it and saw that was like $197 a month they get to do.

They promote inside the group. So basically they go – they're doing Facebook Lives and they're stuff like – so I'm curious. Does it make the group crazy when you have – I don't know how many members you have, but they're all posting stuff all the time or is that just to create some engagement? What's it feel like inside? I'm not a female entrepreneur, so I haven't snuck in yet. I don't know how to get in the group, but –

I want to know what's happening. Yeah, we have only women. But yeah, so we do schedule out the lives. So we try to not like, you know, have like maybe a 15 minute overlap. Posts though, you know, they can post whenever they want. They're all on pre-approval. Anybody who becomes a paid member gets pre-approval. And what really works are call to action, like two step posts. That's what's really does phenomenal in group.

So it's giving something of high value away for free. This is what the women do. They're like, I have made, created, you know, this training, I got X result with it, you know. So I made, you know, $780,000 doing this and, you know, here's my free training. Who wants it before I make it paid?

Me, me, me. Then in the comments, everybody's saying yes. And then they'll go in and respond to those and either lead them to their own Facebook group or to the beginning of their funnel. And I like to say leading them to your Facebook group is a very powerful way to grow your Facebook group.

Because once, if you're giving them that training, once they get the three questions, they have to give you the email because you'll say, well, we need your email. We can't send you what, you know, the training. We need your email. So now you've got them both. You've got them in, you know, you're going to get, put them into your, into your autoresponder and you're also getting them into your group. So chances are then when they're, if they're acting interactive, they'll see in the feed, the Facebook feed, they'll see your group.

So it's like a double whammy. Right. I'm assuming that all these women who are posting to just helps the group, like the quality of the group, getting more people, like it shows them people's feeds more often. So it increases the value and all that kind of stuff from as well. Right. Yeah. It's because it's because engagement, like, you know how the algorithm works for groups or for posts or anything is like the more you like or comment, Facebook says, okay, you like that. We're going to show you more of that. So,

So that's what happens inside of groups is that they see, okay, you like that group. You've just asked, you know, five, ten people. You just said, yes, I want that. Or are you having a conversation? I mean, we have a lot of posts, too, that are very help. People want help. You know, like I'm ready to quit. I'm so frustrated with my business. What do I do? And then everybody rallies and, you know, and.

So those are really nice, you know, the value type posts. But these posts that are on like the color backgrounds that are the short, you know, call to action posts, those you tend to see those first in the group because they're the ones getting massive amounts like thousand, 2000 comments, you know, just huge reach because people are excited to get those, you know, lead magnets. Yeah. So cool. Yeah.

Am I allowed to ask how many members you have paying for that? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we, we have close to a thousand, I believe. Yeah. About a thousand. And then do you ever, I'm just imagining on my side, like my thinking, like how could I implement this and what I'm doing? Like, do you have people who sign up for it and they start, I don't know, it

In my world, there's a lot of people who are like, I don't want them talking to my audience. They're going to spam them. They're going to do stuff like that. Do you have any of those kind of issues that you have to deal with and kick people out or whatever, or is it not too bad? Well, we get issues with women fighting. Oh, yeah. We have a lot of moderators. We have 17 moderators in the group, and we have very strict rules. They'll spam each other's comments. Somebody who's paying will have a post, and they'll come in and try to pervade in the comments, and immediately they're warned and then kicked out. But they'll...

More of an issue used to be is the, you know, we have to have very strict rules. There's no politics. There's no, you know, you cannot talk about, I mean, they'll fight over anything. They fought over the Barbie movie. Okay. Yes. We had fights. Oh, yeah. They'll just, I mean, crazy things. You'll be like, what? Like, why are these women fighting? Because women can get, you know, when they're in conversations. So we have to be like on top of it at all times. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I imagine when they're going live and stuff. So you said you schedule out when they're able to go live. So if you have a thousand people, is a thousand lives a month happening? Well, you know, not everybody takes it, you know, right? It's like people join and some of them don't want to go live ever. They don't want to be live. So some of them will ask, can we just do two posts? You know, we will allow that. Or they'll just, you know, they won't go live at all. So we haven't had that problem where it's just too many people, such as so many people in the group, such a large group that...

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So your students, other people you know who you've trained on this, are they doing the same model where they're letting their members go live? Or is it just focusing on building groups for other purposes or both? Well, it was interesting. So when I started this and we started the group in October 2016 and the membership model, I think it was the beginning of 2018. So since then, there's been several of my members who have grown their groups to maybe 100,000, 50,000, 70,000 who have now taken my model and they're doing my model.

So they're feeding from my group, paid members to their group, and we've got members who are paying for all of our groups. So it's like a little network. And I've actually did Zooms with several of these women. I'm like, we've got to collaborate somehow on this. They'll figure out the idea, how we can do something together. But it's interesting. So it's like a network of women who have decided that this is a great model. But, yeah, many members come into my group, and they'll quickly build their group up to huge levels by just simple things.

asking questions like, you know, a question just like we have a member who just asked like, who here wants to meet on Zoom on Thursdays and have coffee and collaborate? You know, let me know. And then all these people, oh my God, yes, yes. And then she's inviting them to her Facebook group and getting them in. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, so I'm thinking about it now. So we have a business we're launching. It's called understand. I mean, you may know about it. It's a personality thing, but I'm trying to figure out, cause I feel like that would be a really cool place to have a group. Cause everyone in there sharing there, I, you know, like here's my personnel, here's my desk, here's my 16, you know, it can be fun engagement anyway. Um, I'm just like, if I was to hire you to consult me, like what would you look like? How would you, what would you try to do with something like that? The group like that? Well, I first want to identify, you know, who the exact target market of people that you want in to the group.

And then I would base, do some searches. First thing I always do when I tell anybody to do this is like, okay, think exactly who is the person looking for a group like that? Like, you know, what will they be thinking when they're searching in the search bar to join a community? Because everybody joins communities because they want to be with like like-minded people or they want like answers to questions. So you have to be and put yourself in their shoes and then see when you put those, you know, that search and what hit groups, what's coming up.

What groups are coming up? And then you could quickly see the ones with a lot of members and the ones that, you know, maybe are flopping and you just look and see. And you'll get an idea of what to name it because that's really important, the name. The name is number one. And then your about section, you wanted to load it up with, you know, all the keywords related to the person that you're trying to target and to niche to. Okay.

And so that would be the step number one to create the group that way. And then once you have that, then you would, you know, again, you'd want to start, you know, drawing in people into the group, even for your personal profile. So doing the two-step post that I just spoke about, you do it on your personal profile. And where they're going to get whatever you're giving away on that concept will be inside that group.

So it'll drive people from your personal profile. So you get the initial surge of people in there. Yes. That's my fear is like you start an ad and like the first person signs in, they're the first member. It's like, oh no. Oh, right, right, right. Yes, yes. It's like a ghost town, like am I in the wrong spot here? Yeah, you want to actually plant some people in there first. You had to get the conversation going and people always want to talk about themselves. So if you have a group and you start asking them questions about, in three words, what do you do? People love to answer that. Or even where do you live? People love to ask.

Anytime you're getting them, each time they're like voting for your group because they're commenting or engaging, it's going to be more engagement. Facebook gets the single. So this is a good group. This is something people want to see. I'll recommend it more. And that's where it really comes into, you know, getting your Facebook to do the work, the heavy lifting for you for free.

be showing your group, you know, and we did have, um, we were lucky and fortunate. We were one of the Facebook commercials. If you remember the commercials. Yeah, we did. We have, um, they asked me and they did, um, two or three versions of a commercial for us and even a radio spot, which I did the voiceover for, which was really exciting. Um,

I'm curious, did you get traction from radio and TV to the group? Were you able to see people coming in? Yeah, I mean, I guess they were coming. We just get them so many members all the time. But there was a little uptick in that time period, yeah, when they were running the commercials. It was just really cool. I remember that happened. I remember sitting there and I was watching –

TV and some ad came up for a, for Facebook group. Maybe it was when you're, but I was like, how crazy that Facebook's advertising groups on TV. I remember thinking that like, that like, this must be something big that like, we're not even aware of or not paying attention to if they're buying TV ads to promote it, which is interesting. It's interesting because the, I was invited in 2019 before COVID early to, to the Facebook community summit, which was at in Menlo park at

Facebook. So it was thrilling to actually be there. You know, I had to make a post, you know, I'm posting on Facebook while I'm at Facebook. And so that was super cool. And so they do those virtually now, but they were very invested in community. I think Zuckerberg had said at one point, you know, the heart of Facebook is the communities and it there's I think 1.8 billion people in Facebook groups.

So that's where, you know, you say, well, Facebook is for old people or, you know, you get all of that, but people still go for groups and maybe your family and your friends. I think they get the most engagement from groups and that's why they've been invested in it. Yeah.

Now, next question I have is I'm thinking about logistically, like we have our big ClickFunnels group, right? Which is similar to your big group. And when you start talking about the fact that you have these little ones in different cities, I was like, oh, how cool that'd be if we had like funnel hacker meetups or funnel hacker or entrepreneur groups in each city. But I'm curious, how do you manage all that? Like,

Like one group's hard off managing. I can't imagine if we had 12 or 20 or a hundred, like, oh yeah. How do you, how do you do it right now with all the multiple groups? Well, I do have, you know, we have volunteers. That's your biggest thing is to get volunteers. A lot of my moderators just volunteer because they love the group. So in that case for you, I mean, you have people volunteering to be leaders, like make them into a leadership position for, you know, who wants to be a leader for whatever town you're in. And then you facilitate that. And this is what, you know, you're going to moderate the group. You're going to

spend X amount of time in the group per week, and then whatever perks you want to give them. You know, one of the things we did with, and this worked really well, was now when somebody posts, right, we have to approve every single post. So if you're not a paying member and you try to promote in the group, we have our moderators tell, you know, you have to pay, but I let them give their affiliate link. So now when they decline posts,

people are, oh, okay, I have to pay and they're joining. And so they're actually making money. Oh, you have the moderator. Yes. Okay. Yes. And that motivates them. So they make money. They're making good money by just putting, and it's exciting for them to decline people. Yeah, come stand on our group as much as you want. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Here's my link. Yes. So that's a motivation. Like anytime you can motivate people by giving them any sort of perks or benefits to work for free. Yeah. For sure.

That's, that's really cool. Interesting. And then is there, let's say it's a smaller local, like you said, you're doing an event in, you say London? Yes. Yes. So like that group either long-term or is it something where you're doing right now, getting people there and you're going to use that to do the thing and then you'd close it down or just keep running out indefinitely? That's,

been there, that group, the UK group. It's a smaller group. I think it has about 3,000 people in it. And I haven't really paid much attention to it until now, since until I'm doing an event in there. And now I'm engaging with the members. And that's really important too. Now I'm spending time in there asking questions. And one really powerful feature, I don't know if you guys use it in ClickFunnels group, is the new chat feature for groups. I don't think we have it.

You might, you should look, you should probably do have the ability to add a chat. And so for some reason, you know, you have a big group or not everybody's getting alerted to everything, but chats have cool feature with it. So you can invite like your most engaged members and there's, you can click when you start the chat and it'll say, so invite the most engaged members of the group.

What's really cool is the events for groups. They have a brand new feature that's in there a lot of people don't know about. So when you do an event through your group, so now you have the event and you want to invite people. And there's a feature that says invite people who are not in the group, which I've never seen before. So you can actually invite friends and stuff who are not actually in your group.

to this event. So how you could use that is if you want to get more group members, you know, you put the training again in the group that's for the event, the free training, and now you invite other people that are there and they can now go in and get in. And they also have a new feature in there called message friends and it's in bulk. So if you have friends in the group, you could pick all at once and send a personalized message through messenger.

So you can message a bunch of your friends. Is this just you as the admin or is that each member internally can also do that? Oh, no, this is just the admin. That's for that. And the and so that and also so the events have their own chat feature. And so does your group itself that you can get people in and that gets a lot of talking. You have to be careful, though, because people love to spam. Oh, my God.

You say no spamming. Oh, my business, my business, especially in the business world. It's yeah, I've shut a lot of them down. Especially where your people go and they're used to being able to promote inside the group. The ones who are not members, you know, they just want to spam, you know, because they think, oh, this is my opportunity, you know, which it's not. Let's have conversations, right? But they could be great when people start talking, you know, in smaller groups, like when you get real conversations going, getting to know each other, and then they want to come back to the main group because, you know, it's a value to them. Interesting. Yeah.

I'm thinking about in our world, we keep talking about like, we want to break off and do local events all over the country and the world potentially anyway. But I was like, this weird chicken and the egg, like, how do we do that? How do we find the right person? And I'm just thinking through this, like how cool it'd be if we did have, if we started at the Facebook group level and we have all these different groups and find out which ones have the most activity or whoever's hosting, moderating, whatever it is,

Then we could start doing local events and have like there's the group that's already pre-built and then from there it's like, oh, we're going to meet. We're all going to hang out or whatever. Oh, that is a great idea. Which would be kind of fun. Yeah.

I love that. That is so powerful because in two, when you use, if you want to even use to promote your group feature locally, like, like I did with Arizona, I just picked three little cities in Arizona close by. And it was just like, boom, getting in these highly qualified people. And people love that. People want to, you know, everybody feels like all zoomed out, right? We want to get back in person. So by doing that in local communities and bringing ClickFunnels all over the country, like

that, that would be so powerful. It'd be really cool. Oh yeah. People would absolutely go crazy for that because then they can meet each other and network. Yeah. And I don't know if you, you know, Pace Morby is. Yes. Yes. He's amazing. Pace is amazing. One of the coolest things he does is he has meetups happening all over. I don't know how he created, how he did initially, but every weekend there's a meetup like 50 or 60 around the country and then he randomly will fly to each two different ones and speed up. No idea if he's going to come. And then if they do, he'll find the head coordinators. Like I'm going to be in, I'm going to be in Tampa tonight. Uh, tell everybody. And then, uh,

He'll show up and there'll be 800,000 people who all show up and spend all day there hanging out. I was like, I want to figure out how to replicate that. But again, it was like, how do we start building those groups initially? And I think that doing it through Facebook initially and seeing where the pockets of like inner excitement are at and stuff like that could be the way to do it.

And just seeing which states are most active. Like we have, you know, ones with 6,000, 7,000, 5,000, you know, depending on the state or area. Do you have one in each state right now for yours? Not every single state, but the major ones. You know, we have Florida, Texas, California. We do have the small. I mean, we have so many of them. Did Idaho make it? Did we make the cut? No. You're a man. Hi.

We got to make a man, but yeah, the, um, but that would be phenomenal for you though. Cause I could see that, you know, people would really love to join their local, you know, a group in say Arizona, the ClickFunnels Arizona group, and then have knowing that you might show up would be like really cool. Oh yeah. They'd be so excited. Interesting.

Man, there's some ideas that run through my head right now as we're talking. It's hard to ask questions. I'm thinking about how I can apply it. Let me think some more. What are the things that I may be forgetting or not thinking about? If I was going to go deeper, someone who's listening is just like, I want to go deep on this. I want to start creating my own group or groups. What are the other things that they're probably not thinking about? Well, the power of other people's groups, right? So going into other people's groups and building your own group with that.

And there's some, you know, I won't mention names of anything, but there's some really cool software. And I'm actually going to be a white lady and want one that actually does something really crazy. You can literally get like, go to a group and get all the members out like their IDs and then run ads.

So like, yeah, that's super cool. So you could go to a group. I'll give you an example. My daughter has a product for golden retrievers. It's called the Healthy Golden Supplement. So she needs golden retriever owners. But that's a hard niche even with ads because it's like people like golden retrievers, but it doesn't mean they have one in their house. But there are Facebook groups for golden retriever owners. So she can go in there, go to the members list.

And then it will import into a pipeline all of the members. And then you can export that, run it to Facebook, you know, to the Facebook ads. Then use the promote group feature. Go in and invite all those people to your group. Oh, that's cool. So now you're getting in your group. And they're exactly, I was all geeked out. I was like, oh my God, I can do this. Oh my God. I'm like, this is like so awesome. This should be illegal, right? Yeah.

That is really cool. Now, do you go, like, you have these groups, are you spending time in them? Are you posting, you do anything? Or is it just kind of all member run user generated content at this point? You know, it's very highly user generated, the group. I do though, I do, you know, I'll do webinars or I'll do lives, you know, and like a lot of times I'll restream them back, you know, use restream and stream to all the groups.

Now, unfortunately, that's going away and it's apps. Facebook's taking away all the apps for groups, right?

I don't know if you heard about that. So no more scheduling groups, no more Zoom live streams, restreams, unless they figure something out. There'll probably be a lot of go-arounds to that. But it's been a great feature to be able to do that. But you could still use Live Producer. It's a little more complicated. That's Facebook's version, right? Yeah, Facebook has Live Producer, which actually has some cool benefits on that too. Like you can pin a post so when you go live, like your first comment has the link to your product. Right.

And you can promote your groups automatically while you're going live with Live Producer. They ask you which group do you want to promote in your live. So there's some cool features with that as well. With Live Producer, can you push the multiple groups at once or just one at each time? You know, I've been using it through, I think, well, you could still use something like Restream because you put that key in, that RTMP key. So I think you could still use a software like you were talking about Live Pigeon or Restream. You probably can still use that.

You just can't like go through an app like inside of it. You know how you add all the apps to your group. You're not going to be able to do that. Gotcha. Which, yeah. Very cool. Do you love the Marketing Secrets Podcast, but you don't love listening to the ads? If so, we've got great news. We just launched an ad-free version of the podcast you can get subscribed to for just $4.99 per month. As one of our premium members, you have ad-free content that seamlessly integrates with your favorite podcast listening app like Spotify or Apple.

This is an exclusive offer just for our fans of the Marketing Secrets Podcast to help give you an even better listening experience. If you want to get the premium version, all you got to do is look at the show notes or the episode description to get a link for how you can upgrade to premium. Now, I know when people do join a Facebook group, you ask the question to get them on an email list. Um,

I'm assuming that's a big part of your strategy is list building through this whole process as well. And then is your goal with that, do you push people back into the group? Do you push them just the membership? Or what's the strategy with the list you're building on the backside? Well, you always want to push them, you know, always back to your group for engagement. Like even if you're doing a training or anything in the group, you want to, you know, get them back in, say it's inside the group. And one of the things I tell people to use like a deep link thing like URL genie,

genius to like cloak it so that when so frustrating, you get that email, Oh, meet me in the group and you open it and now you're not logged in. You're like, Oh, forget it. I forgot my password. Right. So that like, we'll get you right in. So that's, that's really great. But yeah, so like another thing we've been doing lately is, you know, with pipelines is taking people from the group when they're new members and then tagging them. You know, you, you can do your automatic tagging where Facebook gives you the tag and,

So we put that in admin assist now, so it does it automatically. So every 200 members, it just puts the post out. And we do mention like our membership, listen, this is the rules you can't promote, but if you want to promote here's, and here's our newsletter. And then the other thing we do is have the VA go in and go and tag them in the welcome to the group video.

as well. So they're getting new members are getting hit twice there. And then we can DM them as well and welcome them and then give them a lead magnet. Oh, we got, you know, this automated webinar or something. We give them to get them in and move them through the pipeline. So that's the way to get them on the backend is to use, you know, to use something like that. Yeah. That's awesome. Um,

man, I like literally so excited right now to go like relook at our, again, we don't have a group strategy right now that, and we've got a big group and we're trying to moderate and like keep people stop spamming. It's almost like it's been chaos. Like parts like we should shut this thing down because we didn't know how to use it as an asset correctly. You know what I mean? Um,

And it's a huge asset. Yeah, it could and it should. I mean, there's more members in our Facebook group than we have members using the platform. So it's like, how do we get these people to become users of the platform? And how do we buy them, give them buy-in more into our culture and all that kind of stuff? And right now, it's just been more reactionary. Just like, what did we create? And we never promoted either. It was literally when we first launched ClickFunnels.com.

we never support people to handle support. So it was like click on support. Like give a question, post in here. We can all members help each other. That's how it started. Now we're at 350,000 members or whatever. Like what do we do? We don't know what to do at this point. You know, there's so many people coming in spamming and it's just been a, just to keep it going really hard. Yeah. And that's been an issue with Facebook groups in general. Like you'll see those telegram spammers and stuff too. And like, you're like, how did these people get in? It was like, you wonder like,

I've heard they're using bots. They're using AI to get in. They steal profiles. So that's a thing we deal with on a basis, too. And we always ask the members to report the spam because sometimes they'll block the admins and all the moderators. And then you won't know. And then the members have to tell us. We'll say, because we can't remove them until somebody reports them and then we can see it.

So, yeah, it's a whole thing. Yeah, that's a whole thing. But it's still such a great opportunity for the new members coming in, you know, to put them through a process where, you know, you're moving them along and you're, you know, getting

getting them from the get go and giving them new resources and exciting things so they can learn ClickFunnels. Yeah. So interesting. I was thinking about the people that are doing all the spamming and stuff. Like if you just took the same effort and ingenuity and just sold legitimate things, you'd be the best markers on the planet. Like all the loopholes they have to go through to like,

to spam people, which then it's like the success rate on that kind of stuff can't be that high. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's like, um, Mr. James has, uh, there's a, you know, contact him. It's like crazy stuff that they put there. Like, you know, it's like so spammy and like everybody knows that spam, but then there'll be people who comment on that. I'm like, no, oh my gosh, come on. Yeah.

How did you fall for that? Yeah, how did you fall for it? Like, you know, it's what people do, unfortunately. Yeah, so cool. I think this is awesome because I think, again, we're in a world right now, at least for us, where it's like Zuckerberg's charging so much money for ads. We're trying to figure out other ways, other things to do. And so for us, it's been, you know, we've been redoubling down all the organic things that we're trying to, you know, focusing on an email list and stuff like that. And so this is just such a unique, different thing. And again, I haven't met anyone in our community who's really,

crushing it with groups besides you. So it's been fun to see, to like watch what you're doing and understanding it. And, um, and so this has been super helpful for me to kind of figure out some ideas how we can, we can, you know, take the asset we have and actually monetize it correctly. But then secondarily is like, what's the future? Like, how could we create, you know, like we talked about the groups or things like that, or even just some of our other businesses that are coming in, you know, with, with our personality profiling company or with Dan Kennedy's company, like creating them, um,

I've always looked at groups as like such a powerful tool, but also when it's like so scary that we just kind of like, ah, it's like a necessary evil that we're not, you know, right. To have somebody dedicated to it. I mean, definitely even with secret success, you've got all the mindset people, that's a whole niche in itself. And that should be community.

Yeah.

And that's the whole thing. It's like we have to understand that people are in groups for community. So as marketers, we always want to be marketing. Or I see the mistake coaches will make when they start a group. They'll make it all about them. It's one-sided, and then people lose interest in the group. It's got to be user-generated. Members have to be interacting and being allowed to speak and to be able to connect with other people because that's the reason that they're going to groups. They don't care so much about the group itself.

But then they will see your stuff, and if it's an enjoyable place, they'll buy. So it's got to get a little bit of a different – it's really creating a community. That's the main thing with it. Are there people –

Like you can hire someone to run Facebook ads, you can hire someone to run social media. Is that a thing where you can hire people to run Facebook groups for you to manage all the stuff you're talking about? Or is it something that's different where most people are just doing it on their own? I mean it depends on what level. Like on your own as far as strategy-wise would be at a higher level. But like as far as moderation, yeah, they have – like even you go on Fiverr.

I mean, I had got two, two moderators from Fiverr who were, I've won it. I took both of them off and they both work for me. Yeah. They, they'll say I'm a Facebook group moderator and they've experienced doing that, like moderating, approving. Oh yeah. There's people out there who definitely do that or Upwork that you could find that they've worked with other groups. They know how to do it. And those are the ones, you know, you'd want to, you know, vet and make sure they've good ratings and stuff and bring in until you don't have to worry about, like, I don't touch any of that.

Thank God. Yeah. Cause when originally, but they didn't even have that. We have software that puts the group members right into, you know, uploads them, puts them to, um, you know, wherever you want to send them the emails. But when it started, I had my hand, I would sit there for hours taking each group member, putting their name, their email address in a spreadsheet. Really? Till my hand was ready. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

It was terrible. Yeah. Until then, like group funnels came out and this and that where it just shoots everything up. And there's so many different softwares that do that now, which is makes life a lot easier, especially when you're getting a lot of members. So a lot of it could be automated actually with the technology that we have now, thankfully.

Man, that's so cool. So the moderators you're paying from Fiverr and stuff, do you still pay them or do you just give them the affiliate commission when they're promoting stuff or both? Well, the two I have, they do, those two don't get the affiliate. They do more other things in the business too. So like we have, you know, we have two people just do approvals. The moderators who like moderate and approve or decline posts, those are the ones that do the, they get the affiliate commission.

because they're in there like having to review because every single post has to be reviewed. So when you're getting a massive amount, it's a lot of work. So their incentive, they don't get paid. They make money getting commission. On the back end, are they able to see who's a paid member versus a free member when they're seeing the reviews? Is there a way to see that or do they have to manually look at each person? Oh, yes. So like all of our paid members get a pre-approval and we also make them group experts. So they've got the group expert badge.

That's how they know. Yeah. And then they know, too, like they're supposed to put for standout member. They put SOM in the post because other members will start reporting them for spam, but they're allowed to promote. So they put that, you know, at that little tag. But they love and forget to do that. So, yeah. But, yeah, you want to identify to who's, you know, but the moderators, you know, will know that those people are on that list. You know, in the back end of Facebook, you can see.

who has pre-approval and who doesn't. Is it possible if someone, like they canceled their $197 membership that it automatically would

downgrade or whatever or that is it like a manual thing someone's got to go oh we got to manually go in oh yeah yeah we got especially you know with memberships you know people take credit cards or they don't pay and then you got to go in and yeah you got to go in and and what we'll do is like you know it's say they haven't paid and they still post so we'll take the post down we'll put the note for them you gotta update your billing and

you know, so it's a whole, whole other, a beast. Yeah. Somebody doing that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, that's what continuity, you know, reoccurring membership. That's the part of the part of the business, right? Especially with my, we have to manually go and take away the pre-approval when they cancel.

So yeah, it's not, yeah, it's not fun. Oh, it's so cool. Well, thank you so much for sharing the stuff. I think hopefully for anyone who's like struggling on traffic, especially people who are just getting started, it's like, I can't afford to pay $10 a lead to Facebook, right? It's like, Hey, we'll make a group, start getting people in there. And all of a sudden leads are coming in for free or really inexpensive. And then it gives people the ability to have an audience to actually sell to and to talk to. Exactly. Yeah. You just go out, you know, get your group, start off small, get the

bring the right people. Don't worry about making a giant target niche it, create it for the group and then go into other groups where you can. You know, there's a lot of ones that do allow paid memberships. There's ones that don't that you can ask the moderate, Hey, I'll pay you. You know, you can even, you know, buy Facebook groups, um,

I don't know if that's legal for Facebook, but people do it. They buy Instagram accounts and stuff too. You get access to it through a business or something. I know people have done that and actually got built in audiences that way. But going to other groups that you can with your target market and inviting them to your group is just a really powerful way.

to grow your group and through your personal profile as well. Yeah. Such a cool thing. Again, I think it's like one of the best, like let's get started strategies, right out of the gate. Like everyone that should be like create a group, start getting people in there. Now you have an audience. That's the biggest problem people tell me is like, I bought, I created, I built a funnel. I created a product and like,

I have no one to sell to. And like, I can't buy ads, can't afford them yet. What should I do? And I'm like, ah, so that's the hardest part, right? The hardest part of like, as you're creating your product, create the group right now, start, start building it, start nurturing it, tell stories about what you're studying or, you know, whatever it is that get them excited about your content, your concept. And then at that point,

By the time your stuff's done, there'll be people who can actually, who will care, right? Exactly. And that's the thing, you know, like you just said, telling the stories, getting to know people in your group and not worrying that, you know, like people have, we have this thing, oh my gosh, only a hundred people. So am I real? Or, well, if a hundred people were in your living room right now, would you think that's a little bit amount, even 50 people, you'd be like, wow, if you were in person, but everybody has these hangups and they don't pay attention, they don't need to rock back.

And I think that's, you know, if you have a very tiny group, you can still do very well with that and grow it. You just have to nurture and spend your time and give tons of value to the people that are there who are showing up and, you know, and make it about them more than you in the beginning so that it like, you know, they become interested and want to come back and give them tons of value. Yeah, that's really cool.

Oh, you got me excited. Okay. Every business we're going back re-engineering our group strategy is going to become big. Oh, I can see it being made, especially the local groups that once you run the promote to group ad, like getting people in there locally. I mean, it's so easy to do to people who like the certain interests that you know already. And you just run those ads right to the group because it's, it's like, it's just says join group on the ad. They're not going to a funnel. They don't have to give their email address. All they do is press the button and they're in the group.

So I think it's easy. Lower barrier. You almost run the group like that because our big question too is like, do we find someone in Arizona and in Florida to do it? But it's almost like you create the group and then I'm assuming those people rise to the top, right? They're the ones who are commenting, who are moderating, who are always there. And it's like, you find out who the leaders are by them being a leader versus, you know, I have a friend who does something similar, but he...

He sold access. People were buying their cities. But then the person who bought the city wasn't actually the person who was good at running it or anything. They just thought the opportunity. And so like the whole thing crumbled because he had the wrong people. Whereas this way around, I feel like you could do that. And also you start seeing who the rock stars are and then you can approach them like, Hey, do you want to run a local meetups now? You know, whatever that, that version is.

Yeah, you'll see who the people rise. Yeah, you always see that in groups, who's commenting all the time, who's posting, who's, you know, the natural leaders will, and then you could approach them and say, listen, would you, you know, like to be the leader? And they probably thrilled. And then, you know, and then if or you didn't necessarily, yeah, you could find the locally, which is great, because then they live there, and then they can do the meetups, you know.

and find the locations and be the ambassador for that city and town. And it's a great benefit for them because it puts them in a position of authority, give them a badge to put, you know,

That they're the official ambassador or leader. You give each of those ambassadors the right to like use their affiliate links for ClickFunnels or whatever to all the members. Like you sign up everybody now in your queue. That could be cool. Right. At their events, that could be the goal. See, that would be the key. Like literally the event they're having, they sign everybody up that night and now they're getting all the affiliate commission on it. So that's more and more motivating.

Oh, so cool. All right. I got to go home now and just work on this. Like this is number one thing. So, uh, well, thank you so much for sharing all this stuff. So those, if anyone wants to see your group in action, where can they, how can they go find it? What's the best? Sure. So the group, you just go to women, helping women dot group.com.

And that's where you'll find Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs. That's another tip. Get a URL for your group. I know there's a doc group extension now. That's exciting. There's a doc group extension. So everyone should have one for your group because this way you can shout it out without the Facebook slash nobody remembers. Oh, that's awesome. And if you're a man, you can't get in the group, I'm assuming. You just boot us out. No men. Yeah. We are all dead to the other thing. My wife's coming in there. You're a white girl. Yes. But you could have any woman come in to represent you. Yes. That's allowed. Yeah.

That's awesome, man. Thank you so much for coming and sharing this stuff. And yeah, I'm excited for you. I'm proud of you. It's the coolest thing in the world to see. And yeah, hopefully if anyone wants to learn how to do this, follow her, watch what she's doing. Do you teach this to other entrepreneurs as well? Do you have programs teaching this stuff? Oh, yeah, definitely. I have different courses and programs that I teach of how to grow seven-figure communities and Facebook groups.

So yeah, I definitely teach us all in detail. I geek out on all this stuff because it's like, oh my gosh, you can do this. You can do that. All the tools are coming out and how to use them and all that kind of stuff. Oh yeah. That's the fun part, trying to hunt them down and think of what you can do because, you know, Facebook's always changing social media. So you got to keep on top of

Yeah, it's awesome. Thanks so much for being here. Appreciate you. And thanks for sharing this and everyone looking for a way to get traffic to your funnels, building an audience ahead of time for free groups, the way to go. Christina is one who I know who's doing the best. So thanks so much for being here. Thank you, Russell. This is wonderful. I appreciate it. Thank you.