đ˛ Facebook Group Marketing Strategy To Boost Revenue With Christina Jandali đ°
When you are on social media, itâs important to choose a platform and have a marketing strategy for that platform. Having a solid strategy allows you to leverage your strengths and generate profit. In this episode, Adrienne Hill interviews entrepreneur and business growth specialist, Christina Jandali. Christina gives tips on crafting your marketing strategy and discusses social media marketing and why she believes Facebook groups are the best community-based platform. Tune in to learn the ins and outs of social media marketing.
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
đ˛ Facebook Group Marketing Strategy To Boost Revenue With Christina Jandali đ°
I'm here with Christina Jandali. I'm so excited because she is a business growth strategist and an expert in all things, Facebook Groups, creating them, growing them and using them to earn and generate six-figure profits. Welcome, Christina.
Thanks for having me.
For those who maybe haven't met you yet, can you tell me a little bit about your story and your business journey up to now?
I have the privilege of having helped thousands of people growing their Facebook Groups, engaging them and creating successful sales campaigns, and launches within their Facebook Group by creating that deeper connection. As you can imagine, I didnât wake up one day and say, âI want to be a Facebook group expert.â I fell backward into it. When I first started, I spent years in a corporate career in the corporate space. I spent all this time building a career in the financial sector.
When I transitioned into coaching and consulting, and starting an online business, things took a lot longer than I originally expected. I thought, âI would put up this page and everyone was going to sign up for my free gift and I would be building this email list and everyone would want to buy it from me. It's going to be easy," but itâs not quite the way it happened. I remember having a moment of complete frustration, thinking that the numbers that I would set for myself, my goals, I was nowhere near them. I was looking at one page of a piece of paper of what I did and what I had set out to do.
They were not even close. Being driven and ambitious, it was a hard pill to swallow. How could I have done something like built up this career and climb the corporate ladder and here Iâm not doing so well? I remember having a moment like, âMaybe this isnât meant for me. Maybe I should give up. Maybe I should quit. Maybe I should stop.â When I looked at what I was missing instead of looking outside of myself from all those, what made the difference, and what allowed me to create more success in my corporate career, I realized it was about building relationships and connections with people.
Online at the time, it felt cool to me. I would send an email. I would obsessively hit refresh. I was like, âDid they open it? Whoâs looking? Is anyone paying attention?â I was a little bit obsessed with my stats. Itâs like, "People like people, they are numbers,â and it felt cold. I was like, âWhoâs on the other side of this?â I didnât know. I would gradually grow my email list, like one-sies and two-sies at a time. Neither was a better way.
I thought, âHow can I create a deeper connection with my people in a place where itâs leveraged, where I get to do this online?â Thatâs when I started my first free Facebook Group. I went from struggling to try and hit my first five-figure month. I was getting close, getting there but still falling short of opening up my Facebook Group.
I hit $30,000 a month and I was like, âWhat just happened?â I realized I was absolutely onto something. Before long, people started asking me, âWhat are you doing? How are you doing that your group is growing fast? Itâs so engaging. You seem to be doing well and enrolling clients. How are you doing that?â Iâm like, âI donât know. Letâs put this together and systematize what I was doing.â I started sharing with other people what I learned along the way.
People hear the word systems and think that systems have to be complicated but it's breaking down a lot of times what you are already doing so that someone else can follow.
I love this because no one wakes up one day and says, âGuess what? I have come up with this formula. I have come up with this system. Iâve got it all figured out. Now everything is solved.â This is not how it happens. What happens is you do something and it starts working, then you start to realize like, âWhat did I do?â We donât even realize what comes naturally to us and the things that we learn because we assume everyone thinks or operates the way that we do. Thatâs simply not the case at all. Itâs more we go back to after and realize how we put it together.
A community is all about having a safe place where people have the opportunity to have a voice and share and ask questions, too.
For you, your Facebook Group became that catalyst. It made all the difference for you. What's the unique benefit that a Facebook Group brings to the table that you don't necessarily get from other social platforms?
I would say a Facebook Group is the only effective community-based platform thatâs out there. No matter which social platform you are looking at like if you are looking at Instagram, it means Instagram people love it. Itâs hot. To be effective on Instagram, you are spending a lot of time doing Stories. You are doing a lot of DMs. Itâs a lot of time.
Anything that you are posting disappears. Your Stories disappear after 24 hours. Itâs more of a reactionary-based platform. Same with Facebook, even on your business page, itâs more of like a billboard, that business card or the teaser, the window dressing of people wanting to learn more about you making the invitations to come in.
Whereas your Facebook Group is like, âCome on inside. Letâs hang out in my digital living room. Letâs get to know each other. Itâs a two-way conversation,â which is leveraged, by the way. If you are having a conversation with someone in your Facebook Group and you are going back and forth in the comments, guess whoâs watching? The entire group has the ability to be able to see whatâs going on.
They may not be the one thatâs getting supported, coached or talked to but they can put themselves in those shoes. Itâs this ability to be able to create leveraged connection and the opportunity to create a community where itâs not you posting and people responding. Itâs about making it a safe place where people have the opportunity to have a voice, share and ask questions, too.
I love that analogy, the virtual living room because it is. Itâs your own little small space and not everyone can walk into your living room. Itâs people that you invite. I know there are probably tons of readers who have Facebook Groups, one or more, and they have had them for a while. They have never got that epiphany moment like you did or that massive $30,000 a month and they are thinking like, âHow did she do this?â What do you think is the difference between those people who have Facebook Groups that continue to struggle and those who have Facebook Groups like yours that take off? Is there a key nugget there or a key strategy?
There are multiple things that go into it. To put it in perspective too, itâs about community and people. Youâve got to have a clear vision of how you want your members to feel. How do you want to leave them feeling? Whatâs the experience that you want to be able to have for them so that everything that you are planning, that you are doing fits nicely aligned with that.
You can get stuck in the friend zone where you are engaging with everyone and everyone is hanging out. They are all having a good time and everyone is engaging with your stuff. The moment that you put something for sale, people are silent. You could hear a pin drop and they disappear. You could hear crickets. You are wondering, like, âI have been doing all this good work and now itâs come to an end.â
On the flip side, you can have a group where thereâs a host that shows up when they want to sell something, then you never see them in between. It runs more like a booty call. I was like, âIâm ready now. Come on in,â then they disappear and itâs like, âYou leave me hanging here,â like leaving first thing in the morning before I woke up. You left the building.
You donât want to be in those zones and you certainly donât want to have a ghost town group where no one is talking, buying, no one is doing anything. What is it that you need to be able to do that? There are two things that you need to have in place to have a successful group. All of it centers around creating a connection with your audience in alignment with that vision that you have.
You need an engagement. You need a strategy to generate engagement but not like, âDo you like coffee or tea?â Thatâs not leading anyone towards making a buying decision unless you are selling something to do with coffee or tea. If you are asking someone a simple question or when you are asking for engagement, you want engagement where you have the opportunity to get in the head of your ideal clients to make a deeper connection with them. To build credibility, to build authority, to create vulnerability. There needs to be a purpose behind it that you are opening them up to a conversation. You need an engagement mechanism in place so that you are engaging people, connecting with them and learning about them.
Itâs not only a one-way conversation. The second thing that you need to have in place is a sales mechanism. Without a sales mechanism, you donât have a means to predictably convert your members into buyers. A lot of people are like, âShould I do four value posts and one sales post? I was going to do four value posts and one sales post.â You can make some sales that way but wouldnât it be better to have a predictable method that you bring people in?
You run through a series of events like a five-day challenge. You open up through a masterclass. You present out your offer. You sell for a few days, then you go back to the maintenance mode of your group. When you have that sales mechanism in place, you are deliberately bringing people through an experience from being a lead to becoming a buyer for those that you get to serve. You need to have both the engagement and sales mechanisms in place.
It sounds so simple but the undercurrent of everything you are saying, there's this theme of you are not throwing out a random post to get some likes or sales post to see if you get one sale. Every post feeds a longer-term goal or a longer-term purpose. In every sales post, it's the same thing. There's the long-term play and the short-term play, and you are thinking about both as you are setting those up, it sounds like.
Otherwise, you can be pouring out. Hereâs one big takeaway here. You will kill engagement and sales if all you are doing is pumping out tips and how-tos of content because thatâs overwhelming people. Itâs like they are trying to drink from the fire hose. They canât keep up. They donât know where to go. They donât know what to do. Itâs not building a relationship. They may be great information, but then you feel like you have run dry. You have given everything away and they are feeling like, âThey canât possibly keep up.â Thatâs probably the biggest mistake that people make. That kills both engagement and sales.
I know I have been there in the past. It's like give value, be giving and when you truly want to serve your audience, you try to do that but it sounds a detriment in this case, too much. Are there any other must-nots that you would put in that same bucket?
There are lots of things about you that you donât want to do. You donât want to allow negative Nancyâs to flourish in the group. Get rid of them, get them off, remove or ban them. You donât want those people because, as they say, âIt takes one bad apple to taint the whole batch.â You need to be taking it seriously that your group is a safe space for what it is that you want to cultivate with people. You need to be very clear on your roles and what you are going to allow in the space that you are going to allow people to come in. Itâs important that you stay in alignment with that, no matter what.
Sometimes itâs like, âI donât want to be mean. Maybe they are doing this,â but itâs going to make a big difference for the vibe that you do. Thatâs something thatâs important. The other thing I would say that is a must-not is to stop talking at people and talk with people. If you are always projecting, talking to people, being perfect, trying to look good on the outside and have it all together, you are not being a real human being. You are not connecting with someone and engaging in a two-way conversation. People are going to tune out.
Along those lines, talking with someone instead of talking at them. I know there are tons of coaches out there who advise like, âYou have to show some vulnerability. You have to show that you are a real person underneath the person.â Whereâs that fine line between showing vulnerability or looking like you are a negative Nelly by sharing some?
First of all, I always say, âDonât ever share it when you are in the thick of a challenge. Get to the other side of the challenge before you share about being in the challenge,â because when things are raw, things arenât working for you and things arenât happening, thatâs not the time to share. Go talk to your girlfriend or your friend, cry on someoneâs shoulder but donât use it as your space in your group to share. You have that opportunity to share after. Often, itâs like, we donât want to look into it in a formula of like, âWe need one-part credibility, one-part vulnerability,â or however people want to look at it.
Sometimes we can get too much in our head like, âItâs so much structured.â Instead, what I want you to look at is thinking about vulnerability is from a perspective of being open, sharing the journey and not being perfect. Vulnerability doesnât need to mean that you are bawling your eyeballs with snot bubbles coming out on a puddle of tears. Vulnerability doesnât need to mean that you are ranting about something thatâs pissing you off in your industry. Vulnerability can simply be about being real in a sense like, âI did this. It was hard work. It wasnât easy. I had to move through all these things. This happened and this broke, and then this didnât work.â
Despite all that, I was able to do whatever it was that came about for you because, letâs be real, if you are picture-perfect and people like, âYou were born with this. You had it all figured out. You didnât have to go through challenges.â I have failed, flopped and missed the mark on my goals many times. I have had posts that I have had no engagement. I put offers out that have had zero sales but if had it not been for that, I wouldnât have been able to get to where I am.
I have the gift of running a seven-figure business now but I would never have got there had I not been through all of those lessons and mistakes that I have made along the way. Itâs important that you are sharing your honesty with both sides and that itâs not only a highlight reel. People want to see that but they also want the realness. Thatâs what also gives them the opportunity to feel like itâs possible for them because you didnât have it all figured out and you figured it out. They want to learn what you have learned along the way.
A Facebook group is about community. It's about people. You've got to have a clear vision of how you want your members to feel.
Once you have gotten to the other side and you have the reflection of looking back and saying, âI figured it out,â that's when you share it.
Now there are no emotional triggers that come along with that.
What I love about what you teach and what you have shared so far is that you have a very structured, systematic approach where you are not throwing spaghetti at the wall. You think it through ahead of time and execute it to a plan. For those people who might be reading, who have a Facebook Group, and maybe their success is up and down, on and off, all over the place, maybe they are what you call an overworked hustler. They are doing all the work but they are not quite stable yet. What are some clues or some signs they might be experiencing in their business to show them that maybe it's time to have more of that methodical, structured approach?
There are measures. Everything has a measure. First off, one thing that we want to measure inside of your group is your active members so you can go in your Facebook Group insights on the left-hand side. When you are in your group, you go in there and you can look at your active members. You do that as a percentage of your total numbers inside of your group. Thatâs a great measure of being able to see. If you have less than 50%, youâve got some work to do. It doesnât matter what level you are at. If you are under 25%, you are in a little bit of trouble.
As you progress and as you move up, especially with the smaller group, you should have a higher percentage of engagement, above 75% of engagement and between that 50% to 75% for a larger group. Thatâs your measure of engagement but when I say engagement, itâs not only measuring people that are liking and commenting because you can see if people are liking and commenting. What a lot of you donât realize is that your engagement, your active members, is measuring people that are clicking to view or watching your videos. They are reading your posts. Thatâs a true measure of engagement. Meaning that they are consuming your content.
Most people are surprised that they have way more people that are actively consuming their content than they ever thought before. They make decisions based on, âNo one is commenting or posting. No one is doing anything,â but when they look at that, they realize, âAll these people are tuning in. All these people are paying attention.â When you are stopping and starting putting out content, you are losing or breaking trust with those people. Thatâs your measure for engagement. Of sales, of course, itâs self-explanatory. You are either making sales or you are not. Do you have a predictable way of knowing the number of people in your group or number of leads in is going to generate a specific number of sales?
If you donât have that level of predictability with what goes in and what comes out, then you get to tunnel the opportunity to take a look at it like, âWhat am I using? What is my sales mechanism? What is the conversion tool that Iâm using thatâs moving people through?â You get to focus on that but the question I would say is, âIf you are not making sales, when is the last time you made an offer and how many offers have you made in the last week or the last month?â Chances are, I know most people will say, âNot very many or not at all.â Obviously, you canât make sales without making offers so donât forget.
Do you see a lot of people pouring in value and are afraid to make an offer?
I used to at the beginning, too. I was scared. I was like, âI donât want to make an offer. It feels uncomfortable.â I knew that I had to so I would check the box. Maybe you have had an experience of this before. Even though I was like, âIâm going to hit post. I donât want to look. What if people arenât going to buy?â I would go through all these stories. I get it. I have had that experience and am scared to put it out there, and because of that, energetically, you are repelling people, and because of that, you feel uncomfortable, so of course, itâs going to have an impact.
The challenge is if you are giving value and you are not making an offer, then what happens is you are training your people to be freebie seekers. You are training them not to buy it from you. By the time that you do make an offer, thatâs going to feel like itâs totally out of the left field and people might even get angry at you or frustrated because they think like, âHow could she? She has been only giving for free forever and she never asked me to do anything.â Thatâs not a good idea either.
âHow dare she? She's the one I go to for all the free stuff.â Is that what you call a friend zone?
Yes. I know I said that people will be mad at you but donât let that stop you. Youâve got to do it. Youâve got to put it out there. If you have the key to unlock something that someone needs to have in their life, their business or something that you can help them when you are solving a problem, then itâs your duty to get it out there. If you are operating from a place of fear and you are thinking like, âNo one is going to do it,â you are going to miss the market making the impact that I know that you have been desiring for stepping into this space.
What you have might be what someone in your group has been praying for. They are praying for it to come to them and you have been holding onto it. That happens. If someone has no Facebook Group now or maybe they have one with zero people, or maybe itâs full of people but with 10% engagement, practically zero. If they started using more of a structured approach with a long-term strategic goal and the right methodology, how long could it take them to start to build some momentum and maybe not get 1,000 sales but see enough change to feel like, âThis is working?â
You have to go into it with expectations within 30 days. You can make a big shift with your group. Youâve got to get members first. Without members, you canât create buyers. No one is going to be there and no one is going to be paying attention to you. Youâve got to focus on creating the growth inside of your group. Spend an entire month, and thatâs what I did when I first started my group.
I had 865 members in the very first group that I opened in the first month. That was the only thing that I focused on. I didnât do anything else. Even though I made that $30,000 cash coming in, I wasnât focused on selling. I was only focused on how am I going to grow the group? How am I going to add value? What am I going to do here? How Iâm going to serve people? That was my entire focus within 30 days.
I will be honest, when I first started my very first group, it was a lot easier but every year, we opened brand new spanking groups, pop-up groups, test the growth, test things and see what we are doing. It still creates results and it still moves. I have had many students that have built their Facebook Group to 1,000 from 0 in 30 days as well. Itâs absolutely possible but I know sometimes itâs like, âWas it easier before? Things have changed,â and it still works.
Thatâs why itâs always important to be on top of what is working now, how people are moving and what is it that you need to bring to the table. In 30 days, you can see a result. If you already have members in your group within a few weeks, up to a month, you can run a campaign inside of your group that leads to your offer and start to see those sales rolling in.
That's super encouraging because I purposely have this summit place where I do so that people can have enough time to prepare to have their biggest quarter ever.
Weâve got to start. That's the thing. You have to implement. You have to put things into action.
I'm curious. Facebook isn't only a feed or group. It's almost like an ecosystem. Do you ever cross-promote or cross-share content between your personal page, your groups, your business page, your fan page? Do you have a strategy for handling the ecosystem?
This is a question that often comes up. I donât use my personal page at all. I donât even remember the last post. I laugh. Iâm like, âIâm the Facebook person,â but personally, Iâm like, âI use it for business, then Iâm not on the platform.â Iâm not active on my personal page at all. I have it optimized so that if people do land on my personal profile, they can easily go and find out resources to go to my business page or when we have a campaign going, or go into a group. They have the opportunity to have a call to action to go there, so it makes it easy. When you are starting, you donât need to worry about being active on your business page, your group and everywhere all at once. Pick one and reach a level of mastery with it.
You don't need to worry about being active everywhere all at once. Pick one platform and reach a level of mastery in it.
When I first started my group, I was not active in my business. I make that one post a week or something on my business page so that when someone found me, they could learn something and it would invite them to my group but everything was focused on my group. Once Iâve got my group dialed down, then I started focusing on the business page. Once that got dialed in and we are talking more than a year, you were talking a fair bit of time, then we started adding Instagram and other platforms.
What you are putting on your business page and your group, your teasers are on your business page, the invitations. The teasers of what they are going to get. The appetizer is on your business pages like the storefront, the window dressing but the main dish of the experience and the conversation that you are having, thatâs inside of your group. You are using your business page to be a feeder for your group and to get people onto your email list.
Now your group is the container in which you get to create a connection and experience, a community with people where you get to have that conversation where you get to go down deeper. You get to answer questions. Itâs where you have that core piece. Letâs say if I were going to do a deep dive training in my group, I would start teasing about it on the business page and invite people to come to the group to participate so they could be part of it. The conversation is still aligned but itâs not the exact same content.
It's giving them a little taste and telling them if you want more. Do you use other social platforms the same way? Would you tease stuff on Instagram, Pinterest or wherever else?
We do use Instagram. Iâve got to say. It's not a platform I love. I know everyone loves it. I'm probably the only person. I'm one of the few people. It feels very surface level to me and a lot of stuff in it. It's like the highlight reels of things and it's changing. There are a lot of Instagram Stories. I do like the DMs on Instagram. You could spend forever in there if you are going to be chatting with people but we do measure all of our metrics. Think about if we are talking about having sales campaigns, so run the business with running the sales campaign or launches, bringing people through that sales and doing sales campaign.
Everything that is on all the social media platforms is warming people up, is teasing, making invitations so people come through that experience. The experience is always through a Facebook Group. It's all these little breadcrumbs that have teasers that are going in other places to support what it is that we are doing within the group. We support what's going out for people that are on our email list at the same time but it's all working around campaigns. Everything is working together to lead back to the main dish.
I understand that you have a free gift for our viewers. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?
I know number one is like, "I need members." You need to have members in your group if you want to be making sales. If you want to be building out your group and maybe you are getting started. You are like, âI donât know where to start. Iâm starting from ground zero,â or perhaps you have already got started building your group but maybe you have had a roadblock or stumbling block and itâs filling a little bit like, âSlow down a little bit.â
Maybe you have been having your group for a while and you are like, âIâm only looking for some fresh ideas,â to boost the numbers in your group. Iâve got a free checklist for you. Itâs How to Get a Thousand Facebook Group Members in 30-days. Itâs all of the very things that I was doing in the beginning as well to generate those first members. You can get started on it right away. I recommend that you pick them up.
That's a huge and amazing gift for folks. Honestly, if you scoop this up now and spend 30 days building up your group, you are perfectly poised to have that highest quarter ever. Perfectly timed. Thank you for that. I'm going to jump in there and peek around.
You are welcome. Start now. Set yourself up for success. Great advice.
The start is what stops most people. With this interview and certainly with any of the interviews that we are doing, take action. Pick one thing you are going to take action on because if you are only reading this for entertainment, you are not going to get those results. You do have to pick and choose the pieces that you are going to implement so that you can get the results that you are looking for.
Join us in the Facebook Group. Join the conversation as we debrief and talk through everything we have learned, all the actions we are going to take and have a brainstorm in the chat. You might find that you need a power partner, a new best friend or someone that maybe you will be interviewing at some point in time. You never know. Thanks for joining us. I will see you in the next interview. Thank you, Christina.
Thanks, guys.
Helpful links:
â Grow Your Facebook Group Mini Course - Christinaâs free gift
â Book a 6-Figure Strategy Session - Adrienneâs free gift for you
â Adrienneâs Entrepreneur Community on Facebook
#impactfulentrepreneurshow #guestinterview #facebookgroups
About Christina Jandali
Christina is a confidence-boosting, cash-creating Business Growth Strategies who helps online business owners stand out, get seen and create 6-figure+ profits using the power of Facebook groups. After becoming a millionaire in her mid 20âs (losing it and rebuilding it over again) and climbing the corporate ladder, she realized she was ready to build her own dream business, not someone elseâs.