Facebook is great for marketing products and services through its paid advertising platform. It becomes a lot more complicated though, when you are trying to promote a group.
Normally company members would be the first to join and participate in the group. There are however some difficulties:
- Privacy concerns
Employees are increasingly concerned that employers are using data they can find on Facebook against them in the workplace. This could be because of friends, groups they belong to and obviously photos of going out the night before that are used as part of new tactics at work.
- Facebook blocked in offices
Difficult to get your employees to join a Facebook group when you seem to have banned it in the office. So what can you do? Do you lift the ban or ask people to do it at home?
- Leading a secret life
There are people with particular habits such as going clubbing or trainspotting that they do not want others to know about.
Of course a successful Facebook group does not only rely on company employees joining and spreading the word, but any group could benefit from such a mini-viral start to it’s life.
On the upside:
- You can connect with a variety of different people very quickly with simply a fun idea
- All these people will share a common interest, highly relevant to the product/service
- They have joined the group at their own will (opt-in) so they could classify as ‘warm leads’ to take further action.
- Facebook converts, it is not only about traffic and branding, it actually produces sales, albeit with a smaller conversion rate than other channels
