257: Nurture and Grow your Community through Facebook Groups - with Cierra Lueck

Meet Cierra Lueck:

You know how so many Facebook groups are spammy, dead, or only the admin posts get high engagement. All that changes, when Cierra steps in with the C5 strategy. She helps business coaches build a highly engaged Facebook group community where people are excited to be sold to, and refer others by turning their brand into a movement. The C5 strategy: To transform businesses to transform lives.

How can we use the algorithm to market our business better on Facebook?

So the biggest thing to keep in mind with the algorithm is that it is an absolute beast. If you think about Google search and how you type something into the search field, and then it auto populates what's going to be typed next, and it gives you all these suggestions and half the time it's right. Facebook is right on the tails of the Google algorithm. With the Facebook algorithm, anything that you put in terms of what you're wording in your post or any kind of images, it actually has a smart capability where it knows what the images are. If your words do not line up with the images that you're posting, that's that's just one thing to keep in mind. A lot of people want to post images because of Instagram or other social platforms where images help boost it, but that can actually be a detriment when it comes to Facebook if the image has nothing to do with the information that you're sharing. So on Facebook, you want to make sure that you are very targeted and very direct with the kind of words that you're using so that you can actually reach your audience better.

How do you use Facebook for business sales? 

Facebook ads are probably some of the most strategically placed out there. But that's only one area that you can actually utilize on Facebook to market your business. So when you're a new business owner going out into the market, trying to do lead gen, if you immediately jump to ads, but you haven't actually validated the messaging that you're putting out and you haven't actually validated the offer that you have with your market and you immediately jump to ads, you're going to end up spending a lot more in ad spend, than if you will validate that organically. Through organic marketing obviously, there's your personal profile and there's a lot of people who are in the conundrum of, "should I use one or should I use the other?" So they're thinking should I use my profile for business if I have a bunch of friends and family? Obviously if you're going to only keep it friends and family, the answer is no. But at the same time if you don't announce what you're doing in your business, how will anyone ever know to refer anybody to you so you definitely can utilize your Facebook profile. There's also Facebook pages which you can use to run ads or utilize organically. On your Facebook page, you can share information with your audience on there. The way that you would want to do that is you want to provide, either news or kind of entertaining information based around what your offer is so that people have a reason to come back and look at your page. 

Let's dive into groups a little bit more, it sounds like you've got some really strong strategies around how to use Facebook groups for business.

The idea is that there are five Facebook group types for businesses that are actually profitable. So the first one is for paying clients only, where you become a paying client then you are put into a Facebook group. It's got some really great pros, it's also got a few cons like obviously a paid clients only group doesn't generate new leads for you. So you have to be going out there and you have to have a really great way to get new leads. But it is a great way to get people to connect around your business and around the offer. The second type that I coach people on is a free community which is the lead generating group. This type of group is great because when the community is built around your offer, and what you do, it actually helps to sell your business for you. The third type of group is the Evergreen Launch Membership where people are actually thrown into a group with the idea of launching a new product. The benefit of these groups is that it allows members to try small before the part where the person upsells you. Number four is the Pop Up Group for Course Launch which are pretty much groups created for one specific event such as a course launch and after it is launched, the group dies. The idea is that they're actually launching some kind of high ticket product, or even some kind of low ticket products, where they're just going to be making thousands and thousands of dollars at once. So this is great if you already have some notoriety built up, but one of the downfalls of it would be that if you don't have the notoriety and you don't get enough people in, you're probably not gonna have very high sales, and then it dies almost immediately after. The member benefit is typically the freebies that are offered inside of the group. The 5th part is building a group as a part of a funnel. I know some other guys in the market who help people with their Facebook groups and what they use their group for is instead of having to pay for a webinar platform, they use the group for that so the group is part of their funnel. As a result, there's always people being added in, but one of the downfalls is they're not really building up the community inside the free group as nobody really gets to be part of the community until they've actually paid. 

Can you share with our listeners one of your most successful or favorite networking experiences that you've had?

This last year, I joined a coaching mentorship program which was actually one of the biggest expenses I've ever done in investing in myself. I invested in a mentorship program, and during my time in the program I decided I wanted an accountability partner. At first I networked with these two guys that were in the program. We were checking in almost daily, but it was actually almost a struggle bus trying to get them to actually be as driven as I was. About a month later, I connected with somebody else in the group. Through that effect, we have actually been accountability partners now for six months. Both of our businesses started launching a new thing in our business and we both started from zero with the new things that we were doing. We have both grown to multiple figures in our business in such a short amount of time and it's just been crazy. Now this person is one of my best friends and we're both growing our businesses together.

When it comes to building your network, how do you stay in front of and best nurture those relationships?

I've learned over the years that consistency doesn't mean doing the same thing every single day. Consistency means that you show up periodically, consistently . So if somebody were to be a family member who was checking in on me once a month and they were just seeing how I was, I would consider that somebody who's consistently in my life. The same thing goes for when you're nurturing your market online as well where you don't have to touch base with them every single day. You don't have to be in someone's life every single day to nurture them and you don't have to be having that constant communication for them to want to buy from you. You just need to be there consistently, which doesn't mean every day.

If you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more of, less of, or differently with regards to your professional career?

Knowing who I am now and what I've gone through to become who I am, I honestly don't think that I would change anything. I've really come to terms that the lessons that I've learned in my life have made me who I am, whether that came from a good situation, or a bad situation. I've had a lot of negativity happen in my life in the past, but it's grown me as a person, and it's grown my character. I came to that realization that every single day like today, is the best day of my life because today is the accumulation, or the culmination of every single lesson that I've ever learned and every single good thing that's ever happened to me. 

Any final word or advice for our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network?

One of the biggest things that you can ever do is to create real relationships. I've had a lot of people ask me lately, they feel or they're afraid that they're going to approach people and they're going to come off as spammy if they talk about their business or if they offer the sale. The thing is if you come at it from trying not to be spammy, the thing that you were most focused on is being spammy so it will sound spammy whether you like it or not. So I encourage you to think about what you want and what you want to be when you're in that conversation, and the kind of person that you're wanting to show up as, the kind of leader that you're wanting to be in your industry. Then just be that person whenever you're networking, and whenever you're growing those relationships. 

How to connect with Cierra:

Facebook: Cierra Lueck

Email: cnlueck@gmail.com