How Creating a Facebook Group Earned One Man $200,000

The following is adapted from Faster, Smarter, Louder: Master Attention In A Noisy Digital Market.

Between its vast user base, ad system, audience targeting features, and more, Facebook offers more robust marketing solutions than ever before. Used strategically, the platform can be an enormously powerful force for growth. Just ask our friend Josh Fechter, who made $200,000 on Facebook by building a group of marketers, business owners, and investors—all high net-worth individuals. 

Building a Valuable Group

To build the group, Josh followed a specific set of steps:

1. Understand what the community is after. To determine this, Fechter performed research; studied other groups, even other fan pages; and identified what got the most engagement in terms of content.
2. Learn what keeps groups alive. A lot of groups die because their members lack time, energy, and focus.
3. Determine who belongs in the group. Fechter built target personas around whom he wanted in the group by determining their income levels, job titles, age, and location.
4. Create engaging content. Even with the right group members, Fechter needed to engage his audience with content they could learn from and implement. No high-level strategy stuff; it had to be actionable. So he created a series of long-form tactical guides, long-form stories about the work he did, and videos showing walk-throughs of how he did things. 

To further supplement his content and provide value, Fechter also provided live-streaming talks from various conferences, reaching out to influencers similar to his target personas and interviewing them on behalf of the group. He also made sure that whatever content he posted looked good, had a snappy headline, and was otherwise “clickable.”

Learn First, Act Second

Fechter didn’t just jump into this project blind. He researched extensively before making a move. He understood who the influencers were in the space he was playing in. He wanted only people who already had a following, could advocate on his behalf, and could draw other people into the community based on the positive association.

Build Core Members

Even when he started recruiting members, Fechter did so slowly. First, he invited what he considered his core members, people who would also contribute content to the group. Fechter wanted no advertising or self-promotion in this group. People couldn’t just post whatever they wanted. Only high-value content was allowed.

Building with the Right Tools

As the group grew, Fechter used a tool called Grytics, which is an analytics platform that shows what attracts the most likes, shares, comments, and views. This allowed him to double down on what worked and continue to feed the engine with similar content.

He also grew the group with Facebook ads. This was especially cost-effective because he was driving traffic on Facebook itself and not offsite (buying internal clicks are much cheaper than buying offsite clicks).

Then Fechter focused on email outreach by pulling data out of LinkedIn, understanding people’s job titles, and looking at their group activity. His virtual assistant got the names and email addresses of the members of relevant groups. He then entered that information into an email automation tool and produced an email template that said, “Hey, I noticed you’re a marketer in this area and are part of this group on LinkedIn. I think you’d find some content over here in this Facebook group valuable. Come over and take a look.”

Put In the Homework, Witness the Growth

Because of the scale of the project, Fechter grew the group quickly, and he successfully attracted the kinds of people he was looking for. In fact, the group exploded so quickly that he had to change it to invite-only. This in turn created a type of exclusivity similar to that fostered by brands like Amex and Tiffany’s. Once they had to be approved for membership, even more people wanted to join.

Monetizing

As you can see, it’s a lot of work researching and building even a simple Facebook group if you want to do it the right way. There had better be a payoff, right?

The way Fechter finally leveraged this group was brilliant. In order to capitalize and monetize his group, Fechter did a one-time post that said, “I’ve collated all of the best posts from the group in the last year into this e-book. Anyone who wants access, I need you to sign up for a free trial of this platform over here.” 

Because the majority of the group were marketers and business growth people, getting them to sign up for a free trial of an SaaS tool likely to benefit all of them was a smart move. A ton of people signed up for the trial and stayed on afterward, and he made $200,000 for the business.

It was only one post, but that one post was literally the culmination of a year’s worth of work building the group, curating content, creating value, and fostering trust. Only after all of that did he make a soft ask by saying, “Here’s a free trial of my service that you might find interesting.”

Value doesn’t just occur overnight, and neither does credibility and growth. If you want things fast, you’ll have to go through paid advertising channels; but to build a credible brand, you’ve got to travel a different path and provide long-term value for people. So here’s to Josh Fechter, another perfect example of an “overnight success” that was years in the making!

By taking the time to build a Facebook group the right way, you too can enjoy a significant amount of growth for your brand. 

For more advice on using Facebook for growth, you can find Faster, Smarter, Louder: Master Attention In A Noisy Digital Market on Amazon.

AARON AGIUS is the CEO and co-founder of Louder.Online, a global agency that has worked with brands like Salesforce, IBM, and Coca-Cola. Named as a leading digital marketer in a Forbes article, Aaron leverages his thought leadership and speaking engagements to help businesses optimize their efforts and accelerate their growth.

GIáN CLANCEY is the CMO and co-founder of Louder.Online, where her passion for science has fueled countless world-class data-led marketing campaigns for global brands. Growing up in a large family taught Gián the power of close, authentic relationships, which she uses to fuel passionate engagement with employees and stakeholder communities.