72. Using Social Media to get clients - 7 Steps to build a Lead Generating Group

Using Social Media to get clients - 7 Steps to build a Lead Generating Group [Everything Business Consulting Episode 72]

Are you a business consultant, coach, or advisor and want to use Facebook and LinkedIn groups to generate leads and acquire clients?

Welcome to episode 72 of Everything Business Consulting, where we're going to explore Building a lead list using Facebook or LinkedIn groups.

This podcast will answer the question: Why would we want to build a lead list on a social media platform?

We then explore a 7 Step Strategy for Building a Successful List:

1. Identify a need for a group 

2. Choose your platform

3. Create a group

4. Recruit (relentlessly)

5. Deliver value

6. Support members

7. Make use of your leads 

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Transcript:

Julius: Welcome to episode 72, building a lead list using Facebook or LinkedIn groups, and that is indeed building a lead list to acquire clients as a business consultant. Personally, I use this method myself to build a lead list of over 2,700 business owners and managers on Facebook. And if I had known everything I'm about to teach you and pass on when I started, I can assure you that it would be much bigger than that, right? Now, let's start with why? 

Why would we want to build a lead list on social media, using that as a platform? Well, firstly generating leads can become prospects and then those prospects can become clients. So ultimately, if you want to grow yourself as a business consultant and you want to acquire more clients, then you want to generate leads. And this is one of the steps you can do to do that. 

Now the second reason why is for leverage. If you're using a social media platform, it's very easy to get a large number of people on your group or on your platform. And then you can communicate with that large number of people. There's only one of you, but if you have a lot of people, in your group, a large audience so to speak, a large community, well, then you've leveraged yourself and you've got many times more people around you, that can benefit from you and then you can hopefully turn them into prospects and clients.

The third reason why is it's a fairly easy method to get in front of a large number of leads. This isn't a method to acquire clients and generate leads that is going to be incredibly fast in most instances, but over the medium to long term, it is something that you can do without a huge amount of time and effort to generate quite a few leads.

The fourth reason is to establish yourself as a leader. If you can get in front of that, many people, hundreds or thousands of people well then it's fairly easy to command the attention of these people in your group. If you're the one that's setting it up if you're the one that is constantly posting and providing value and being helpful well you've positioned yourself as the leader in that situation. And that works very well when it comes time to try and turn those leads and those people in your community or in your group into a prospect or into a client. 

The fifth way or the fifth reason why is it will build your confidence. If you go through the process of building a large group and helping them out, well then you're going to feel more confident that you can actually help them in a business consulting, a coaching, or advising capacity. If you can take the steps of helping people and giving them advice. And they tell you that this advice is valuable. Well, then you're going to feel validated, and you're going to feel like when you walk into someone else's business when you actually start the engagement that you can provide great value with a lot of confidence.

The sixth reason why is it's in our nature to congregate and interact with like-minded people. Now you're the leader of this particular group, maybe you're going to get some other thought leaders or administrators on there to help you run the group if it gets particularly large. But what it's going to do is it's going to put yourself in a big pool of like-minded people who want to hopefully make their own businesses better and hopefully improve themselves. And that can be a very pleasant thing and a motivating thing as well, to have like-minded people around you to interact. 

And the final reason why you should consider building a lead list through a Facebook or another social media platform group is simply, it is free, now that's a pretty big benefit. There's a time cost to it you must consider, but there is no upfront monetary cost so if you are looking at the long game of business consulting, or you've only got a few clients when you're starting out, or you want a method that overtime is going to pay dividends, well then I would certainly consider this as a great method because it is free. 

So I hope you see the value in creating a lead list on a social media platform, you'll be able to generate a high number of prospects and those prospects will hopefully become clients or at least a good portion of them. You'll be able to leverage yourself and your time and your effort. It's a fairly easy method if you're building it up over the medium to long term and a great way to establish yourself as a leader, which helps to build your confidence. And naturally, you'll feel good about interacting with like-minded people and giving them positive advice. And as I said, it's free, you just need to consider that time cost.

I now want to take you through seven steps that you can use to create a successful group. Now the first step is to identify a need to create a group. Now looking for a reason to put a group together is going to make it more compelling for people to join. This is going to mean that it's going to grow faster and ultimately have a far better chance of succeeding.

If the group has mutual goals or mutual pain points, some kind of similarity to draw people in and join them together to create a sense of community, something where they can share each other's problems or share solutions while it's just going to be a very good environment. You don't have to have this, but it is certainly an element or an ingredient for success, and it's exactly what I did. I started the COVID 19 support group for business owners and managers in New Zealand. It served a need, it targeted a specific pain point and it brought people together who had mutual goals. They wanted to support one another and find out information regarding the pandemic and support around that.

Some ideas here to help you create your own group, you could have an industry-specific group, you might have a group of lawyers and call it something like business growth for lawyers. You might niche it down a little bit more, it might be business growth for lawyers within a very small area. You might want to address a specific challenge through all of the conversations you have with people in business, you might find out there's a certain sector or type of business that have a challenge with something.

Now I know that some businesses in the supermarket supply chain in my home country are having some significant challenges with the large supermarkets at the moment. For them, you might start a group called the supermarket chain supply collective or something like that, and try and use that common problem to bring them all together. You might want to have a local area group, you might have the downtown business networking and security group, and just bringing that security group into it as well. I just added that there, because that gives two reasons for someone to want to be involved in a group, they can network but then it also pulls in a pain point.

Maybe there is a bit of crime or some untoward activities happening in the downtown area, and that is not going to be your area of focus, but it brings more people into the conversation. Finally, you might be targeting a specific type of business owner, you might have a group for young entrepreneurs, you might have a group for retired entrepreneurs, whatever it is, just go out and talk to people.

A challenge might be, if you want to take it to the next level, you can have multiple groups running at the same time if you identify multiple needs. In most instances, you'll find that the amount of time to run two or three groups doesn't far exceed the amount of time to run a single group, and that's going to give you the ability to leverage yourself even further.

Moving on to the second stage of creating a successful group would be to choose your platform and to choose a platform that is going to suit the kind of people you wish to engage and get on that particular group. The two main options that people are using right now is Facebook and LinkedIn groups.

Facebook is more of a casual social environment. You're less likely to find a group of Fortune 500 CEOs hanging out there. You're more likely to find the small to medium business owners that are typically business to customer-facing. They're going to be a little bit less polished. LinkedIn is much more of a professional network where you find that owners of more professional businesses are going to be, these are the C-suite type executives. There's a lot of corporate business owners, there's a lot of corporate staff members, and more business-to-business connections. If you wanted to get into a professional service business-to-business company like a lawyer or an accountant well then that would be more the space for you. You should choose a platform that is going to suit the type of people you want within your group and link it to their needs. And again, you can have groups on both types of platform. 

The third step in creating a group is simply to do it, to create the group. When you create the group, you want to set up some foundation rules. So people understand what the group is about, what is expected, what is acceptable within the group, and what if anything is a no-go conversation.

Now, some simple rules will be to keep things constructive within the group, we don't want any negativity. If it's a group where you're going to have a lot of business owners that are trying to perhaps push their products and that's kind of overstepping the boundaries, then maybe you say no self-promotion. On these platforms on Facebook and LinkedIn, there are typically some recommended rules that you can very easily populate and just set some boundaries and guidelines of what you want. 

You should also set a mission and a tone for the group. You can do this by firstly having some rules and having a bit of a trajectory of where you want it to go. And you can do that by preparing a few early posts and photos so that it looks like there's going to be a lot of value in there for people that are going to join it. But also so that these posts and these photos, they are set up in a way that set a tone. They paint a picture of the kind of conversation that is likely to be had in the group.

Now over time, you might find that this tone or the conversation is pushed in a particular direction, but that's fine. You can take that feedback and move with the group to serve them however they need to be served. In my instance, I simply set up a purpose for the group, what it was about, it was about supporting a business owners in a very positive and constructive manner. And I've put some rules in there about what it wasn't, it simply wasn't a place to promote your own services, this is a place for us to be positive, it was not a political driven agenda within the group, we didn't want to discuss whether things were right or wrong, we simply wanted to help people deal with the situation at hand.

If you wanted to really leverage yourself in this situation, you can reuse some of those early posts and photos, and content across multiple platforms. Now they might be across multiple groups that you are running, but they could also be across your Facebook or your Instagram or your LinkedIn profiles for your business.

You don't have to constantly be generating new content. You might come up with a very great post that's quite informative, you might find that it's so informative you're going to put it on your personal LinkedIn profile. And you're also going to use it and send out to your email marketing list. All of a sudden you've been able to spend a small amount of time and potentially reach up to three times as many people.

The fourth step to grow a successful group, and perhaps the most important is to recruit and to recruit relentlessly. You are naturally going to get a few people that walk past and think, well, that's a nice looking group I'm going to join, but for the most part, you're going to have to drive the growth, particularly until you get to a point of critical mass. I would start by selecting the people that you know, in the target group and the target audience that you want to be in the group. And then you can ask them very quickly. Hey, is there anyone else that you know, that's in a similar situation, you think will be able to benefit from what this group is about?

And then over time, once you've provided some value, and we are going to get to that in the next step, once you've provided value, then you'll be able to say, Hey, have you got value from this group? Or is there anyone else that you know, that could get value? Well, you should join them as well. And all of a sudden those one, two or three people are going to say, well, actually, yeah, I know four or five or six other people that could value from this group so I'm going to invite them as well. 

To really accelerate the growth you should be connecting with as many people in the demographic that you want to invite to that group as possible. So you might find them in other Facebook groups, you might find them on LinkedIn by searching the types of occupations and businesses that they own in a particular area. You might even hit your email list or just talk to people in person, but whatever you do, you need to recruit relentlessly, particularly when you're starting out the building of a group. 

Now the fifth step is to deliver value. Now you've created this group with some sort of pain point or some sort of reason to bring people together. And the people that have joined the members, they thought they were going to get something when they signed up to be a part of this virtual group. Well, all you've got to do simply is to deliver the value and to deliver the conversation and support that they thought that they were going to get when they joined.

Now, this might be updates on a particular situation. Possibly it's going to be advice on the topic of the group. You might encourage users to post questions that you can answer and that also other members of the group can answer, they can also provide their value. Your aim is to drive the conversation and deliver the conversation that the group wants. What I did in my COVID 19 support group was I tried to drive a conversation that was very heavily built around supporting business owners and talking about the challenges and the problems. 

Now, what I found was that about 80% of the conversations in the group were actually about getting a government wage subsidy. So what I did is I learned everything I could about that particular subsidy. So I could very quickly and concisely answer questions and provide update bulletins when this was required. I shared the kinds of articles around that stuff, that was useful and I was also very supportive on posts, providing them and pointing them in the right direction.

Now that was still 80% of the conversation within the group, but I made sure that there was another 20% of conversation that was a little bit more conducive to what I wanted to talk about, which was really the conversation around establishing myself as a business leader, and that also once those other questions were out of the way that was received very well. To minimize the amount of time around that conversation around the wage subsidy, which wasn't particularly exciting or useful to me, I provided a very detailed outline of what was available and I pinned that in a post to the very top. 

So when someone joined, they're able to go into this Facebook group and they're able to see about 95% of the information that they needed. And it was still the odd post that popped up that I had to jump on or someone else would help to answer, but it wasn't a constant conversation delivering the same message over and over. And that meant that when there was conversation and questions and commentary going on in the group, it was just a little bit more constructive and less repetitive. 

Now, again, there is that challenge where you able to reuse the content. You can use that content perhaps on a blog, on another platform in another group again, to your email database, or even on your own personal or your business social media profiles. The main message here is to deliver value and to deliver the particular value that the people within the group actually want. 

The sixth step is to support the members of your group, they're in there because they have a problem that wants to be solved or some pain points. Well, it's your job to be that support person. Now, this might require you to prompt the members to ask questions from time to time, or you could even get them to share their businesses. I've seen in the past in other groups that they have a share Friday where on every Friday, people get to share their business and share what they're doing, and all of a sudden that gives you an insight into their business.

And perhaps you'll be able to use it to your advantage when you start the conversation. What do you want us to create and drive interaction, you want a group where everyone is comfortable to converse, and there is a lot of interaction with one another, because if you can have a group that is flourishing, well then that's going to flourish even more as a conversation grows wider and deeper, it gives you the ability then and the opportunity to create relationships and build trust.

In my group, once I knew a lot about the COVID government subsidies that were available, I could answer almost any question and point the members of the group in the right direction. And on a few occasions, I prompted the members to comment about their struggles or how the unfolding situation was going to affect them. And then, I could engage with them on a deeper level and offer my support, and supporting members gives them that level of personal care and that personal connection, which takes us to the final step. And that is making the most of your leads. 

You've invested some time and some effort to create and grow a group you've established yourself and you're authority, you need to make use of it and you don't need to be shy about that. Once you've got the group up and moving, it's time to use it as a source to generate leads and prospects. If you're answering questions well you're going to see that there are people out there that need help, they might need some support, they might want to grow their business a bit more. Well, you can simply reach out to them and ask if they want to take it off the public domain. Maybe you're going to send them an email, maybe you want to book a zoom session, or just give them a call. 

Now, this is simple, you just need to be direct and say, Hey, look, I think I can help you with this. Should we arrange a chat? And they've already had some support with you, they've seen that you're supporting other people, they trust you. There's no reason for them to turn you down. Perhaps even they've told you their business then you can look up their phone number online and say, Hey, look I just thought that I'd reach out to you because I saw you were having this problem. And I thought we should have a quick chat about it. And, if they do genuinely have a problem, well, they're going to be ripe to open up.

Periodically you may decide that you want to offer free consulting. So you might put up a post saying, Hey, I've got a gap in my calendar and I've got some free consulting sessions or coaching sessions I would like to offer to people within this group. This is a really good group and I want to help some people grow their business, or I want to help solve some problems and come up with solutions for people out there. Who's interested? Send me a message right now. Maybe it's that you want to ask for referrals, you want to ask other people who may be interested to join the group, or maybe you want to ask them if they know other businesses, maybe their suppliers, or their neighbors who have businesses that could do with some of your advice. Once you've created this group, you shouldn't be shy. You should make the most of the members within it and use it as a source to generate leads.

In summary, to create a successful group, you need to identify a need, a compelling reason to bring a group of people together. You should choose a platform that suits the kind of people and the group that you are creating and simply create that group and then recruit relentlessly to get people to join it. Once there's people in there, you want to deliver value and support those members. And don't forget, you don't need to be shy about making use of it. You've invested time and you should get something out of it. In my particular group over the course of about a year, I was able to get 2,700 members. And I'm fairly certain that a very high portion of them are business owners or they're managers that are struggling with business, or they have some challenges that would make them great potential leads.

On your quest to becoming a successful business consultant, coach, or advisor, or even just growing from the point you are now, I seriously suggest building a lead list using Facebook or LinkedIn groups. For all show notes on this episode, visit consultx.com/episode/72.

Please leave a review on your favorite listening platform, because it really helps us to reach more people. Finally, don't forget you can reach out and request a topic for the show or have your business consulting questions answered. You've been listening to Everything Business Consulting with your host, Julius Bloem.