Business is Slow? FB Community Groups Strategy

Summary

In this episode of the Off the Ladder podcast, Branden Sewell discusses effective strategies for home service business owners to grow their businesses, particularly through social media and community engagement. He emphasizes the importance of being active in local community groups on platforms like Facebook to generate leads and referrals. Branden also highlights the potential for building relationships with vendors and creating additional income streams through social media efforts. The conversation stresses the need for discipline and strategy in leveraging social media for business success.

Takeaways

Be disciplined and active on social media.
Join local community groups for referrals.
Engage with potential clients directly.
Delegate social media tasks to team members.
Building relationships online can lead to opportunities.
Social media can create additional income streams.
Success on social media takes time and strategy.
Re-evaluate your social media approach regularly.
Consistency is key in social media marketing.
Find what works and repeat it until it doesn't. 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Off the Ladder Podcast
00:27 Strategies for Driving Business
01:37 Leveraging Social Media for Business Growth
05:29 Monetizing Social Media Efforts
08:29 Conclusion and Call to Action

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:01.486)
Hi everybody, I am Brandon Sewell. I am the owner of Seal Pro Painting located in central Florida, and I'm also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast. And we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. We've been in a series of episodes based on doing things to gain traction and get business when business is slow.

So, if you've been following along, we're sharing on 10 different things that you can do to drive business. Just a quick little recap here. We've gone over a few different strategies. One, calling past clients, sending out a monthly newsletter, doing handwritten thank you cards, hitting the streets and doing door to door, doubling down on networking and relationships.

and cutting back, well, counting costs and then choosing where to cut back. And today, we are on point number seven, which is going to be about being disciplined and active on social media and specifically community pages. I will say that there is another piece to social media that I'll get into a little bit today, but it's not going to be the main focus.

So the main focus about social media and really like the way that I like to think about it is these community pages that are out there, have like you can search groups, go onto Facebook, search groups, you can search your local town or city that you live in, and there's gonna be a bunch of different groups that you can join and become a part of.

These groups are going to have different rules and you may not be able to share an advertisement about your business, but if somebody asks for referral in the group, you can share your business then. So my recommendation to you is write down your service area. What cities and towns does your service area include? And then go onto Facebook and search those cities and towns for community groups.

Branden Sewell (02:21.006)
Now what you're gonna do is you're gonna join all those groups. Then what you're going to do is you can search those groups. You go into the group, hit the search, search that specific group for referrals based around the service that you provide. Then you're gonna go into each one of those posts where somebody asks for a referral and you're gonna post about your company like the post.

And then also go in and message that person directly. And then what I always do is I'll comment on the, so where I comment referring my business, like I'll post a link to our booking landing page, and then I'll comment on that and I'll tag the person and I'll say, I sent you a message. Just because we know that sometimes our messages can go into the message request folder.

within Facebook Messenger. you want to just notify them, I sent you a message, be looking for it so they can check that if it doesn't go directly to their inbox. And then from there, you might want to follow up with them. But there are tons of leads and low-hanging fruit in those Facebook community groups. Now, the other thing that I want to add about these community groups is that you can reach out to past clients.

referral partners and let them know like hey if you see somebody asking for a referral and you've been happy with our service please refer us to those people. The goal is to have more than just yourself referring your business in those community groups. But this is a really effective way and over time what Facebook will do is they'll recognize like the posts that you're interacting with and

which community groups and things like that. And then you won't have to go into the groups and search. They'll actually just start to show up on your feed within Facebook. Now this does take some discipline. If you're not a person that is typically on social media or you don't like social media, the reality is you're missing out on a great source for free leads. It takes some effort on your end to be paying attention, look for them.

Branden Sewell (04:44.928)
search for those leads and have the ability to go in and share your information. But if you just do a little bit of work, it can definitely pay off. And this is a great lead source. If you have an administrator, if you have somebody who's doing administrative work, this is something you can delegate for them as well. I used to have a girl who worked for me and I'd tell her, part of your work during the day is you're gonna go in to Facebook groups

and you're going to join them and you're going to look for those leads. And that was part of her job. Now I'm doing it myself again. But if you do the work, you're definitely going to get results from those. And I think a big key for this too is making sure you do that thing where you tag the person and then let them know you're messaging them and then actually message them because not everybody does that. Some people are just going to go on.

Share their business information and be gone. But the problem is is like if there's 60 comments on a post That customer is going to be overwhelmed. They're gonna get it. They're not gonna go in and call 60 people so those business owners or business representatives that actually respond to the post by going and reaching out to that person directly are gonna have the the most success with that

Now, I wanted to mention another thing with social media. Now, this is kind of like a missed opportunity by a lot of business owners simply because they don't do it. I make money off of social media and my efforts online, whether that's through my Instagram, my brand partnerships. It's also led to me doing consulting.

I've had the opportunity to do consulting calls and getting paid very well for those. And I do my podcasts and all of that. what I would encourage you to do if you are a business owner, you can create another stream of income by being outgoing on social media. Talk about your business, your services, what you're doing on

Branden Sewell (07:09.674)
different forms of social media. Get out there, talk about products that you're using. And initially, you're gonna do all of this for free. You're gonna talk about the products and the materials and the vendors that you work with, and you're gonna do it for free, and you're gonna shout them out, and you're gonna tag them. But once you get traction and you start to gain impressions online, then those vendors are gonna notice. You can tell them, let people know so-and-so sent you.

And you can start to build these relationships online with vendors and suppliers and things like that. And even the different software that you use to run your business. And then you can build relationships with them to the point where you might be paid to create content or paid to get people signed up using them as a vendor of some sort.

I would say it's not the main source of my income, but I make extra money on the side with what I do with social media. Sometimes that's a few thousand dollars in a month that I'll make extra from my efforts with what I do online and with social media. That's extra money I'm making just to do this kind of stuff.

It definitely pays off. Now it's not a get rich quick thing. Some people look at people, influencers online, and they think, this is going to be really easy and I'm going to make money really quick. Well, that's a lie. It takes a lot of hard work. It takes some strategy. But it is possible and you can make money online. But again, I want to say it's not quick. It's not easy.

It does take a strategy just like your business does. It's no different. So anyway, definitely be using social media. Get disciplined with it. Come up with a strategy online. Stick to it. And it's just like your business. Stick to the strategy. Re-evaluate the strategy. Change it up. Do new things. See what's going to work. Find what works. Keep doing it. Repeat it until it doesn't work. Make it better.

Branden Sewell (09:34.862)
The same way that you do your business is the same way that you can do business online And just approach it with the same mindset your business wasn't easy to start and get off the ground Neither is social media, but it is effective and it does work when other people say it's not working There's a way you just have to find it. All right Well that is gonna bring this episode to a close stay tuned for the future episodes in this series

If need any resources for your business, check the show notes down below. Please use my affiliate links if you use any of those resources. As I say all the time, I do get credit if you use my affiliate links and that's how I'm able to do this and continue to do the podcast and hopefully make it better. If you're watching on YouTube or you're watching on any major podcast platform, please comment, like this, share it, subscribe.

Rate and review the show and help us reach more people and that is all for today I'll see you next time on the next episode of the off the ladder podcast