How To Fill Your Challenges & Groups – Episode 49

Melissa: We'll hop over to Ariel. 

Ariel: Hey, how are you guys? Good. So last on the call we talked a little bit  about the challenge on so starting to fill up, which is kind of cool. And what I'm seeing that I'd like to see differently is people are signing up, but not necessarily jumping into like the Facebook group.

So I'm starting next week Monday.And my question is what's the best way, or what can I do to just  increase the show up rate? 

Paul:  So you have a challenge. Now we know the context of the challenge.  Do you want to give a little backstory? Cause when we talked about it last week and you know,that you're just dealing with the the faith based and pulling everybody in, do you want to kind of maybe give a little hint hint to the backstory so everybody knows.

Ariel: Yeah.  So I'm doing a five day breaking 500 church challenge where the goal is to help churches that are less than a hundred, you know kind of get past  any kind of growth barriers. And the focus is helping churches become healthy with the concept that healthy churches will lead to growth.

And so, yeah, so, so the last time I I asked a couple questions about how do I get people into groups and done some of it got about 160 people signed up, which is great. 

Paul: Wow. That's awesome. 

Ariel: Yes. That's exciting. You know, I think the next step is how do I make sure they show up? 

Paul: So when's the official start again?

Ariel: Monday, Monday. 

Paul: Okay. So does anybody have any input looks like Marlin's got his hand up. 

Marlin: Maybe some pre-work or something that sets a context for what the challenge is going to be like, like, something  to drive traffic there early. So that way people are engaged and the content can only be available within the group.

So then like something that piques their curiosity.Now they want to go inside the group to find out what that is about. So that could be an idea. 

Ariel: Great. appreciate that.

Paul: Anybody else have any, cause you know what, I've got an opinion. 

Heather: Do you have any kind of welcome sequence in a group that like gives them a set of tasks to do? Like that gets them engaged with each other and talking to each other and connecting with each other? like typically that's something that a lot of the successful challenges I've seen out there do.

It's something I did in my challenge. And you would have like, like pin to the top. So it's like, Hey, come to this post and introduce yourself, but, but don't just leave it like, Hey, introduce yourself, give them three things that are like,related to the challenge because you want it to be at least a three line answer.

You want like substantial engagement. And then, you know, everybody will kind of jump on board  I would definitely do that and argue, keeping all of your content just in the group, like Marlin suggested.

Is that how you're is that where you're delivering all of the challenge? 

Ariel: Yeah. So kind of using like E cam and I'm gonna just do a live pretty much. 

Heather: Okay. But then, they know that like they know they can only get the content if they are in the group and you have like an email sequence set up to remind them,Hey, you know, for every day the challenge go here.

Okay then. Yeah, 

Ariel: Yeah,  there's any most sequence that they're going in. the second email they get is just me asking them why they joined and when people respond, it gives me an opportunity to kind of go back and forth with them,create some interaction and yeah, and I have the post, you know, I've got a picture of me and my, kids . And you know, just trying to get as personable as possible.

So they don't feel like, you know, like they feel like they can get to know me. But what I'd like to see is a higher rate of people that actually go from a signed up,  to actually join the group. 

Paul: So anybody have any other input,

No.Okay. Well we found through the . Years is a lot of different little tricks. So one is which is the easiest and obvious is to do some type of pre party to the event itself. So cause everybody might be thinking like content doesn't start until Monday.

So I have no reason to come into the group until Monday or do anything.So you got to create desire for people to want to be in the group. Like they're missing out on something if they're not in a group right now. So this is where you could you'll see that some of the larger ones that do really successful challenges, they'll have a more informal pre party the day before the command, they'll introduce themselves.They'll talk about the goals and the overarching purpose of it.

So that's really just a wrap up and, you know, just to kind of get everybody excited, you know? And then before that  there's certain pieces of software out there that can help with things like this, but you could have like a, kind of like a viral campaign element to this where you could have a contest or giveaway it could be around like people incentivized to invite other people into the program itself.Sometimes this is better done on the, on the front end using something like KingSumo where  it creates the viral meant where after they sign up for a thing, they're an incentive that they're entered into something in order in the more people they invite or the other, you know, email,whatever they get, they get incentives. Like they get more votes type thing. 

Otherwise, we do something that we call it "around the world" is what we call it internally between Melissa and I. And that's where we purposely we'll plan a valuable piece of content to the closest point of our bullseye,which in your case would be the challenge inside the challenge group so that we will go in there, Facebook live unexpected and we'll drop what we call as an engine, knowledge nugget.

And it just like something that was not planned. It's impromptu just want to come in here, I'm going to give value. And it's just one idea, like one simple idea,not the whole plan, not the whole program. I just want to wet the palate, get people really excited type thing. Maybe that one idea has like three parts to it.

You know, it could be really simple still. It doesn't have to be the big things and give away stuff. Now what we'll do though, is we will do what's called 'around the world",which means then we'll go the next layer out of our ecosystem. Okay. So the bullseye is the challenge inside the group. So what we'll do is then we'll hit like the email list and we'll say, Hey, we just went live a few minutes ago.

And Melissa gave incredible piece of value, our three point system and what we do to like get people in a church,you know, in less than, than like an hour of announcement, you'll, you'll see like a bump, a 10% of the people will just like show up at church, like whatever it is, you know, like whatever the promise is or whatever that point is.

If you want to see all three, since you're already on the email,it's you already signed up for the program, just come on in here's the link directly to now of course they hit that link. What it's going to say, you have to join the group first. You can see this. Yep. All right. So that's close to the ecosystem.

They're already, they already signed up, right? So they're already on the email list.They just haven't joined the group yet. So then what we do is we look at around the world is then going to our ecosystem, the next layer out. So think of about the rings of a bullseye. So then what we do at that point is we then look at it.

Okay, Melissa. So it's Melissa and I, right? So Melissa will go on her Instagram accounts.She'll force me, I'll go into my Instagram account. We'll then do a Facebook pages. And we'll also do our face. Cause sometimes some of our people are on our personal profile. So then we'll go there as well. So what we're doing is we're going around our world, like what is our ecosystem?

What is our world that we can do right now?But what we're going to do is we're only going to give them a piece of the pie. So the three steps are inside of the challenge inside the group. And I'm going to jump on and say, Oh my goodness, Melissa, just 10 minutes ago was inside of our challenge Facebook group.

And she just gave the three top tips on how to attract people into your church within less than an hour.I just totally blew me away. Now I'm going to give you one of these tips real, real quick. I'm going to let you know one of them, but if you want the other and really number three, I didn't, I never even thought of that before you need, if you want all three though, you need to go, I'm going to give you the first one,but if you really want the zinger, like you have to sign up for the challenge.

You have to go into the Facebook group and get it. So let me go ahead and give you that one right now. Boom. So what'd I just did. I had the bullseye, we gave the real value. I went one layer out and we gave a teaser like,Hey, this is what you're missing out on. You're already in. You just need to come all the way through.

Then I go to the next layers out in our ecosystem and I make them aware of what they're missing out because they didn't take the action that I need them to take. So I've created a desire for the next step. When each layer of ring.You c an do that same thing you can say, Hey, I just went live on my Facebook page a couple of minutes ago.

You're not in the challenge yet, but you're on our main email list. I just want to let you know, like I just dropped some value. You know, if you want to get more people into your church,you need to click on this link. Watch the Facebook live that I just did a couple of minutes ago. Go check it out. So what do I do?

I just told them to go. They're going to get this one value bomb. But when they're there, there's going to be a link that says you should join the challenge, you know,come on over. Cause they made a choice of not joining the challenge yesterday. So I'm not telling them to come join the challenge on this email right now.

I'm just telling them we just dropped some mad value on this one point. They can drive people in whatever your thing is. 

Ariel: So the link you point them to is the link for the signup page,or you point them directly to the group 

Paul: cause I want them to sign up. So I create value. You just give people the next step, depending on ring that you're on.

Does that make sense? So we're in your Facebook group, they're already there, you're trying to get them engaged. So they're there, you're giving real value.So then when you're, when your email lists that people that did sign up, but then not join the Facebook group, you can send it the whole thing and just say, Hey, if you didn't catch it, come check out the live

they already signed up for the challenge, the people that are on your general email list,that you want them to participate in a challenge, but they haven't yet. You're telling them that you just went live on your Facebook page, where you just dropped one or three nuggets and you got to listen to it.

Cause it's incredible. Now when they go to watch that, it's a, micro-commitment when they go to watch that on your Facebook page,the Facebook page is going to say, man, you got the first one, but you need the other two know how you get that joined the challenge. 

Ariel: That makes sense. 

Paul: make sense? 

Melissa: And then throughout the challenge too in your emails that you're sending you, cause you'll have people join the challenge.

Like first they're like,Oh, I forgot the challenge. You know, you've been talking about the challenge. It's like, I forgot it's happening. So make sure your emails,  what we'd like to do is  after day one,  maybe after the lesson and whatnot, somewhat throw throughout the day,  grab screenshots of what people are saying excited and be like,Oh my gosh, this is what's going on.

It's not too late. Cause sometimes people think, well it's too late. I can't jump in. They just already started. But because we had a lot of people joining,   mid challenge and it was, it was really awesome. Like, no it's not too late. Come on in,come on in and just keep sharing those  ahas and wins all throughout the week.

You just have to kind of keep reminding them and reminding them and reminding them about it.  

Lisa: I've got a suggestion. I'm running a challenge right now.

And what I'm doing is I'm awarding a winner every day from, from the previous day's activity or their challenge. And I'm judging them based on points on Facebook and they're getting points for engagement.Um, and then also what they post as well for their challenge and day one, I had over a thousand comments for that particular day's challenge.

So that really encouraged people to engage and be active in the group and that the prize it's just a $25 gift certificate to my eCommerce store. And then the grand prize is when your annual subscription to my new membership that I'm launching. that's been really helpful people that are just jumping over each other just for that $25 gift certificate.

Paul: Do they know about the membership? Do they know about that giveaway the, the one year? 

Lisa: Yeah, I announced it yesterday. When, yeah, it was our third day and every morning I've been going in and announcing the new challenge and then also announcing the previous winner.And that's when I announced the grand prize, I hinted that the grand prize was coming, but nobody knew about the membership.

 Until that was announced as the grand prize. And re-upped almost 50 members so far,

Paul: What, an easy way to make people aware of your membership. 

Dorene: Quick question on that. Whether it's Lisa or somebody else within the group, I wonder if there's any value like about that person and if people are participating and they're excited, what happens? Can we put a challenge out there to say, if you really enjoy this, you know, and you wish to share on your profile or your platforms . Feel free.. 

 When you do take a screenshot and we'll add you to this, this is that effective or helpful or too too much? 

Lisa: I ask people just  to bring their friends and if they think they would enjoy the challenge and the day before I did a warmup exercise as well just to build excitement for people to have their,their warmup activity ready.

Even though they didn't exactly know what the challenge was going to be about other than it had to do with geocashing T shirt. Yeah. I told them to do their laundry

Paul:  A warm up activity. That's awesome. Cool. I think about that. A warmup activity

pre engagement. Awesome. 

Melissa: Cool. 

Paul: Did that help out and   give you some ideas. 

Ariel: Great. Thank you.

Melissa: Okay. Right. Well you have to keep us posted and let us know, let us know. how things go. We're really excited. 

Ariel: Thank you