How to Launch a Paid Membership Using Your Facebook Group

Lee: so my question is I'm just at a point right now to launch my membership. Right now I have a following. I have a Facebook group that has about 600 men in it, and my group is for, for Christian men. as far as the launch is concerned, should I just put it out into my free group as well as Facebook ads what's the best way to get the message out initially?
Melissa: Best way to get, best way to get your message out about your new membership.
Lee: Correct. Paid membership. Paid membership.
Paul: And just to clarify, are you gonna do this as like a launch? Are you doing like a webinar or like a training series or bootcamp, or are you just hitting your audience and making people aware that it's it's available?
Lee: You know what, that is a great question. So if you tell me to do it in orders 1, 2, 3, and four, I'm great with that. if we could just start with the first step. What's the first step? Everything behind the scenes is ready. What should I do first?
Paul: let's bring it open to the group.
Melissa:
Paul: Anybody that leans into a launch, whether it's a new offer, existing one, like what, how do you ramp up in, into that launch? anybody want to, jump in
Heather: Hi. I actually just came off a little mini launch and it wasn't anything, Elaborate. So for me, when I start them, I do a little tease. I kind of talk about it like, this is something I'm interested in a Facebook group. I love taking polls. Polls have really helped me and guide me knowing what my audience wants.
So that's one of the places I love to start when I wanna think about a new launch, even if I'm gonna redo a launch. And then I get my ideas, I start writing little emails because I do try to incorporate people getting on my list through my Facebook group. So they have to answer the question and some don't, but whatever.
that's where I like to start. and then I trickle down and I send out the emails and, get to that point eventually. that's kinda what I like to do. I don't know if that helps anybody.
Awesome.
Paul: That's great. Great. Great. Robert?
Robert: I just, went through a launch, on a membership my recommendation would be to just launch,into your Facebook group, right?
to get it out there. You've got a following already. I'm assuming you have a sense of the pulse of that group. and you've got, as Suzanne said, the opportunity. You can pull 'em first and see, what their thoughts are, but it's there, it's ready to go. You have an audience, you can fire it out there and get the ball rolling.
you can show them some love. You can figure out what their concerns and issues are, you know how they receive it, if they have any input on tweaking it before you start going into ad spend. Developing a webinar, doing more, a more elaborate launch. you'll find out when you put it out there if there's traction or not.
and I think for me, that worked really well. I spent a while putting together digital courses and did the full blown launch, webinar kind of thing. And it was fine, but that was a lot of upfront work. To get to something that if you're off on the validation isn't really gonna fly.
Where is, if you've got a following, you've got a group, you can launch it out to them. And if it's not gonna fly, you're gonna find out real fast. and you're not gonna put in all that extra effort and the cost of the ad spend.
Heather: Great.
Paul: And Heather, you had something contribute or was that a new question?
Heather: Oh, no, I have clarifying questions to ask. because I feel like there's not enough information. Yeah. so you say you have a group of 600 men. How engaged are they and what is, what's the purpose of the group? what are they getting out of being there? Are you helping them become more biblically literate?
Is it focused on being a good Christian husband? what's the focus of the group? Do you have an email list at all, or are, do you only have the group? Can you give us a little more of the, quantitative details and the purpose details?
Lee: Okay, great question. So in the group, out of the 600, I probably have about 100 of their emails.
And then also the purpose of the group is basically for Christian men to have somewhere to go at least once a week. So that they can receive prayer, they can talk, they can receive encouragement, but just basically a time of fellowship. And every Saturday morning we have a Zoom call with the attendees being anywhere from nine to 14 people.
And the those men have connected on their owns. They call each other, they text each other, they even visit each other. So that's the overall purpose. we start with a short three to five minute, topic discussion. And then from there it's, we go wherever the spirit leads us.
Heather: Okay. so I'm gonna, I need to give you just a smidge of my unique background. I actually have three graduate degrees from seminary. I'm gonna tell you that I think you need to add a discipleship. Segment to this because I personally, having also tried to launch multiple Christian memberships, if you don't have something discipleship and more purpose driven beyond the fellowship and prayer part, and I do understand how important those are, but you've gotta have something more concrete where people can see the growth and see where they've come from and where, that growth is being fostered.
I think in order to have a viable membership that people will pay for.
Lee: Great. Thank you so much for that. That was very helpful. Thank you.
Melissa: Awesome.
Paul: anyone else have any, insight or input or thoughts? You, Melissa?
Melissa: Yeah. Lee, I think you've got like your setup really great with your free group already. You've you have this audience all already there, so just kinda like with tagging on what Robert said, I think I would start work from the inside out.
So before we get into paid ads, like you could. Launch to that group. And it could be as simple as, you do a series like, a series of Facebook lives in the group with some sort of like internal event type of thing. you could call a challenge, you could call it a bootcamp, you could call it whatever it is.
Extra trainings, extra support, extra education, and I'm really, and let them know. And I'm excited because I know a lot of you have been here in this group for some time and we've been having the fellowship on Saturdays.
But I'm really excited because I wanna introduce to you something that I think for those that wanna go further, like what Heather said, like that to go into, some of the other spiritual practices. And then that's where you introduce the concept of the membership. So I think I would work internal first.
and it doesn't have to be anything. Fancy. I think that's where a lot of times with launching, like we make it way over complicated than it needs to be. could be simply like you just show up, you talk about, again, the pain points, you know what they're experiencing.
You've been with these guys for a while and it's like this is the solution for you. and, if you're interested, I'm doing this, founding member, charter member, what do you want to call? Because you guys are in this group now. if you make the decision, by the end of the week, you'll get this extra.
session with me or this extra bonus with me and do it internally first. That also will allow you to test the launch material when you take it out to the public as well too, because what's nice is that you have a nice, warm audience and they're familiar and they resonate with it, and then you can tweak and maybe even take that same.
video series, or you can hone it down into, I know you've worked on webinars before. You can hone it into a webinar type of format and then take it out to the public. And then that's where I would run ads to that. so I would work from the inside out with that.
Lee: Awesome. Thank you all so much.
That was perfect. Thank you. Awesome. And Heather, I'm gonna ask for your email address, please.
Paul: And Lee, I just, I have a couple additional thoughts I just wanna add in because I'm gonna be the contrarian here and go an opposite direction to make you think Right out the gate, what everybody said is a hundred percent on point.
And for all of us, what is the least amount of friction just to get us to launch? Because too many of us sit in paralysis where we have to have all these complicated things. 'cause we watch these big gurus do very complex launches and they have 40 people on their team a lot of us are just running solo, and it's like we have to give some grace that like, we're not going to launch a big rocket ship type thing.
Like we're gonna go in the yard with the kid and we're gonna pump up some air in that little tiny rocket with water in it. It's gonna fly 20 feet in, in the air. like you just need to like, not overthink it and like just do it because then you're gonna have perspective. Now the contrarian part that I'm gonna say is that, okay. Good friend of ours, Matt, Tommy, has thriving Christian artists. So you figure you have two groups here that have potential money wounds stories, narratives about money. You have artists as well as faith, right? And it's who are you to charge in two buckets at the same time.
And over the last several years, he's created a very significant multi seven figure business. with a very large membership. and the average person pays $97 a month, be in there. now years ago it was much smaller than that. and he had to get over his own mindset blocks. we helped him with that as a friend, you know, years ago.
and he leveled up and magically the right people were willing to say yes, but why I bring him up as an example. He built a really successful group that was very engaged and very active. That was probably close to 60 to 70,000 people in it. And the good and bad with what you developed with your group is you could have been delivering so well in there that a lot of these men are getting their needs met by this weekly call that you're doing.
And you could have technically free zoned, like friend zoning, all the people in there, like they're expecting, they're getting what they need. And that's what happened with Matt, is his Facebook group in a way got to the point where it actually was hurting his launch. So even though we're validating and using the group.
for it, you have to create a clear distinction. There when the men get off the call on Saturdays, they have to be desiring more. 'cause if they're not desiring more, there's no natural tension that they're gonna want to buy the next thing. If they come in and their cup is completely filled with what you deliver and overdeliver.
And there's nothing wrong with that. But sometimes we accidentally. Over deliver to the point so much that we devalue whatever offer we put in front of people and we don't have conscious awareness that, oops, we did that. Because a lot of people tell us, all the big gurus, they were like. Give your best stuff away for free, give your best stuff away for free.
And we all do that. if we had a restaurant, we don't go out in the parking lot and give everybody free meals all day long, you know? 'cause they're not gonna come in and buy a meal. You know what I mean? I just want you to keep that in mind is that if there's not a clear distinction, if there's not a tension, then when these guys get off the call that they wished like they desired naturally more, it's gonna be a tough sell.
And that's gonna be a little misleading. Coming back to a little bit what everybody else said. It could potentially give you a false signal. Because you might have a good offer that a cold audience would be like, boom, I'm grabbing it. You might have free zoned the people, the men that are in your group.
So that's where I just like, for all of us, you just gotta be a little bit careful sometimes. and in that case you might. After you do this launch, no matter how it is, you might wanna survey the men that came in. They might tell you like, Hey man, I love what you're already doing. I didn't see the value in jumping in and paying for this other thing.
'cause there might not have been enough distinction between the two. and you might want to put some slush money aside and fully invest in doing some ads or a cold. However, it is a cold audience that doesn't know this routine of your weekly free meeting. Because they might actually convert better. And that's what happened with Matt is he looked really hardcore at the numbers and thankfully he had a big agency 'cause the money that he was spending and everything and he, several years ago, he closed his big huge Facebook group because everybody there is helping each other so much.
They had zero need to go into the pay program. They gottheir cup filled because the community would help each other out to the point so much that they had no idea going over there. some of us, it's like we do want to test with our existing audience, but it all depends on it. Have you have a tempo with the audience you created to expect to buy something from you all the time?
And because you haven't done that, it could give you a false signal. and again, going back to that restaurant, analogyJust think about it in a different way. if I owned a restaurant and you were my friend, and you came for the last year, and every time you came, I'm like, no, no, no, no.
Don't pay. Don't pay. Don't pay. I got it. I'm taking care of your meal. I'm taking care of your meal. And then one night you come in with your family and I'm ah, you gotta pay tonight, man. You're actually gonna be like, Hey, what's going on? Not your friend anymore. Yeah. What? blah, blah, blah.
you're not gonna look at it from oh yeah, you're gonna go broke. If you keep doing this with all your friends, you're actually gonna think away about it 'cause you got free zoned. So, just be careful. When we all go out and over deliver, we still need to leave something mysterious.
Some type of, question mark. A piece is missing that people naturally desire. That's why they want to buy from you. So when you're giving the free samples out in the food court, you're not giving a free meal, but you're giving people a taste. And when they get that little sample in their mouth, they're like, oh, I want to buy.
And in the real world, a free sample is always attached to a purchase decision. In the online world, a free give is typically never attached to a purchase decision. It's just I just wanna give you free stuff forever, and I hope you're gonna buy one day. But in the real world, Costco does not go out in the parking lot where nobody is a member giving out free samples only to the people that paid that are inside the store do they give samples out to.
So hopefully that helps.
Lee: yes. That helps a lot. Thank you all so much. Thank you.