I’m in 178 Facebook groups.
People think I’m crazy when I tell them that. But here’s the thing: this strategy has generated hundreds of accounts for pest control companies without spending a single dollar on ads.
I’m Jake Sheldon, co-founder of Pest Control Millionaires, and I’ve seen this work across dozens of pest control companies. Let me show you exactly how to find and use the best Facebook groups.
Why Facebook Groups Matter
Number one, for the people reading this, you need to be doing them because they’re free. It doesn’t cost any money.
I would say that’s number one.
Number two is you’re getting your brand out there to potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. Again, this is free marketing.
That’s why I believe every single service-based business should be doing Facebook groups because it’s free and it gets your brand out there very, very quickly.
How to Find the Best Groups
I get this question a lot and I would say you do want to be specific with the group, but you also want to get volume out there and test, test, test.
We talk about that a lot. It’s just testing a lot and making sure you’re doing that.
The Groups That Work Best
The groups that I’ve gotten the best results from are typically:
- Your community groups
- Your entrepreneur groups
- Your business owner groups
- Local mom groups
- Dog walking groups
Those are fantastic to get into.
The Groups to Avoid
The groups I would stay away from that aren’t typically going to be the best are going to be your buy, sell, trade groups. Those aren’t going to be really what you’re looking for.
Any group under 300, unless it’s hyper-local, is typically not going to be great either for you. You typically wouldn’t have enough population in the group where there’s some engagement, people are seeing it.
So those would be the groups that I would stick to that I’ve seen the best results from.
How to Actually Find These Groups
Facebook has a search section of course, and there are quite a few people who don’t know this: you can search by people, by groups, by pages.
When you go to search the group, say you’re in Dallas, Texas, you can actually search Dallas networking group, Dallas realtors, Dallas local mom groups.
You can actually search those things, click groups, and it’s going to pull up all those groups in your local area.
Be Specific with Your Search
Now you do want to be specific with your search terms in Facebook because sometimes they will not pop up.
I talk to some people and they’re like, “Hey, I can’t find any groups here in my area.”
I’m like, “Okay, are you searching your city name or your suburb name before?”
And they’re like, “No.”
I’m like, “Okay, well go ahead and try that real quick.” And it actually will pop up if you’re a little bit more specific.
I’m not sure why it does that, but you do want to be specific in your search term.
You want to make a list of all your suburbs everywhere in your area. And that way you’re making sure you’re finding all the valuable groups that you can post in.
How to Get Into These Communities
Some of them don’t want people selling or at least not super outright. So is there a question of people letting you into the group versus just a public community?
There are some tips that you can use.
In the beginning, I was just saying I lived in the area and you can get into some of those.
Now for some of you reading this, they do have some very, very specific questions to get into these groups. And it can be pretty difficult.
The Client Address Strategy
What I started doing is asking my clients if I could have their permission to use their address to get into these groups.
You have, which we can go into a little bit later, but you actually have your client post on behalf of your company or do a shout out in these groups for you.
So now it’s not you posting about your service. It’s actually the client is shouting you guys out.
And it’s like a referral. It’s like the best thing you can do. And you can get a lot of people to do this.
To answer the question fully: you can either borrow someone’s address or some of these groups are pretty easy to get into. You just say you live in the area.
Or if they won’t let you in, then you get permission from one of your clients, friends, family members, a buddy, whatever it may be, get their permission to get in the group.
Or you can just ask the admin to get in the group. And that’s not a bad idea either.
So just do whatever you can to get in as many groups as possible, because you want to do volume. Volume is so important when you do this.
How Many Groups Should You Join?
The problem I see with people not getting the results that they’d like from this: they’re like, “Hey Jake, I joined five groups and I’ve been posting all the time in these and I’m not really getting anything.”
Well, I’m in 178 groups.
So I’m in a lot of groups.
Now this might seem crazy to a lot of you reading this, but we do 10 posts per day in 10 groups.
It’s one post per day. Sorry, one post in a group and you only would do that one time per week.
Because you don’t want to over-post.
The 50 Group Rule
That’s the reason why you need a lot of groups. I would actually recommend 50 if you can. If you can’t, some of you reading this may have smaller areas, so just join as many groups as you can.
But if you’re in a city with 100,000 people or more, you’re going to have 50 groups that you can join.
And so you can do 10 groups per day, five days a week. And you’re at least 200 posts per month.
200 posts a month, that’s going to add up and you’re going to get leads, you’re going to get sales coming through that.
People think I’m crazy when I say that.
But it sounds crazy, and if it works, it works. And it’s in different groups.
Most of these people aren’t in every single group and they’re not seeing your posts several times. It’s the first time they’re seeing the post the same way you might be posting across different social platforms.
Company Page vs. Personal Page
Does it differ and does it matter between joining these groups on your company page versus your personal page?
I would say you should do both, but a lot of groups will not let business profiles onto their groups.
Another thing that I think works better anyways is your personal page.
Your personal page, you’re a person, right? People are going to trust you more. You don’t look like you’re a business spamming people.
People are going to trust you way more if it’s a personal versus a business.
So essentially you should do both, but I would focus more on the personal side of things.
You’re going to get way better results. People are going to trust you way more and you’ll get way more leads, way more results from the personal.
The Absolute Best Groups to Join
It is different for every area.
I’ve seen local mom groups just absolutely crush it. We’ve had people sell hundreds of accounts just from one local mom group.
Actually, I’ve seen networking groups work really well. I’ve seen business owner groups work super well.
They partner with other businesses in that group, build friendships. They send business back and forth to each other.
So it’s not necessarily one group that I’m like, “Hey, you have to be in this group or you’re toast.”
It’s different for every area, but I would say the essential ones that you should definitely be in are going to be:
- Your business owner groups
- Entrepreneur groups
- Networking groups
- Community groups (anything local)
- Suburb groups
- Local mom groups for sure
- Any dog walking groups (I know that sounds silly, but it works)
The Strategic Partnership Opportunity
I was actually kind of under the impression it was mainly residential prospects they were looking to connect with, but it’s also maybe strategic partnerships or even commercial clients.
One of the best ways to generate leads for your business is partnering with other businesses in town.
A perfect example: if you’re a pest control company and you want to partner with a lawn care company that doesn’t do pest control, you guys can send business back and forth to each other.
He sends you pest leads, you send him lawn care leads. Vice versa.
These are fantastic places to build relationships, friendships, and strategic partnerships in these groups.
And it doesn’t have to be just lawn care. This can be HVAC, plumbing, moving, you name it.
You can grow really great friendships and strategic partnerships from these Facebook groups.
And I’ve done it and hundreds of other pest control owners that I know have done this as well.
I think most people aren’t thinking about that.
The Bottom Line on Facebook Groups
Join at least 50 groups if you’re in a city of 100,000 or more. Aim for 178 like me if you really want to dominate.
Post 10 times per day across 10 different groups. That’s 200 posts per month.
Use your personal page, not your company page. People trust people, not businesses.
Focus on local mom groups, networking groups, business owner groups, and community groups.
Get client addresses to join groups you can’t access otherwise.
Build strategic partnerships with other service businesses in your area.
This is completely free marketing that generates hundreds of leads. You just have to put in the work.
If you want to learn more strategies like this, join our free Facebook group, Pest Control Millionaires. We’ve got over 2,000 active members sharing what’s working in their businesses right now.
And if you want the complete blueprint for building a premium pest control brand, grab a copy of Zip Code Kings. It covers everything from marketing to branding to operations.
Stop sleeping on Facebook groups. Start joining today.
