How to Use Facebook Groups for Lead Generation

For this week’s newsletter, I had a great conversation with Dan Magazu, the Owner of Ride The Wave , which helps home services businesses generate leads through marketing in Facebook Groups. His method helps business owners generate 5+ weekly leads and close 30%+ of those leads.

In my conversation with Daniel, we covered how he started a mulching business during COVID, created a digital marketing business, discovered his top tips for marketing in Facebook Groups, & more.

The 8 Key Takeaways

Below are the 8 most essential insights from my conversation with Dan that you can apply to your home services business today.

1. Starting a mulching business

Following a clear pattern shared with other guests here on The Workbench, Dan started a home services business before parlaying that experience into a digital service. Unfortunately, Dan’s freshman year of college aligned with the COVID-19 pandemic, so Dan and his classmates were sent home early. Dan started a mulching business with friends who all had landscaping experience to keep himself busy during this time.

Dan returned to college for his sophomore year but would head home and work on MulchMasters every summer thereafter. Dan was eager to see how big he could grow his business.

“We worked on the business every summer break, and after graduation, I wanted to see how big I could grow it. At its peak, we had six full-time and four part-time employees, generating $200k in revenue and $80k in profit.”

— Dan Magazu (@dannymagazu)

2. Making money with mulch in 4 steps

Dan kept things simple with MulchMasters. There was no company website, CRM, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or other digital tools. To get customers, he posted in local Facebook Groups (which we’ll touch on later in this newsletter) and then followed a four-step process to convert leads to customers.

Conduct an assessment

Provide an estimate

Order the mulch

Do the job

The assessment and estimate were completed during the same visit to the client’s property.

Once the customer agreed to the estimate, Dan ordered the mulch to be delivered to the client’s property, scheduled a job date, and got to work when that date came.

“Before starting the job, we ordered the mulch to be delivered to the property and did bed prep, which involved weeding and edging the beds. Then, once that’s all done, you start with the mulching. You use a pitchfork to grab the mulch from a wheelbarrow, place it in the bed, and spread it out. It’s a pretty simple service that is easy to learn, and most people could offer it.”

— Dan Magazu (@dannymagazu)

3. Turning challenges into skills

Dan was new to home services businesses when starting MulchMasters and faced two challenges early on. Through practice and repetition, these challenges taught Dan hard-earned skills he would continue to use in his business endeavors.

Estimating the price for jobs

Communicating effectively with clients

Optimistic and eager to provide value, Dan often underestimated the time it would take to complete jobs, thus underpricing his services. In some cases, Dan was underestimating the effort by 50%.

Additionally, Dan had to learn how to communicate proactively and professionally with his clients. Dan realized that the more communicative he was, even if things weren’t going exactly to plan, the more satisfied his clients were.

“Another big skill I developed was the ability to communicate professionally with my customers. I updated them on my arrival times and ensured they were happy with the worker. If they were not satisfied with the work, how could we fix it? We learned a lot about customer service.”

— Dan Magazu (@dannymagazu)

4. Creating a Facebook Groups marketing business

As mentioned earlier, Dan used a single marketing channel to build MulchMasters to $200k in revenue: Facebook Groups.

A Facebook Group is a public or private digital space within the Facebook app for group communication. It lets people share their common interests and express their opinions.

According to SocialPilot , over 1.8 billion people use Facebook Groups every month. In Dan’s case, he used Facebook groups focused on his local community to find customers for Mulch Masters.

Dan had such success with marketing in Facebook Groups that after his final summer after college, he created Ride The Wave to help other home services businesses market in Facebook Groups.

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“After the summer ended, I wanted to keep working on a business, so helping other companies use Facebook Groups as I had was a good idea. My friend Chris owned a custom pergola company that was perfect for Facebook Groups. Chris agreed to test marketing in Facebook Groups with me.”

— Dan Magazu (@dannymagazu)

5. How to market in Facebook Groups

Dan says there are two key steps to marketing your home services business in Facebook Groups:

Join local Facebook Groups in your service area

Create a post introducing yourself, your family, and your business

When choosing which Facebook Group to join, you should look for groups centered around the local community where you live and work.

Not all local Facebook Groups are created equal, though. Dan recommends searching for Groups with at least 2,500 members where multiple people post daily. “All Things Plymouth MA,” with 15.6k members, is an example of a great group to join.

All Things Plymouth MA

Once you’ve found highly engaged Groups in your service area, you’ll want to create a thoughtful post with images to introduce yourself and your business. You can also add a link to an online form to capture the information of anyone interested in your services.

“Write a thoughtful post that tells your story and isn’t just an advertisement. Share who you are when you join this community, how you engage with and support the community, your family, your pets — things like that. Include at least five images in the post, not just photos of your business. Share unedited pictures of you and your family and one or two of your business or service. Finally, use an online form like JotForm to create a simple information request form to capture people’s names, phone numbers, and email if interested in your services.”

— Dan Magazu (@dannymagazu)

6. A Facebook Groups marketing case study

Dan shared an example post from one of his clients who has performed quite well in the “All Things Plymouth MA” Facebook Group.

Dan attributes the post’s success to the personal introduction message, quality photos, and clear call-to-action at the end.

Example Post

In addition to including personal background and photos, Dan recommends including quality images of your work in the post. Ideally, a before-and-after photo or a photo showing the final result of your service would be best.

“The images are probably the most essential part. Include high-quality photos, both personal ones with your family or doing something you enjoy and good photos of your services or the final results of a project. You can see we included high-quality pictures of his services and family.”

— Dan Magazu (@dannymagazu)

7. How to convert Facebook Groups leads

Once you’ve found the right Groups and are creating personal introductions with great photos, how do you convert the engagement into customers? Dan suggests keeping things simple with an online form where people can submit their name, phone number, and email to request more information or a quote. Dan uses JotForm with his clients, but many tools provide this.

Lead Form

Speed is the game’s name in lead generation, so Dan connects the JotForm to OpenPhone using Zapier so that when a new lead submits the form, they instantly get a text from the business owner.

Dan recommends responding immediately to leads and waiting no longer than 30 minutes, as you risk losing the lead if you wait any longer.

“It’s so important to be super responsive to your leads. The goal is to respond to leads in 30 minutes or less. Our automation ensures we follow up immediately, which is the best way.”

— Dan Magazu (@dannymagazu)

8. The results of Facebook Groups marketing

Like any good marketer, Dan tracks data closely to measure what’s working and what’s not.

Here are some snapshots from Dan’s Facebook Groups marketing efforts:

5.7 Leads per Week

50% Reply Rates to SMS

10% - 30% Close Rate on Leads

“We track the data thoroughly for our clients. We average 5.7 leads per Facebook Group per week for our clients. Anywhere from 50 - 75% of leads respond to our initial text outreach and request a quote, then around 50% of those people become customers. About 15% of Facebook Group leads for my cleaning clients become customers. For my clients who do in-person estimates, that number is closer to 30%. Generally speaking, 10% up to 35% of Facebook Leads become customers for my clients.”

— Dan Magazu (@dannymagazu)

What the future entails for Dan

Dan recently suspended MulchMasters’ operations to focus his full attention on Ride The Wave. He’s excited to create more unique marketing channels for his clients and help them grow their businesses.

“I’ve suspended MulchMasters’ operation to focus solely on Ride The Wave. I enjoy the business, and it’s going well. We aim to develop lifelong business relationships with our clients by creating unique growth solutions. That growth solution is Facebook Groups, but we’re trying to create new outside-of-the-box marketing methods. We’re making door hangers for one client right now, and we’re attaching hand-written sticky notes to them and things like that. I’m excited to keep working with clients and find creative ways to help them grow their businesses.”

— Dan Magazu (@dannymagazu)