Facebook Groups vs Pages for Affiliate Marketing

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What’s Facebook Got to Do with Affiliate Marketing?

There was a time when successful affiliate marketers just needed a basic understanding of SEO to prosper. You could put a website together and watch people flock to your site; leading you to generate commission withins weeks. Things changed. While the ultra-SEOed websites will eventually be able to prosper as affiliate cash machines, it requires a much more complex skillset and time than a decade ago.

Rather than relying on affiliate prospects to find you, the fact that everyone has a Facebook account means that you can go and find them instead. You can discover people based on their location, lifestyle and love life, making it a lot easier to target whoever you want with whatever offer you’re pushing.

Some use Facebook advertising to drive people to their affiliate-loaded websites for quick conversions. Others would rather play the long game, and drive people towards a Facebook page or group, so they can gradually funnel people towards a conversion (or multiple within the same niche). But is it better to do this with a page or group?

What are the Differences?

Posts on both Facebook pages and groups (once joined) will appear on your newsfeed, as per the rest of the content you typically see there. However, the dynamics are completely different.

Facebook pages and completely public entities that anyone can join to follow the latest posts. They act in much the same way of a regular profile, where you can share all types of content and the people that like the page (and even those that haven’t) are able to interact with it.

Posts from the page itself get all of the attention and are the whole point of it.

Facebook groups can either be public or private (requiring questions to be answered for the chance to join). Rather than being based around a person, brand, or theme, they’re meant to be for groups of people to have group discussions.

Posts from members hold just as much weight as the original creator of a group.

Why Choose Groups?

Groups are community hubs which essential run themselves. It’s conceptually more similar to a forum than a page. Rather than you having to feed the group content, its members will do some of the work for you. For example, I’m part of an Amazon group where its original founder hasn’t posted in months, as they know that if a newcomer turns up asking what stranded inventory is on Amazon, there are hundreds of people that would be happy to answer for them.

You can supply content of all kinds on pages, but it’s much easier to navigate through posts on groups. As a member, you can search for previous questions and get the answers from months prior. The fact that people are able to join and gain such value from the beginning will make them feel as though they have to stay, because they don’t know what they might miss if they leave.

You’re able to empower people on groups, giving them administrative powers and responsibilities to ensure that discussions remain constructive, and that it continues to be a welcome environment for all. Members will learn to respect the opinions of these members. If you’ve managed to convert them into a subscription sign-up, their recommendations hold a lot of weight.

This dynamic lends itself well to affiliate marketing, as it means that when you do introduce an offer, it feels less pushy than on a page. Ideally, you won’t be the only one discussing the merits of a particular programme, product or offer; the active community will.

The other benefit is that by building a community, you give people a reason to stay. They tend to have smaller pools of people connected to it, so it means it’s such easier to get people talking, building relationships and conversing on your platform. When you’re playing the long game, it's one of the most powerful assets you could ever make use of.