Total Facebook Takeover [review]
POS:
Great concept and trainingNEG:
Software aspect is not excitingToday I’m taking a second look at, and doing a full review of, Total Facebook Takeover. Total Facebook takeover was released a couple of days ago and honestly I had access to it at least a week before that. When I first looked at it I noticed that it has a software aspect and […]
Today I’m taking a second look at, and doing a full review of, Total Facebook Takeover.
Total Facebook takeover was released a couple of days ago and honestly I had access to it at least a week before that. When I first looked at it I noticed that it has a software aspect and frankly I was not to impressed.
The software aspect basically just allows you to create Facebook groups and post to them. Really I did not see the point in it because it does not let people do anything that they cant already do from right inside of Facebook. Frankly it was not interesting so I did not see any point in testing it further.
It turns out this snap judgement on my part was a big mistake.
Fast forward to a few days ago and Simon asked me what I thought of Total Facebook Takeover. I told him that I did not really see the point in the software. He thanked me for me feedback and then asked me what I though of the training? That confused me. I had seen a link in the header that says ‘training’ but I had assumed this was training on how to use the software (which was simple enough that I did not need training). But thats not the case. The training is not training on the product, its a 5 module, all inclusive training on how to do marketing with Facebook groups.
It turns out that not clicking that link and dismissing this product without looking at the training was a huge mistake on my part. In fact now that I have looked at it I’m a bit embarrassed that I made such a snap judgement.
The training is quite good and covers everything you need to know, from creating a group, to building up group members, to monetizing your group. it is really all inclusive with everything you need.
But one think kept bugging me. Why use a group anyway? What advantage is there to a Facebook group, and more specifically will people actually see my messages in my group? So I decided to run a little test on one of my groups.
Normally I don’t post to my groups. Instead my groups are a way for people to contact me or ask me questions. For this test I posted a very simple message to one of my groups that simply asked people to comment “Yes” if they read the message. I did the test this way because I wanted to know not only how many people would see the post, but also how many people would actually read the post
The results actually surprised me. Within a couple of minutes I started getting notices that people where commenting on my group post. When it was all said and done 70 people commented “Yes” as per the instructions. These are people who I know for sure not only where shown the post but who actually read the post (and chose to interact with it).
Whats exciting about this is when you consider the number of people in this group. There are only 394 people in this group. That means over 17.7% of the people in this group where shown the post, read the post, and interacted with the post. 17.7% is a very good number. Why? Because it reviles the effeteness of email marketing.
Generally speaking email marketers will get around 15-20% of their list to even open their email and only 10-15% of those opens will engage with the email. This means someone with a list the same size as the group I tested with would expect at most 78 people to even open an email sent to them and will be lucky to get 12 people to take an action from the email. From my group test I got 70 people to not only read the post, but to also take the action I wanted. Thats very cool.
Also cool is the fact that unlike email Facebook groups are free. I can build as many of them as I want, in as many niches as I want. I can message them as often as I want and I can let them grow as big as I want and they will never cost me a dime. Email on the other hand is quite expensive.
It gets even more exciting when you consider that when you have a group people will ask you to join the group. This is a sharp contrast to building a list where you have to basically bribe people to get on your list. Lets be honest after all, that’s basically what a squeeze page is, a bribe. You go on my list, and Ill give you this XYZ. However groups are different. People not only gladly join, they ask to join, and you don’t have to give them a thing. Because of this its going to be a lot more easy to build a group up then it is to build a list.
Now I’m not saying Facebook groups will replace email marketing. An email list is a core asset in any online business. However after seeing how well Facebook groups perform in my own testing I’m personally pretty exited. I can 100% guarantee you that I will be building up Facebook groups in my own niche. Given the fact that they are free to create and use, easy to build up, and perform comparably well to an email list anyone would be silly not to take advantage of them.
While I’m still not impressed my the software aspect of Total Facebook Takeover I am very happy to report that the training aspect is well worth the investment. It starts with the basics of creating a group, explains how to build up your group members, and even covers how to monetize your group. In short the training on Total Facebook Takeover is going to give you what you need to fully take advantage of Facebook groups, something I’m now convinced is a very good opportunity for making money online.
A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.
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Does it come with a facebook group for the course? Also what i don’t get is if you have a fan page all your fans are interacting on that. Why would they also want to interact on a group?
I posted the test message I spoke about to a group that had 394 members and 70 people answered the post. I posted the same exact message to one of my fan pages that has 500+ members and the post reached a wopping 13 people and 4 people commented. Its pretty obvouse that groups are about 20X better than fan pages. When you think about it this makes sense since people get notifications of group posts but do not when you post to your fan page.
Thank you for the review and discount code 🙂
I am glad you took a second look at this…basically because I have unsubscribed from almost every other marketer but you and Ray the Video Guy.
Thanks, I am excited too..!!
Tom
I have had a few emails about this product and I checked the sales page. I came to the exact same conclusion that the software was pointless. I also thought if the software is pointless the training is going to be as well. So I thought I wouldn’t bother with it. Now I think I might give it a second thought about it. Cheers Brett.
Hi Brett,
When I click on your link, I get 502 Bad Gateway.
Regards, Morgan
Might have been a server blip, seems to be working now for me.
Last half of your last sentence… I thing you might want to change “not” to “now”. It changes the whole meaning.
Great review, I think I’m going to buy this.
Thanks!
Gary
Yep just fixed it. One letter makes a big difference. Spell check .. its a love / hate relationship with me 🙂
Hi Brett,
Your advice made a sale 🙂
Hi Brett,
Thank you for your generous 20% discount coupon. I had been sent this program from other sources but if I dont see a review from you I generally dont bother to investigate further. I have bought this now through you, once again thank you and keep up the great work!
Just bought this on your recommendation. Now, let’s see if this will be as efficient then it looks. Seems easy to handle and have a lot of potentials. Thank for having a second look on this product and keep the good work.
What are the OTO’s with this product and do I need them?
Im sorry, I dont review OTO’s normally. As for ‘needing’ .. I would not approve something that required an OTO purchase to be valuable.
I’m assuming you need to really know the subject in order to be the moderator of that group since people that join are always asking all kinds of questions and they’re expecting to be helped.
At least that’s how I see happening on all the groups I belong to, including yours.
Well yes, you should know about the niche you intend to market to.
Uhhhmmmm….Brett…..I’d argue with that statement! 🙂 (See my post further down!)
Hey Brett,
Thanks for another great review and for the bonus discount!
To some of the “gurus” you may be the “most hated man in Internet marketing” but to me you’re “the most trusted man in Internet marketing.”
Brett,
thanks a lot. My first image about total facebook takeover is like you, don’t feel it is interesting.
Thanks for reminding us to rethink again and the discount code, just use it.
thanks again,
Regards,
Luke
OMG…I assumed everybody knew about FB Groups! One advantage of Groups over FB business pages is perception…Groups are perceived as open helpful communities where as business pages are just “trying to sell ya something”!
Do you have to be an expert to start a group? Nope. Start it on any topic you wish….the more popular the topic, the faster the membership will grow and the content will self perpetuate. One of our groups, “Alberta Horse Buy and Sell”, which now has about 9000 members, we started, because we wanted to get some horses and didn’t know a single damn thing about them! Never had one before. EVER. (Got 6 now!)
That group now makes us money because we promote our western themed carved cedar signs in it. Any time we want! And the admins don’t even THINK of giving us the boot!! BECAUSE WE ARE THE ADMINS!!
We also average 20-30 member requests every day. That’s the pain part of this. We manually approve to prevent spammers from joining. (Hey Brett….write us a script that goes through the member requests and auto approves anyone that has friends already in the group! 🙂 LOL!) (And blocks anyone who is a meme=ber of more than 20 other groups!)
These two things are the only criteria we use to screen. We used to go look at each person’s page to make sure they are real, but when we got to a certain size, it became too much of a time sucker.
Hmm a group management software might not be a bad idea.
I’ve noticed that there are many groups that subscribe to the “We’ll reject your join request you if you belong to more than xxx groups” to be a very shortsighted and misguided approach to member screening.
Assuming what or how a person will post based on the number of groups they belong to is pretty much a silly way to make a determination on the likelihood of SPAM.
You have to look at case by case basis and relying on a piece of software to replace what should be a manual process is plain laziness and a good way to alienate potentially great contributors.
Well your welcome to your own opinion. However I run multiple groups, some quite large, and I can say 100% for sure, without a doubt that the vast majority of spammers are people who belong to a huge number of groups. Also there is no legitimate reason at all for someone to belong to 1000+ groups. Its impossible to participate in that many.
The training isn’t really that good… It’s quite simplistic, unprofessional and somewhat unethical (in some instances). I regret signing up for this. Will be requesting a refund. At least I didn’t buy the (seemingly) worthless OTOs.
Well you of course are entitled to your own opinion. I appreciate you taking to time to share it.
But I still think you need a fan page to be able to do ads…is that correct Brett ??
No you dont need one to do ads. But you do need one if you want to do ads that show in the timeline and not just in the right hand side.
brett.
based upon what you are saying above, about groups being more responsive than pages due to group members receiving notifications, i assume it is fair to say then that when posting to groups, one does not have to worry so much about the time of day one posts…
for example, i am in australia but promote products primarily for the USA market, meaning that i have to look at what time of day i post (certainly if i post to pages)…with groups though, am i correct in thinking that i don’t have to worry about that as much?? because of notifications…
or *should* i still think in terms of time zones when posting to groups, in your opinion??
cheers,
phil
What you *should* do is test and see if posting at different times gets better results from you groups. Any response that anyone gives to a question like this is at best an educated guess, which is still a guess. You should never guess, you should test and know.
I bought the software and have gone through probably three quarters of the training. It’s a good product – enlightening – and worth the small investment.. I’m still a bit confused with regard to how to actually get people to join your group.. but I’ve contacted the product creator a couple of times and he’s always been extremely quick to help and very friendly.
In my experience, the more one-on-one interaction I receive from sellers, the most I trust them. It doesn’t matter the price, the product, the value, or anything else – if someone takes the time to answer me individually, I have this internal ‘green light’ flash on (subconsciously I think!) that tells my brain that I can trust them, wholeheartedly.
I’ve yet to discover if my ‘subconscious green light’ is actually a good thing or not! 🙂 …. Finally, with TFT – while groups do appear to be and (as you’ve shown) have been proven to be an awesome tool, I have to wonder how long it’ll be before the powers that be at facebook catch on to it all and strip us of the tool altogether…. they hate IMers in general on FB, so I hope they don’t eventually ban us from the ‘groups’ tool.
Time will tell! 🙂
-Deb