The Facebook Group Strategy That Replaces a Solo Ad Budget With Zero Dollars
You don’t have money for solo ads or PPC. You’ve got a blog post you’re proud of, and you posted the link to your own Facebook wall where the same forty friends who always scroll past it will scroll past it again. Nobody new sees it. Nobody clicks. Nobody joins.
That’s not a content problem. It’s a distribution problem, and it’s the exact gap Justin Varenchia built this training around inside the 15K Formula. Before he ever spent a dollar on paid traffic, he generated his first five figures in commissions inside Empower Network using nothing but a free method built around Facebook groups, at a point when he genuinely couldn’t afford to pay for advertising and didn’t yet believe paid traffic was worth the risk.
As someone starting a blog or a business with no ad budget and no existing list, you already know the frustration of writing something good and watching it disappear with zero engagement. This lesson is the exact mechanic Justin used to put a single post in front of hundreds of thousands of targeted people for free, using nothing more than groups he was already free to join and a blog post he’d already written for his own list.
How do you find hundreds of thousands of targeted people without spending on ads?
Justin came to this method the hard way. For about a year and a half, his only traffic strategy was SEO, and it worked, until it didn’t. A Google update wiped out roughly 30 leads a day that had taken him a year and a half to build, almost overnight. He needed a strategy he could implement fast, with no ad budget and no ranking to rebuild from scratch, and Facebook groups were what he landed on.
The strategy starts with joining Facebook groups built around your topic, not general groups, specific ones. If you’re posting about making money from home, you join make-money-from-home groups. If you’re in real estate, you join real estate groups. Facebook caps individual accounts at 300 group memberships, and requests to join aren’t always instant. Some groups approve you the same day, others take a week or two, so building toward that ceiling is a gradual process, not something you finish in an afternoon.
Once you’re in, the housekeeping matters as much as the joining. Turn off notifications for every group except the ones you personally run, because a single group can have thousands of members posting throughout the day, and leaving notifications on for even fifty joined groups will bury your phone. Justin also pairs this with a weekly piece of content for his own list, a hangout or a call, so the same post doing the rounds in Facebook groups is also reaching people who already know him directly.
What actually separates a spam post from one that gets shared?
The difference between a strategy that builds an account and one that gets it shut down comes down to relevance. Post content that matches what a group exists for, and you’re a contributor. Post unrelated content because a group happens to have members, and you’re spam, even if your post is genuinely valuable somewhere else.
So think of it this way. If you were to go fishing, you know, you’ve got to have the right bait, you’ve got to have a fishing pole, and you’ve got to go in the right spot where the fish are. I look at groups on Facebook the same exact way. If you know where the people are hanging out that are targeted and related to the content you’re sharing, something you need to keep in mind is who is your audience, you know what I mean?
Before writing a post, you have to know exactly who it’s for. Struggling parents. People stuck in a nine-to-five looking for a way out. Whoever it is, the post, the video, and the group you drop it in all have to line up with that one person, not with a general audience.
How do you know if your post’s problem is the headline or the offer?
There’s a practical wrinkle here too: posting a raw affiliate link straight into a Facebook group typically gets blocked outright, so the link has to be run through a posting tool built for it first, then wrapped again before it goes out.
Justin turns the whole process into something measurable using Bitly to shorten and track every link before posting it into groups. That single habit changes guessing into diagnosis. If you post a link into a hundred groups and nobody clicks, the problem is the headline or the image, not the blog itself. If people click by the hundreds but nobody signs up, the problem has moved downstream, into the blog content or the call to action sitting inside it.
One post Justin dropped into roughly 150 groups generated 185 tracked clicks, real traffic he could point to and improve on, not a guess. Because the whole thing is trackable, a strategy that used to depend on hope gets turned into a repeatable science, tightened post by post. He edits the headline inside the shortened link itself so it still reads as relevant to whoever glances at it before clicking, a small detail that changes whether a link gets clicked at all in a crowded group feed.
What’s the one mistake that gets your account suspended?
None of this works if the account posting it gets shut down, and Facebook will warn you before it happens. Justin is direct about what that warning means.
As Justin Varenchia puts it in the 15K Formula, “If you ever get a Facebook capture that pops up and it tells you to slow down, guess what? Slow down and go back to it later. That’s a warning saying you’re going too fast, and if you keep it up, you can get your account shut down or suspended.”
The fix is pacing, not stopping. Posting the same message into twenty groups every ten or twenty minutes keeps you under the radar, where posting into three hundred groups in twenty minutes straight does not. Justin has run the same Facebook account for years using exactly this rhythm, treating it as something to protect rather than something to burn through.
None of this required an ad budget, a list, or any technical skill Justin didn’t already have sitting in front of him. It required joining the right rooms, posting content that belonged there, tracking every link, and respecting the platform enough not to get shut down doing it.
The full lesson goes further than what’s covered here, including the exact swipe copy Justin uses, the specific tool for posting a link Facebook won’t otherwise allow straight through, and how this method stacks with emailing your own list every week. This lesson is part of the 15K Formula. The entire course, including this lesson and everything built on top of it, is available for $99 through the 15K Formula course.
Join a handful of groups related to what you’re already writing about, set up Bitly on your very next link, and post it before the day is over.
Full lesson transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
Justin Varenchia here, and I'm shooting this video to share one of my strategies for getting free traffic to your blog, doing some social syndication, using Facebook groups. And I just want to take people back real quick to my story when I got started with Empower Network, and I just want to remind everyone I did not do any paid advertising my first six to seven months of being inside Empower Network. And my first $20,000, $30,000 that I generated inside Empower was from free marketing strategies, and the method I'm going to be sharing with you today in this training module for the 15K formula, I'm going to share exactly what it is I do to tap into hundreds of thousands of people for free and targeted people. But first I want to cover some things that are just super important. And also I want to say, isn't this 15K per month formula training like the most badass training you've ever seen next to the master scores, right?
It's just so much value. What I've been learning from Dave Wood and all the trainers has just been, it's just profound, bottom line. So I'm just very grateful to be able to take notes from the trainings and for you guys to engage. And there's so many gals to be a part of it. So I just want to throw that out there too.
But yeah, there's some important things that I must cover, because if you take advantage of a strategy and you do it the wrong way, it can cause harm. It can shut down your account and do things of this nature. So it's very important you use common sense and you just follow some of the things that I share with you. And there's a reason I'm sharing it with you. Right.
I'm going to be teaching you how to tap into hundreds of thousands of people within the five-day cycle, this Empower training in Empower Network. So if you want to understand the process, what you can do is you can follow some of the things that I share with you. And there's a reason I'm sharing it with you. Right. Hundreds of thousands of people for free every day, you know what I mean? But it's very important you don't do some stupid things such as spam or post unrelated content in groups that aren't targeted, that don't match or correlate with what you're posting. This is considered spam, you know what I mean? So for example, if my post is talking about real estate, then I'm not going to go post in a cooking group that is dedicated for cooking and recipes or whatever it is, you know what I mean? It would be considered spam because there's no correlation.
So it's very important you keep that in mind that when you're posting in groups, you should be following the rules and regulations of the groups, you should actually read them, and you should post related content of value. That's the secret to making blogging work very, very well. And taking you back to my story, because I talk in these open-ended loops, and I apologize. So I want to take you back because, again, I didn't have any money to invest into paid advertising, as well as I didn't believe in paid advertising back then because of a self-limiting belief. So I used this method, to get to one sale a day and then two sales a day inside Empower Network from this Facebook strategy.
It's a mixture of some other things as well, such as emailing my list my new blog post, which I'll share with you a bit later. I think that's very important that you provide valuable content and you share it with your list and you let your personality shine through, being unique and being yourself and sharing your story and applying some of the strategies that you've already picked up going through the 15K formula, of course. So use this strategically and don't take advantage of it and be spammy, because it not only can get your Facebook account shut down, but it can make us look bad, you know what I mean? So it's just not smart to do, and it's not going to help you, being spammy is not going to get you sales. It'll just take you backwards instead of forwards, you know what I mean?
So, it's important you just keep that in mind. So think of it this way. If you were to go fishing, you've got to have the right bait, you've got to have a fishing pole, and you've got to go in the right spot where the fish are. I look at groups on Facebook the same exact way.
If you know where the people are hanging out that are targeted and related to the content you're sharing, something you need to keep in mind is who is your audience, you know what I mean? Before you write your blog post, think about that. Who do I want to connect and relate to? Is it struggling moms, you know what I mean? Is it people who maybe work a nine to five and they hate their jobs and looking for a better way out to unplug from the matrix, you know what I mean?
What is it? Know your audience, and then specifically target that post on your blog, or your videos on your blog, or all of the above, and target it towards that, you know what I mean? You have to be relatable, and as long as you're providing valuable content and telling stories like we teach you to do, it's very easy. You get free traffic.
This is a method where you can easily get two, three hundred people to your blog for free without having to pay any money, and it's super simple to do, so let me just get into it. This is a blog post that I just wrote. I wrote it late last night for today. And I share a video on it, as you can see here, and then I share a hangout we recently did, and a bunch of call to actions. Do you notice that, like, call to action here?
Yes, Justin, I'm ready. No, Justin, I'm going to get my questions answered first, sending them to an FAQ page, right? If they want to get started, they can click that link. They can click this link right here, more valuable content, this is like a three and a half hour hangout, right? Because I learned in the 15K per month formula, do something for your list every week.
So that's what we did. I got with some other leaders and said, let's do something cool for our prospects. And because I did that, I have a lot of valuable content. I'm just applying really what I'm learning here in the 15K per month formula from Dave and Dave and all the badass leaders here. But just lots of calls to action, and talking about the Empower, I don't know, how to build my system flow. But nonetheless, I just want to show you what a basic blog post looks like from me. Now, what I'll do is I need to go to Facebook, right? Go to Facebook. And here's the strategy, we're going to basically join a bunch of groups that are targeted to the content that you're creating.
So for example, if you're posting about making money from home, it should be make money from home type groups, how to make money online, and things of this nature. If you're talking about, I don't know, real estate because you're in real estate and you're connecting that through your call to action and your Empower blog, well then join a bunch of real estate groups and connect with your audience, whoever your audience is. If you're talking about personal development and mindset, well join personal development groups. Now you're probably going to ask me, how do I join groups? Well, the truth, last time I checked, Facebook does not want people to just join groups because they don't want people to spam.
They want you to be invited to groups, and if people invite you, then you can join. So you can get invited to groups, or you can just be clever, think outside the box, go to Google and figure it out. Use the Google search bar tool, whatever, and just type in what you're looking for. And guess what? You just might find some answers.
I was able to find answers. I joined 300 groups and I soon found out that 300 groups is the limit, meaning Facebook will allow you to join up to 300 groups. So choose 300 targeted groups, or if you don't want to go crazy, then choose 50 groups or 20 groups or whatever makes you happy. You don't have to take it to the limit. I'm just letting you know what the limit is because I'm one of those guys that take things to the limit.
So if you're looking for things to the limits, I just happen to know, right? So when you join all the groups, here's what's going to happen. Let's say you join 50 for this example. You're probably going to want to turn your notifications off, because if you keep them on, it'll drive you crazy. And what am I talking about?
Let me go to my groups, and this is going to show you a list of all my groups. And I'm just going to go down to the bottom. Okay. And what I'm going to do, for example, I'm going to click on a group. I just open it in a new window.
And if you go here, you see notifications. It says off. I recommend turning notifications off unless you like receiving hundreds and maybe even thousands of notifications every day on your Facebook saying that there's new posts in these groups. Because I just want you to keep in mind, some of these groups, this one has 184 people. Let's just open up like another one.
Just random groups here that are targeted to my niche, like global entrepreneurs. 453 members. And I'll just open one more real quick just to give you an idea how many people can be in these groups. 20,000. So this group has 20,000.
And I can probably just tell you off the bat, maybe there's probably 100. Maybe there's 500 active people that post. But most of the people are just people that observe and just look for things that are interesting. So if you can appeal to them, doing what I'm sharing with you right now, you can get a lot of targeted traffic. And this kind of traffic is ultra, not just ultra targeted, but it's really good.
It's like social media traffic and YouTube, like video traffic. It's the best. You don't need hundreds of leads. You don't need to get a sale like some cold traffic sources that aren't so good. You may be able to get 10, 20, 30 leads and easily convert a sale.
So this is very, very, very powerful. So nonetheless, just make sure your notifications are off. Because just imagine if there was 500 people posting in a group and you got 500 notifications from one group. So that's why I turn it off. In all the groups, I turn notifications off, except my own groups, which I own and want to know and be on top of, and be a part of.
And for that example, if you're a part of a group that you're really a part of, obviously keep that on. But for the sake of these hundreds of groups that we're adding on Facebook for this marketing strategy I'm sharing with you, it'd probably be a good idea to shut them off. And that's how easy it is to do. Now, once you request to join a group, some of them will accept it the same day. Others, it may take a week or two weeks before they accept you.
I just want to make sure that you know that. So if you're a part of a group that you're really a part of, I just want you to keep that in mind. So if you go join 100 groups right now, maybe 20 or 50 will accept you within 24 hours. The others you'll have to wait, just to give you a perspective of how long it will take to max out or get to that limit of 300, if that is even a desire of yours, right? I just want to share with you what is possible, okay?
So what I would do is get my Facebook ad for the day. I'd write something and I'd basically take the headline from my blog. I'd write, you know, and just add some things to it. Here it says, new video. I seriously want to help you.
I make public my personal intentions and targets for 2013 inside. And notice I'm using the social media bar, and you should already be aware of this tool, because if you just try to post your Empower Network link on Facebook, it won't go through. So it's very important you use, right now, unless there's another alternative or it's working, but for right now, make sure you use social media bar to post your link, right? And when you use social media bar, one of the options in there, it asks for an image. Make sure you use an image relevant to your post or an interesting image that would make people want to click on your post.
That can definitely help you with your click-through and conversions. And something that I want you to do that I'm going to share with you, because I want you to turn on your social media bar, and I want you to turn this strategy into a science, not just a guessing game. See, most people fail because they don't know what they're doing, and everything's a guessing game. Well, I'm going to teach you how to strategically track what you're doing today. This is very, very profound.
And when I discovered this, I started getting a lot of results very, very fast. You're going to go to bit.ly.com, and there's probably a lot of tools. I'm just sharing with you one that I personally use. I'm sure that you can use a lot of different ones out there because there's a lot of different URL tools that do tracking, right? So whatever's clever.
But just to show you what I do, right? So what I'll do is I'll take my link from social media bar. I'll paste it right here. And then what I like to do is I like to edit the link. You can click right here and edit right here.
And here, you want it to be relevant, right? Because you want people to click on it. So make it look relevant. So I'll put, I'll help, usually I just put my title or headline in here.
30 people make 30K. Yeah, I mean, and maybe I'll even add a month. It's not that important if it's too long or too short. You know what I mean?
Because in these groups, you can post long links or short links. It doesn't have to be crazy long. Like I'm not going to put the entire thing here, but I'll put up to a month.
Just so it's relevant with the headline. So that makes it very easy, right? Save it. Then you can just copy it.
And I just use a note program here on my Mac. You can use any notebook program. Obviously, not that important. Whatever is clever. And I'm just going to move this because I'm going to be posting this.
Now, why am I posting this? Well, it's important to know if my copy is any good. Obviously, if I post it in 100, or even 300 groups, and I don't get any traffic, I know my headline sucks. It's not interesting.
And that's where I'm going wrong. That's why it's important to track it. And let me just give you an idea of what I'm talking about. I'll show you a post that I think I threw in about 150 groups here just recently. Why 20-somethings are the most successful entrepreneurs.
And you can look at the statistics. And you can see I had 185 clicks from posting it in Facebook groups. So that's free traffic. And that's good traffic. You know what I mean?
Quality traffic that anybody can tap into. And it's one of the easiest things I've ever done. And once I discovered this, I was like blown away. Because I was one of those guys that previously, before doing these strategies, I was doing SEO. And that was my only strategy for like two years.
And SEO is great. But you love it. And you also hate it. Because Google unleashes attacks with these friendly little lovable animals. And I'm like, I don't know. And then I got these animals like the panda. And you know what I mean? It just changes everything quick.
And I went from like 30 leads a day. That took me like a year and a half to get to. And then all of a sudden, all my leads were gone. And I needed a strategy that I can implement fast. And when I discovered this Facebook strategy in groups, it was like game over.
I just started doing the same thing every day. Doing a good value-based blog post that the people are going to love. You know what I mean? Sharing it with my list. And then I got, which just to give you an example, this is a swipe copy I just wrote that I just sent out, and I don't get a lot of comments on my blog post from that. Like for example, I sent it to my list, I do have like a medium-sized list, not a major list or the smallest or biggest, but when I send the broadcast, maybe it goes out to like, I don't know, 14,000 or 12,000 people. So that's not a massive list, it's a decent sized list, right? But nonetheless, I got one comment from sending it to my list. So you can't tell me I'm getting all my comments and social exposure from having a list. I do get some, I'll probably get like another comment or two from it, you know what I mean, it's something, but most of my social buzz and all my comments and things that really make my blogs attractive, that social exposure is coming from this strategy that I'm sharing with you right now.
And I'm actually doing it with you live. I didn't post it in my Facebook groups yet, my blog posts, and that's what we're doing right now. So anyways, I wrote a swipe copy. I sent it to my list just like we share with you to do. We tell you to email your list, right, and send them your valuable content.
You know what I mean? And make sure you're using Bitly for tracking, and then we're going to go through each group, and we're simply going to do some copy-paste, but I've got to make sure I have the whole ad, right? So here we go. Move that, and I'm going to post my ad, but I just want to make it look right here. Okay, and notice I'm using Bitly, so this way I know how many people are clicking on my ad, right?
And then I'll just copy-paste it, perfect it here, and I'll hit post. And I want you to see how valuable this technique is for your business. Because I just posted an ad for free to targeted people that are interested in advertising. It's in my niche, right? And it's related to the type of content I'm sharing.
It's all about marketing and training and value, right? I just shared this with 20,000 people. Now imagine belonging to 300 groups, and groups, you can have 50 people in a group. You can have hundreds of thousands of people in a group. So you can actually share this with people, and you can actually use this technique to put your ad in front of over a million people if you treat this serious, daily.
You can put your ad in front of a million people. So this is how simple it is, and what I would do is I would basically just open up a bunch of windows, open in a new window, or a new tab, I mean, right? And then you just basically copy-paste the message. It's like the easiest thing I've ever done. Copy-paste, copy-paste, you know, 4,000 members.
Here's one with 1,000 members. Here's one with 3,490 members. And I go through, personally, I'll go through anywhere from 100 to 300 groups, depending on what I feel like doing. And are there, you're probably asking a question, is there software or services I can use to automate this? There are, but I'm just showing you the manual way that's free, because this is how I started doing it, and I actually still do it this way.
There are tools that you can use that will automate this, but it's pretty damn simple. Now, here's another caution sign. If you ever get a Facebook capture that pops up and it tells you to slow down, guess what? Slow down and go back to it later. That's a warning saying you're going too fast, and if you keep it up, you can get your account shut down or suspended.
So you have to use this cautiously and use common sense. So anytime you get a warning, a capture appear saying to type in a message or a code, that means slow down, shut it off, maybe go back to it in another two hours or in another hour, whatever. Here's what I realized. You can use the same message and post it into hundreds of groups, but you can't do it too fast. You can't do 300.
You can't do 300 in a row in 20 minutes. Maybe you should do 20 every 10 minutes or 20 every 20 minutes. I think you should be smart about it and not go too fast. However, many times I've gone very fast and probably within 10 minutes posted in 100 or 150 groups, no problem. But I think it would be smart to be clever about it and not to abuse it, but to be wise about it and intelligent about it, you know what I mean?
I still have the same Facebook account that I created like, I don't know, five years ago or something like that. The same account. I've never got it shut down. I've been suspended for 30 days or, you know, doing things and just from adding friends, doing things legit sometimes. I get a suspension just because that's how it is, whatever.
It happens. Get over it. But nonetheless, I have the same account because I respect it. And I don't take advantage of it. I don't spam.
And I try to provide as much valuable content to the viewers as possible. So now you know. If you make a post, let's say you share it in 100 groups and you check Bitly and you see you have nobody reading it, like nobody clicking on it, right? Well, then it don't matter what you're blogging about or what content you have or your call to action in your blog, right? It's not even relevant what's in your blog.
Because people aren't even getting it. So by treating it as a science, it helps you understand that maybe your copy sucks. Now, what about if it's the opposite? What if you have 200 people that are clicking on your link and your copy is really good and you're getting free traffic, but maybe you're not getting any leads or any signups? Well, then maybe your content is bad, or maybe your call to action is not good and you're not connecting with people or it's not related.
Right? And you'll be like, crap, this don't work. This don't work. Wow, this really works.
How can I replicate that? Can I replicate this message again in a different creative way? You can get really good at this method. You know what I mean? It's one of the easiest methods that I've ever done.
I still use it because it gets me social exposure. It gets lots of comments. I don't know if you've read some of my blog posts, but I can easily get 20, 30 comments to a blog post if I share it all over Facebook using this strategy and strategically tracking everything so I know what's working and what's not working so I can get better and better. I think as a marketer, that's our job. It's like a professional athlete who's like a professional runner.
They're going to every day train and they're going to sprint. They're going to run long distance and they're going to time themselves. They're going to try to get a better time and out produce themselves. We can do that just by applying the knowledge that we learn here in the 15K per month formula. We can constantly improve our strategy.
That's the strategy. It's the easiest thing you can do. Basically, I'll give you a review one more time. Join as many groups as you can. Turn the notifications off so you don't go crazy.
You don't want to go stir crazy blogging. You know what I mean? After you turn the notifications off, you can create your own blog post. You can create a very good message of some copy. Make sure you use Bitly and social media bar. That way you can post on Facebook and track how many people are clicking on your ad. That's it. Do that every day.
Get hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people exposed to your ad. The biggest problem right now, you're creating a blog and you're not sharing it. There's so many free strategies that you've learned here in the 15K per month formula from people like Rob Fore and Chris Record and all the badasses, Dave Wood. They share so much. There's so many strategies.
Everything works. You've just got to be willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty and go to work. That's all there is to it. There's no excuse, because if I can do it for free, Chris Record can do it for free, and Rob Fore is using all these crazy strategies and getting all this free traffic, anybody can do it. It's just a choice.
You make a choice. I'm going to get a lot of traffic to my blog. Regardless of what it takes, I'm going to generate 30 leads a day, whatever your goal is. If you can generate 30 leads a day off of free strategies with good traffic from your blog and video marketing and social media, you have the formula for two sales a day. That's all it takes.
Don't just try this for a week, but perfect it. Commit to it for the next 90 days. It can turn your life around. I know it did for me, because just six months ago, I was struggling to pay my rent until I discovered this strategy with Empower Network. I went to town and I treated it very seriously.
Now, everybody knows me inside Empower Network. It's thanks to this Facebook strategy for free. Now, I just handed you the keys to the universe. Use it and take advantage of it. Why not?
Share the prosperity. I'm glad to help. I appreciate you tuning into this video. I hope this training has served you well. Now you know so many strategies for free traffic.
All you got to do is take action and then create the lifestyle of your dreams. I look forward to seeing everyone at the next event, giving you a hug, shaking hands. I just want to say I appreciate you all. I appreciate you, Dave Wood. Thanks for asking me to do this training.
Love and light, everyone.
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