S5E3 | What’s a pop-up group?

“Here’s my pet peeve: If I’m paying for something, I want a separate area for that. I wouldn’t want to pay for a challenge and then I’m in a Facebook group with people that didn’t pay for the challenge. That doesn’t feel right, it feels icky.” 

This episode is all about pop-up groups! But what exactly is a pop-up group, and when should you use one? 

If you’re listening to this podcast, you likely already have a free group where you’re funneling your fans in, and you’re building that ‘know, like, trust’ factor in a safe environment. You might even have a paid group. 

A pop-up group is separate from these groups, and it’s a temporary thing. You can have a paid pop-up group or a free pop-up group, and I’m going to dive into both. 

If you’re running a course or program for a limited amount of time, then you can create a paid pop-up group for participants to catch up and ask questions. I used a paid pop-up group for the first time I ran my Challenge Workshop, and participants posted their progress and wins. It was a very supportive group where people had a place to ask questions and be inspired by what others were doing. I then used that pop-up group to sell and move people to another offer I had for them. You can even use a paid pop-up group if you’re running a free challenge, and offer it as a paid upgrade. 

What’s the benefit of using pop-up groups? If I’ve paid for something like a challenge, I want to have a place to go to share and talk with others who also paid for the challenge. I want a space where I can just talk about the challenge, where I don’t have to deal with questions from people who aren’t in the challenge. You don’t want to ask people who have paid for your challenge to be in your free group that anyone can access. 

A pop-up group is not only to build the community or to bring them to the next level with you, it’s also to inspire those who haven’t taken action yet. If you have a piece of homework that you need them to do for your challenge, create a post specifically for people to share their homework. Sharing their work will inspire someone else to do the homework, which will generate results!

I’ve created a paid upgrade in one of my last challenges. It wasn’t a pop-up group, but it was still separate from my free group. I had four Zoom calls with them throughout the whole challenge where they could ask questions.

People often ask me if they’re running a free challenge or a free launch if they should create a pop-up group, and here’s what I always say: If your free group has about 4,000 members or more, run your challenge in a pop-up group. 

Reason being, if there are 4,000 people in your free group, only about 500-1,000 of them will sign up for the challenge, and you’re going to have way more people in your group that don’t even know this challenge is happening, or decided not to join. But now they’re going to be inundated by things going on in the group that don’t pertain to them, and they’re not going to engage. This will lead your engagement to go down. Some people may even leave the group. 

In your pop-up group, you need to communicate when the group is going to be paused, or when you’re going to step away from the group. If you pause a Facebook group, people can still watch the replays of live videos, access content, and read files, but no one can comment or post in the group, so you no longer have to maintain it. 

Or, you can share that you’ll be leaving the pop-up group, and give them information on where they can follow you. Just make sure that the end date of the pop-up group is super clear, and that you have a strong onboarding process for moving everyone to your other groups once the pop-up group expires. 

If it works for you, I hope you add a pop-up group to your next launch!