1. With everyone asking you to “become a fan” of their crappy business, groups have become the exclusive domain of small projects set up amongst friends. By using a group you positively associate yourself with these close knit communities and people are more likely to give you their attention.
2. Messages sent by the admin of a Page appear only appear in an “updates” panel. Problem: no one ever checks their “updates” panel and so these messages are left unread. Facebook groups send their messages directly to their member’s Inbox and so actually get read. I mean it’s right under your nose appearing alongside personal mail so it makes sense right?
3. You get “invited” to a group, whereas a page only gets “suggested” to you. Semantically, there is a huge difference between an invitation and a suggestion. An invitation feels exclusive, fun and special. A suggestion feels like criticism – it connotes that whatever is being suggested is in some way tainted as it is only worthy of being weakly “suggested” rather than more overtly offered. Invitations switch the power around – an invitation says “hey, we’ve got something great… want to take part? it’s cool if ya don’t, we’re having fun anyway”.
Pic unrelated.
