It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that Facebook is only an environment where B2C advertisers can have success, but that’s far from the truth.
Think about what you go on Facebook to do: browse through entertainment, catch up on updates from friends and family, perhaps even look for a bargain on Marketplace. But what do all Facebook users have in common, despite if they’re part of the B2C or B2B market?
We’re all human.
And at the end of the day, it’s people who make the decisions for their business, and Facebook can be a great way to engage with these people. No matter the reason they’re on Facebook, they’ll always have their business’ best interests on their mind. This is why in the marketing world, sometimes you leave behind what keeps B2C and B2B separate and focus your efforts on H2H—human-to-human strategies.
Target(ing) Acquired
Using Facebook targeting proved to be a worthwhile venture for a German patent and law firm, which received a 40% increase in return on their ad spend, along with a 75% lower cost-per-click (CPC) in comparison to other paid advertising channels.
One of the most important factors to keep in mind when tackling B2B advertising on Facebook is that, as the saying goes, you’re looking for quality over quantity.
Facebook has 2.45 billion monthly active users, but you should try to advertise your product or service to nowhere near all of them. The platform has incredible targeting and segmentation tools, where you really narrow down to only spend ad dollars on the people most likely to increase your ROI. You can upload lists or create ones, based on a large number of audience attributes, such as:
- Job title
- Industry
- Interests
- Location
- Previous interaction with your website pages or Facebook page
- Various demographics
Facebook for Business has the full list of audience-building options, as well as the details for lookalike audiences. The platform uses an algorithm to find people similar to who you’re already targeting and who are likely to interact with your ads, which is another way to take advantage of Facebook for B2B advertising.
You’re Not Advertising to Yourself
A lot of people know this, but they don’t understand it. Your potential customers have a different perception of your product or service than you do if they’re even familiar with your brand at all. Before you start creating any concepts for your B2B advertising on Facebook, understand this:
It’s ineffective to just serve an ad that you like, it needs to appeal to your audience’s pain points, desires, and motivations.
An opportunity that can provide insight into what your prospects are actually interested in and what types of topics, selling propositions, and benefits they would respond to is to create a survey. Send it out to the customers you currently have (and offer an incentive, of course) about how your product or service is beneficial to their business, why they chose you, and what they’ve been able to do at their operation thanks to your product.
An added bonus: You can, with permission, use these responses as testimonials (like ours, on our home page)—one of the most useful ways for others to see how your product has proven to be beneficial to people like them.
The Ad Itself
When you’ve created an ad for Facebook, there are a few questions you need to ask yourself:
- Does this provide a specific value proposition, or is that vague and tough to understand with unfamiliar eyes? Make sure to use strong headlines that quickly and powerfully state the true value of your product or service, followed by descriptive ad copy. And make sure it sounds like a human wrote the copy, stick to a conversational tone, and leave the business jargon out.
- Are your visuals relevant and appealing? If your image has nothing to do with the product, your customers will again be misled from the underlying value proposition of your business.
What Are You Offering?
Essentially, Facebook advertising for B2B organizations is the land where effective CTAs will flourish and inspire lead generation. What’s important is that you’re offering your audience something worth taking action on.
Use Facebook’s advertising avenues to promote thought leadership blog posts that your prospects would be interested in, whitepapers, guides, and, when they’re familiar enough, demo requests.
The secret ingredient? Use full-funnel marketing to know when and where to offer specific types of content.
Other Tips
To help you see success when it comes to Facebook for B2B advertising, here are some other things you can do:
- Test, test, and test some more! When running an ad campaign, run a handful of different ads in the ad set. Keep everything the same except for just one component: Post copy, image copy, or image style. Choose one aspect you’d like to test and vary this between each of your ads and track the results. This is also known as A/B testing.
- Try videos. Using high-quality video Facebook ads, B2B company Schneider Electric was able to reach an 80% reduction in cost per engagement.
- Companies like Promo offer an easy way to make attractive videos in a simple fashion.
- Get familiar with the ins and outs of Facebook Campaign Manager. First of all, it’s important to set up a Facebook Pixel on your website to allow optimization for your ads and make sure conversion tracking is working properly. From there, you have lots of directions to go.
Make Your Facebook Ad Timely
Take advantage of the season or time of the year you’re in when trying to reach new customers through advertising on Facebook. For example, since it’s Q1, you can run campaigns that:
- Appeal to planners. We’re still in the very beginning of a new decade, which means you can advertise that your product can specifically help their business and its goals for the year ahead.
- Offer tips and tricks. With a new year, people have new motivations to better themselves or their business. Advertise what your product or service can help them do new things.
- Celebrate new beginnings. In a similar fashion, people are naturally in the mood to start off a new Q1 with a fresh start. Introduce them to something they haven’t considered before.
There is a lot to consider when it comes to B2B advertising on Facebook, but I hope I’ve at least convinced you of one thing: It’s certainly not a useless marketing tactic.
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