The Art of Effective B2B Facebook Advertising

When you think of the brands who are smashing it on social media, you’re probably thinking of B2C companies like Nike or Starbucks. You never really think about law firms storming it on Facebook, or hardware providers with millions of followers. But these types of B2B companies do exist, just look at IBM, they have 1.1 million followers!

Although the vast majority of B2B companies tend to value social media marketing, they particularly view Facebook advertising as ineffective but in reality, it is the complete opposite.

We know ad spend isn’t a top priority for many businesses considering the current circumstances, which is why we want to shine a light on the Small Business Grants Programme that Facebook is slowly introducing to 30,000 small businesses and how you can decide if it’s a step in the right direction for your company.

Facebook Small Business Grants

Facebook is offering $100M in cash grants and ad credits to help businesses during this challenging time. To be eligible to apply, you must:

Have between 2 and 50 employees

o   Have been in business for over a year

o   Have experienced challenges from COVID-19

o   Be in or near a location where Facebook operates

Is B2B Facebook Advertising Right for Your Industry?

If you’re looking to improve knowledge and awareness of a service, Facebook allows you to create specific buyer personas which assist you in understanding who you’re targeting. Alternatively, if your trying to reach out to key decision-makers, Facebook’s robust targeting options ensure your message reaches the right people.

So, identifying your key business goals will help you understand if Facebook advertising is right for your sector. Below are some great B2B examples of how Facebook advertising has helped the financial, health and tech sector grow.

• Paessler AG is an IT company which generated new leads for its network monitoring software by using Facebook ads that offered a free printed card game as an incentive. They saw a 51% decrease in cost per lead compared to previous lead campaigns
• Ada Health promoted a medical app using creative video and photo ads, underpinned by Facebook targeting to encourage people to sign up, resulting in over one million app installs in less than 8 months.
• Schroders Italy, an international investment management firm, used mobile-friendly video ads to educate Italian consumers and drive brand awareness up by 4.2 points in a three-week campaign.

So, if you’re thinking, ‘How does Facebook advertising work for B2B marketers?’, here are our top tips to get you started:

Tip One: B2B Target Audience

Facebook offers robust custom targeting tools which let marketers optimise their focus on certain topics which are likely to generate leads. Facebook also has an extensive database of contacts which you can utilise by using ‘lookalike’ audiences. While this is great, many businesses only run targeted ads by location, age and gender, but did you know there are other options?

Facebook allows you to target potential customers based on their job title and company – this is really useful when you’re trying to reach key decision-makers. These advanced features let you target broader categories and locations. Therefore, your ads can reach people working in a particular industry or you can simply target general groups, such as SMEs, to more specific job titles like Account Managers.

Tip Two: Focus on Resources

While B2C marketers tend to focus on ads that offer product discounts to encourage conversations, B2B marketers can use a very similar tactic to drive leads.

The average Lead to Opportunity Length for a B2B conversation is 84 days, this is double the amount of time for B2C, so you need to give potential clients time to think. If you can create a click campaign and get them to visit your website by offering a free guide or e-book in exchange for their email addresses, you can then produce targeted emails about your services.

When you have this data, revisit your Custom Audience in the ad managers, and create tailored lists of potential customers who bought certain services and promote up-selling. This would appear as a “people who used this service also liked this” ad.

Tip Three: Remarketing to Old Friends

Let’s not forget about clients in your existing sales funnel, who are on the verge of converting. Facebook advertising has unparalleled remarking capabilities. By targeting site visitors and email address databases, it taps into the greater intent these people have already displayed. The goal of these ads is to remind people to complete a desired conversion by creating highly relevant messaging based on their previous viewing habits.

Using the custom pixel, you can target visitors who previously visited a certain page on your website. If a consumer didn’t follow a CTA to find out more or download a case study, your remarketing ad on Facebook encourages them to do this.

Finally, when creating an adverting strategy for Facebook, you must consider your business goals and ensure you track KPIs to ensure your campaigns are producing results as intended. Example metrics include; post impressions, conversions, link clicks, follower number and much more.

Once more information on this $100M cash grant has been released for the UK, we will advise you more on our ‘Deep Social Media’ webinar series that we will be hosting for free!