If you’re marketing a B2B business, you probably think Facebook isn’t the best way to use your advertising budget. Many B2Bs focus on other forms of social media such as LinkedIn advertising, which can be extremely expensive. In my experience, I’ve seen over £4 per click on LinkedIn, compared to 15-40p per click on Facebook. But Facebook’s audience targeting and wide reach make it a worthwhile investment.
In May 2017, Facebook announced they had reached 1.9 billion monthly users, so it’s very likely that your target audience is on the site and checks their newsfeed regularly. By not targeting your audience on Facebook, you are missing out on a fantastic opportunity to market your business.
Here I’ll discuss how B2Bs can target their audience on Facebook and what types of content you can promote.
Facebook Audience Targeting
Many B2B marketers struggle with getting their messages to their target audience. Here’s how it to do it.
Job Title and Industry Targeting Options on Facebook
The audience targeting options in Facebook ad manager are fantastic. They go beyond the audience targeting offered on LinkedIn and AdWords, which is why B2Bs need to take advantage of it.
Similar to LinkedIn, you can target people by employer, job title and industry too. It may not be as accurate as LinkedIn though because users are less likely to update their Facebook profile when they get a new job. But the option is there to take advantage of.
You can target your audience based on additional information you know about them. For instance, if they are architects, you can target people who are interested in architecture. There are many other interest and behaviour options worth exploring. This is a great way to increase brand awareness and bring new users to your Facebook page or website.
Facebook Remarketing
Facebook remarketing is a powerful way to target users who have already visited your website. This means you’re not just targeting anyone on Facebook, you’re targeting users who have already taken an interest in your product or service.
Here’s how to set up Facebook Remarketing
- Install Facebook Pixel to your website, once this has been installed, Facebook will start collecting data about your customers. I recommend setting up Pixel events so you can track new leads from Facebook.
- Create a Custom Audience in Facebook Ad Manager. Navigate to Audiences – Create Audience – Custom Audience – Website Traffic – Create Audience.
- Set the website traffic to ‘Anyone who visits your website’, you can change this to a specific page if you want to target users who have clicked on a product or service.
- Give your audience a name, such as “Whole website traffic,” and click create audience. It will take some time for the audience list to populate, depending on how much traffic your website receives.
- Then, when creating your Facebook ad in Facebook ad manager, you will be able to choose the Custom Audience list you’ve created:
Creating Engaging Content for your B2B Audience
You also need to think about what content you can promote that will be engaging enough. This is a big problem that many B2Bs have when they are a service provider, or when they manufacture a product that might be seen as boring.
Video Content for B2Bs
Using videos is one way B2Bs can promote content on Facebook. Facebook’s algorithm favours videos and this can be a more engaging way to tell your story to potential customers.
Types of videos which are suitable for B2Bs:
- An introductory video
- Client Testimonials
- Educational
- Demo’s
- Product reviews
- ‘How To’ tutorials
Introductory videos help to increase brand awareness, and ‘How to’ videos can initiate repeat custom. Think about your marketing objectives, who you’re trying to target and which stage of the marketing funnel they are part of.
There’s also the financial cost of the video ad to consider. Although it will cost you to develop the video, promoting it on Facebook can be cheaper than a regular ad. The cost per view can be as little as 4 – 10p, yet clicks from a product or image ad can cost up to 40p or more, if your audience targeting is off or your ad isn’t up to scratch.
Case Studies
Case studies work well for B2Bs and they are a great way to create trust and gain leads. By putting together a case study with high quality images and quotes from your customers, you can drive traffic to your website from Facebook. You can promote your case studies and use Facebook remarketing to only target users who have visited your site, so you can push them further down the marketing funnel and increase online conversions.
Your Turn
Many businesses are still not making the most of the potential that Facebook advertising has to offer. You can use the recommendations for audience targeting and content ideas that I’ve provided to give your business a head start.