Nothing reaches as far as Facebook. With 2.74 billion daily users, that’s enough people to reach the moon (and back) about almost 6 times! So, when some marketing articles start to scoff about Facebook being irrelevant, we hope you think just a little more critically about who might be waiting for you on the world’s largest social platform.
Many brands feel that Facebook isn’t optimized for B2B marketing and that might be why only 46% of B2B marketers strategize using Facebook. Some marketers believe that LinkedIn is the most professional platform, but Facebook is a mighty fine place to generate B2B leads. You’ve just got to do it properly in order to see the results you want.
For B2B audience targeting, there isn’t a one size fits all campaign that will work for every business on every social media platform. Each business is unique in its own right, so are the algorithms that social media sites use to spread awareness and advertisements.
Don’t use the same B2B marketing strategies you use for LinkedIn on Facebook – It won’t work.
LinkedIn is not Facebook just as Instagram is not Facebook (or is it?) For starters, you can’t as easily target demographics based on a company or profession as you can on LinkedIn. Instead, you need to get more creative and create more in-depth personas of who your audience actually is and how you can target them.
Remember, you’re not targeting the business itself (although it’s possible that their brand page managers could see your ads) you’re targeting employees of brands that are likely to be the decision-makers of B2B purchases/sales.
You can produce more impressions through ad spend (cost per thousand impressions [CPM] is cheaper) on Facebook than you can on LinkedIn. You can also track your metrics through Facebook far easier than other platforms and can more accurately read the number of conversions, say to lead you to sign up for our emails. What does all this mean? It means you can strategize to use your extra budget and more precise analytics to try varying different content or ad tactics to find the one that sticks
Build the B2B audience you want to target
Facebook offers the ability to target B2B brands and employees based on the size of the enterprise using the “Detailed Targeting” section category. You can choose whether you want to target large business-to-business enterprise employees from companies with 500+ employees or down to small enterprise employees from companies with 10-20 employees. From there, use the information you’ve amalgamated within your personas as well as the type of industry you’re targeting (technology, perhaps?) and you’ve got a pretty narrow and specialized target to reach.
From there, start building lookalike audiences using the data you’ve gathered from your B2B lead conversions to focus on interests and demographics you’re more likely to relate with. Create a customer value custom audience and then a lookalike from that audience. Even just a 1% lookalike is enough to increase the targeted audience’s likelihood to generate leads.
Yes, we know ad targeting is cheaper on Facebook, but go further than just ad spend.
Facebook has evolved quite a bit since we created our first profile back in 2007. We may miss the good days when we could post directly onto someone’s “Wall” or interact with business pages more easily, however, there are some new features that should be considered when building your Facebook strategy.
For example, Facebook Stories has grown quite a bit in momentum for business use. 500 million people use Stories each day, so there’s a chance, someone somewhere may be interested in what you have to say. Other pliable options include Facebook Live, where you can interact with your audience through video in real-time, holding virtual events, and using the AI of Facebook messenger to instantly interact with your Facebook visitors.
Facebook Live is something you can strategize to create once a week or once a month. Review your product, share useful tips, etc. and then use the video that uploads to your Facebook as content to engage with future visitors. You can even download it to your other social platforms, so it’s definitely not something to be looked over as irrelevant to B2B brands to use in their social media or digital marketing plan.
Don’t forget to engage with the audience you’ve been growing on Facebook
As you use targeted ads to find the audience that is most likely to generate leads for your B2B business, it’s still important to build relationships with those that choose to engage with your Facebook content. They may follow you, like your ads/posts, and show an interest in learning more about your brand. It can sometimes feel like a full-time job just responding to comments and reaching out on other brand pages, but it makes a difference. And, you don’t have to do it alone.
Outlasted Data can monitor your Facebook’s comments, mentions, and any other engagement, pinpoint which areas need more insight and then provide the best opportunities to optimize your content and ads to spread your reach and increase engagement. This engagement, in turn, is your B2B brand’s ticket to generating leads through proper nurturing of those budding relationships.
If you need to rely on further help to target your B2B audience on Facebook, you can partner with a third-party platform, such as OutlastedData, to help you reach your audience through data-driven solutions and effective digital marketing campaigns that can precisely pinpoint the types of audiences to target.
Interested in finding out how Outlasted Data can help you reach your target audience on Facebook? Reach out to a member of our team today to get the conversation started.
