How to Use Facebook Ads for B2B Marketing
We already know how valuable a tool Facebook is when it comes to B2C marketing. The world's most popular social network is where you can easily capture the attention of your potential customers with personalised messages and beautiful visuals. And without having to sell your kidneys to fund your marketing strategy.
π―By 2023, the same is true for B2B businesses. Facebook gives you multiple opportunities for successful advertising through lead generation campaigns, carousel ads where you showcase your products and services, or the video format where you tell your brand story and feedback from your customers.
In this article, we'll talk in detail about how to use Facebook ads for B2B marketing, with a special focus on the different targeting options and some campaign ideas.
Finally, we'll share with you how to arrange the different campaigns in your marketing funnel so that you get the maximum number of leads and conversions for the budget you have.
Audience segmentation
π¨βπ©βπ¦βπ¦ΠΠΎ in terms of the segmentation required for successful B2B advertising on Facebook, the options are not few. When you create a campaign through Meta Ads Manager, you can target your audience by different criteria related to their place of work or profession. Here are a few examples:
Business Decision Makers
If you're looking for an audience of managers and employees in leadership positions across industries, you'll find them here. The data is based on the information users have provided in the job field of their profile. This includes people who work in industries such as marketing, HR, IT, and others.
Business Decision Maker Titles and Interests
Users enter this audience according to the job title they have written in their profile and according to their interests (what pages they follow, what publications they interact with). Note, however, that the industries in which users work are not specified here, making the audience broader in scope and less precise.
IT Decision Makers
π»If you offer products and services for the IT sector, this audience is ideal. With it, you will reach users in leadership positions in IT companies according to the job title listed in their profile.
New Active Businesses & Instagram Business Profile Admins
With the first option, you can target administrators of business pages created in the last 6, 12 or 24 months. The second option allows you to reach directly into the newsfeeds of users who are Instagram account admins.
If your products/services are directly related to Facebook and Instagram, these targeting options allow you to create campaigns that truly resonate with the interests and needs of your target audience.
Place of employment
You can target users who work in a specific industry, company, or who are freelancers, work from home, etc.
Position
You can target broader groups such as "entrepreneurs" or more specific ones such as "graphic designer". The information is based on what users have shared about their job title on their profile.
New job
When someone adds starting a new job as an important event to their profile, they will become part of that audience. Maybe your product/service is the tool that will make his new job easier and help him impress his boss? It 's worth trying this targeting option in one of your campaigns.
Ideas for Facebook advertising campaigns for B2B marketing
Your B2B marketing messages need to communicate concisely and clearly:
- the problems your products/services solve;
- the value you provide to your users;
- the number of people who have trusted you, and what industries they are in (social proof);
- call-to-action.
Here are some ideas for Facebook ad campaigns suitable for B2B businesses to target the relevant audiences for your business that we discussed above.
Campaign for New Leads
βFacebook ads make it easy to get leads through lead generation campaigns. User information can be collected directly in a Facebook form or you can make your own on your website.
What is convenient in the first case is that some of the information such as name and email address can be automatically filled in, and this saves users time.
Either way, with this type of campaign , you can collect custom email addresses to build a database that you can use for email marketing or shortlist audiences back on Facebook. π©
Since nothing in this life is free, it's good practice to offer users valuable and useful content that they can access in exchange for an email address.
This can be a practical guide in the form of an eBook on a topic close to your products/services and important to your industry. Another idea is to advertise your upcoming webinar by giving early access to tickets to an opposite email address.
The important thing in these campaigns is to provide some value to users, not just grab their email address. If the content you offer is genuinely useful, it gives you bonus points in the eyes of potential customers, and who knows - the next ad in your marketing funnel might get them to open the wallet. π
Free trial campaign
Reduce the risk for new customers by offering them a free trial period to try your product. And yet, since we said no free lunch, let's clarify - customers get to use your product for free for a limited time, and you get an audience of people who have taken one step closer to the ultimate goal of becoming paying customers. This opens the door for new targeted campaigns. πͺ
Campaign with client testimonials and case studies
It has long been proven that so-called "social proof" sells well. Build an advertising campaign where satisfied customers share how your product has helped their business.
Even more interesting for your new audience will be to share case studies of your existing customers in which the benefits of your product are discussed in more detail. Good formats for this type of advertising campaign are carousel and video ads, through which the content can be easily seen directly in the newsfeed.
Onboarding campaign
This type of campaign can be used in two cases:
- for users who have provided their email address but have not yet registered for your product;
- for users who have registered (e.g. for a free trial period).
Use onboarding campaigns to present your product in an accessible way, what the benefits are and how to work with it. Try not to complicate communication too much - the easier you are to understand, the more likely you are to see the results you want.
Upselling and retargeting campaigns
π‘The important campaigns that complete the marketing funnel and we can say that we start from the beginning are those for upselling and retargeting.
Create custom audiences (by uploading to an email list or event-based from your Meta Pixel) and target audiences that:
- have signed up for a free trial but haven't used the paid version of your product yet;
- pay for your product month-to-month - offer them a discount if they pay for a full year;
- use a more basic service package - offer them a professional package with a discount on the annual price;
- Haven't gotten hooked yet :D - try again with some of the above campaign ideas.
Like love, selling at first sight is rare on the internet. It's a good idea to use the above examples to build a flow that includes lead generation campaigns and sales and retargeting ones, using a mix of communication channels (social, email, Google Ads).
Building an ad float for your B2B marketing in a few steps
- Define your audience - where they are located, what industry they work in, employees you need in certain positions, and other criteria.
- Set up a lead generation campaign where they will receive an e-book in exchange for an email address. (Be sure to put a checkbox where they agree to receive email campaigns from you.)
- Create a conversion campaign to target users who downloaded the book through a custom audience from an email list or using the information from Meta pixels.
- Retargeting: who converts - offer them a bigger package or a longer active period, who doesn't convert - offer them a discount.
- From the converted users , create a Lookalike audience to repeat these steps.
B2B ads on Facebook aren't much different or more complicated than B2C campaigns, but it's important to consider some specifics. Good planning, audience knowledge and follow-up analysis are always key to achieving good results. If you need help, we at ADvantage Digital Agency are on hand to get your business closer to the highs you want. Request a consultation now.