Facebook Advertising is Not Just For B2C.

Since the beginning of its time, there has been a misconception among marketers that social media advertising only works for B2C brands.

There are, however, several reasons why this is false and why B2B companies should be utilizing Facebook Advertising just as much, if not more, often than their B2C counterparts.

To start, let's take a look at some of the numbers.

Facebook had 1.79 billion monthly active users in 2016. That beats any other social media platform, so it’s safe to say your buyer personas are likely on there. Check out how Facebook compares to some of the other major platforms: 

Instagram: 600 Million Active Users

Twitter: 317 Million Active Users

Snapchat: 200 Million Active Users

LinkedIn: 116 Million Active Users

View the complete list from Statista here.

Not only does Facebook more than double these other platform's reach, but it has a lot more information about users at its fingertips -- location, employer, job title, interests, industries, and various demographics to just name a few.

People across the globe have been sharing intimate details of their lives with not only their Facebook friends, but the company for over a decade. With all of this information, Facebook has an extremely valuable and diverse database.

Facebook Advertising gives you access to this database in the form of the ability to create highly-targeted audiences, usually to the point where you can target your exact buyer personas. There is no more guessing on whether our ads are being placed in front of the right person, Facebook knows it is.

To convince you even more, I’ve come up with some effective ways you can utilize Facebook Ads to generate traffic, leads, and sales for your B2B organization.

Building Brand Awareness and Driving Traffic With Facebook Advertising's Targeting

As briefly mentioned above, Facebook Ads gives you the ability to create highly customized audiences to target. Using the detailed targeting tool when you set up a campaign, you are able to find users who match your target buyer persona.

For example, if you are trying to get more traffic from a buyer persona with a specific job title who would more likely be the decision maker at a company, you’ll be able to do so with ads directed at CEO, COO, or CIOs in your ad campaign.

Knowing this helps us generate more qualified traffic and leads, especially to those who have the purchasing power at the companies you want to target. 

Another creative way to approach this is to learn what software or online tools they use.

For example, an inbound marketing agency might want to target people who "like" HubSpot, Hotjar, or Google Analytics. This gives them a creative way to show their audience how their services can supplement the current software they are using. 

This is all dependent on your campaign and overlying strategy, but this is a great way to get even more detailed in your targeting efforts.

If this is your first time advertising on Facebook, I would suggest creating three unique audiences based on your different buyer personas.

This will help you quickly learn how different groups will react to your ads and if you need to make any adjustments early on in your campaigns. 

Remarketing for Lead Generation

Another way you can get use Facebook Ads for your B2B organization is through remarketing.

As defined by Adhesion, remarketing is a way of "positioning targeted ads in front of a defined audience that had previously visited your website"

In other words, it's using strategically placed and designed ads on other websites to get previous your site visitors back on your site and turn them into leads.

For example, let's say a visitor read one of your most popular blog articles but didn’t take the next steps by clicking on the call-to-action. 

Remarketing is a great way to give them another chance to convert by enticing them with an offer related to the article they read. Facebook Remarketing is easy to setup and a great way to open up more ways for visitors to convert.

Not sure how to setup a remarketing campaign through Facebook? No worries! Here is a step by step guide on how to started! How to Create Your First Facebook Remarketing Campaign.

Here are some quick remarketing ideas to build your first campaign:

• Increase your monthly ebook or whitepaper conversions.
• Accumulate more registrants for your upcoming webinar.
• Send more demo requests to your sales team.
• Remarket visitors who viewed one of your product but didn’t purchase make a purchase.

Once you have built a custom audience and come up with an effective remarketing strategy, simply create an ad around a next step offer you want them to take.

When you create your ads, it’s important that your ad has a detailed description of what exactly you’re offering, an eye-catching title, and a strong, unique visual. By using these tips to create a strong ad, you'll be more likely to start generating some quality leads to move down the funnel.  

Looking for some B2B Facebook Ad examples? Check out these 7 Inspiring B2B Facebook Ad Examples.

Key Takeaways

Though predominantly a personal platform, Facebook Advertising is not just working for B2C companies anymore. 

By really understanding your audience and creating highly targeted Facebook campaigns, your B2B organization has the ability to open up a whole new avenue of lead generation.

If you're a B2B company who's interested in testing Facebook campaigns, I would start with a small budget of $50 to test a 1-2 week campaign. 

By doing this, you will be able to collect data and results to understand what strategies and audiences will give you the best results. That way you'll be able to make adjustments to further improve your lead generation funnel.