Many B2B companies don’t consider Facebook advertising as a part of their paid strategy. After all, the network isn’t meant for professional business connections like LinkedIn is.
At JDM, we’ve seen great success with Facebook advertising for B2B companies. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s a platform we highly recommend. Here’s why...
Here’s something to consider: Those who are on LinkedIn likely have a Facebook account. Not only that, but they’re on Facebook more often and for a longer period of time.
A recent study shows users spend a daily average of 58 minutes on Facebook, whereas they spend less than 1 minute a day on LinkedIn.
That means you have a much better chance of catching your prospect’s attention on Facebook versus LinkedIn. If they’re scrolling and see an ad, even a business-related one, if it solves a pain point, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll click.
Furthermore, Facebook has much lower costs than LinkedIn since there is more ad inventory available. That makes it a great platform to do creative and targeting testing. You can then take those learnings to LinkedIn and start campaigns with creatives that have already seen success.
Now that you’ve learned why you should be advertising on Facebook, here’s how to set yourself up for success on the platform.
Facebook offers several different types of campaign objectives for advertisers to choose from.
The best objective will depend on your offer. Here are the most common offers we see:
|
Offer |
Campaign Objective |
|
Webinar |
Conversion |
|
Demo |
Conversion |
|
Content Download |
Conversion |
|
Newsletter Sign-up |
Lead Form |
|
Blog Post |
Traffic |
For any offer that requires an opt-in, use the conversion objective and set the proper conversion event. Facebook will optimize for that desired conversion action.
Lead forms are an easy way to grow your email list. It allows users to click and easily share their information without having to leave Facebook. It’s best to only use these if you have a follow-up email sequence in place once they share their email.
It's important to note that Facebook auto fills their info tied to their Facebook account, so you’ll usually collect personal emails instead of business emails. Since lead forms are very easy for users to submit, it often results in a higher volume of leads at a lower overall quality.
Some companies want to drive traffic to blog content. We tend to steer away from this, unless the post is highly optimized for conversions or if you’re trying to get traffic to the page that you’ll retarget later.
For B2B targeting, it’s usually a good idea to start off with Lookalike audiences.
If you already have large enough lists of user data, there are different ways to segment them to create valuable seed lists for Lookalikes. You can start with a segment of your most valuable customers, all customers, qualified leads, and full email/interest lists.
You can also create Lookalikes based off of these sources:
We highly recommend retargeting on Facebook.
Your prospect (who could be the decision maker), is likely scrolling down their feed before, during, and after work. Not only are they more likely to see your product on Facebook, they are more likely to click as well.
When running retargeting campaigns, make sure to exclude those who have already converted or taken the action you’re looking for.
Conducting Facebook audience research for B2B is simple with the help of Audience Insights and Facebook Suggested Audiences. Create a list of competitors, relevant media, job titles, product integrations, industry figures, and other pages your audience might be interested in.
Add these into Audience Insights, then navigate to the Page Likes tab to make note of other pages that come up. This will help expand the possible pages you can target in the campaign.
As you are adding these audiences into your Facebook campaign, take a look at the suggested audiences to see what other targeting options come up.
For B2B ads, it’s important to address the pain point and how your product solves it. It’s also helpful to keep your messaging concise and unique. Users scroll fast, so you want to be able to quickly get your point across.
By immediately addressing how your product solves the pain point, your audience will be interested in learning more about the product.
You can test a variety of creatives, such as product shots, lifestyle images, illustrations, GIFs, videos, and so on. It’s important to test a few very different things to see what resonates best with your audience, and then iterate on the best performing creative.
Once you’ve found what offers, creatives, and messages convert well, you can take these learnings to LinkedIn. By doing this, you’ll reduce any potential wasted ad spend that would have been used to learn on LinkedIn.
If you have any questions about B2B advertising on Facebook or LinkedIn, reach out to us. We’ll be happy to help!