First, let me bust a BIG, BAD myth that could be holding your business back. Here it is:
“Facebook CAN’T be used for B2B Marketing”
Well, in this blog post I’ll be busting this myth.
To top it off, I’ll be revealing to you how our Facebook Marketing agency does B2B Facebook marketing regularly…and often it gets better results than Linkedin ads!
Truth be told, in most cases, our marketing agency likes combining both the Linkedin and Facebook platforms for B2B marketing…cos there are so many synergies to be had.
But just for the purpose of this article, I’d like to show you how we do B2B Facebook marketing on a regular basis.
So what industries have we done B2B Facebook marketing for?
- Dentists
- Manufacturers
- Pest Control
- Mortgage brokers
- General business owners in a specific region/country
Although I haven’t done other specific industries, I’m sure that if given the challenge, 9 times out of 10 my Facebook marketing agency can come up ideas on how to make it work.
As you’ll see in the examples I’m giving below, you’ll need to think a bit about how to ‘skin the cat’ with B2B Facebook marketing.
It certainly isn’t as straightforward as B2C Facebook Marketing, but with a bit of thought and creativity, you can definitely come up with good ways to use Facebook for your B2B marketing.
Here are a few ways I can recommend based on what we’ve done in our Facebook marketing agency.
1. Use your database for B2B Facebook Marketing
This method requires that you have a database of current clients…at least of their emails.
What you do is you can plug in your database into the Facebook ad platform, and create a ‘custom audience’.
This will allow you to create and show ads to your existing database right away.
Needless to say, this is a great way to re-advertise to your existing customers. To gain more repeat purchases and brand loyalty.
This is the lowest hanging fruit that you can use Facebook ads for, and start getting your B2B clients buying more from you.
Word of caution: Don’t go buying a database list off someone and uploading that to the Facebook ad platform. That is a serious violation of the Facebook Terms of Service…and could get your account banned.
2. Expand your database for B2B Facebook Marketing
Ok, this is where things start getting interesting.
The database that you have uploaded, provided it has at least a few hundred records, can be used to create a ‘Lookalike Audience’.
So here’s what actually happens…
Facebook looks at the database you’ve uploaded, finds out their similarities, and then it looks for other people on Facebook that are similar to your database. I assume they would base that on demographics, interest and a few other things.
Then Facebook gives you a LARGER audience that LOOKS LIKE your original database.
You can expand it from 1% to 10% of the entire country you are targeting.
The larger you expand your ‘lookalike audience’ the less they look like the original database.
This will give you similar businesses to target with your Facebook ads if you’d like to reach more new customers.
To create a Facebook ‘lookalike audience’, click on the ‘Audience’ tab in your Facebook Ad portal.
In the example above, I’ve uploaded a database of dentist that have opted-in for my list, I’m using that to create a larger audience of potential dentists that I can target.
3. Interest targeting for B2B Facebook Marketing
“So what if I don’t have a database?”
Well, then you gotta start building one!
The fastest way to do this is via interest targeting.
Assuming you want to target people within a certain industry, you can often find those interests in the Facebook ad platform.
When I was targeting pest control businesses, for instance, I used ‘pest control’ as one of the targeted interests.
Of course, I would then expand that interest targeting to other related keywords, such as ‘Rentokil, termite control, cockroach infestation’ etc.
If you want to get more specific about the person who sees your ads, you can use the next step in addition to interest targeting.
4. Job title B2B targeting
Yes, you can also target people based on their job title on Facebook!
So continuing on the pest control example, I wanted to target pest control business owners only.
So I ‘narrowed’ my audience using the job title, ‘business owner’.
This helped me narrow down to target the exact person I wanted looking at my advertisement.
5. Our Facebook Marketing Agency Trick: Call them out
If you have an instance where you have a large audience, but you know that only a small % of them are those you really want responding to your ad.
A simple, yet effective way is to ‘call them out’.
So, in my pest control campaign, I made sure I ‘called out’ to pest control business owners.
Here are some other ways you can ‘call-out’ to people:
- By job title: “Attention CIOs”
- Using pain points: “Neck Pain Sufferers”
- Utilising geographic location: “Hey Singaporeans!”
- Use demographics: “Attention Female CEOs”
- With interest “Hey Business Leaders”
To conclude: Facebook marketing CAN be a powerful B2B marketing tool – you just need to be more creative.
I’ve spilled all the beans here on this blog post that’ll help you get started on B2B Facebook marketing.
I’ve spent a lot to learn and practice these Facebook marketing tricks so I hope you can put it to good use.
By the way, if you’d like to have an obligation-free chat about how our Facebook marketing agency can help you generate more B2B leads, simply click on the ‘contact us’ button below. Ciao!
Updated: 4 February 2020
