When you think about targeting key players in the B2B industry, LinkedIn is often regarded as the ‘go-to place’ and for good reason. The social media network is aimed specifically for working professionals and its ad objectives are tailored for B2B businesses.
With LinkedIn being so popular, why even bother trying to target B2B decision makers on Facebook? Because it can be just as effective if not more when done right.
In today’s article I’m going to breakdown why Facebook Ads is a great way to target B2B decision makers along with a few best practices tips you can use.
Why Use Facebook Along With LinkedIn?
Everybody has a Facebook account (okay, almost everyone).
Not only that but most people login to Facebook a lot more often than LinkedIn. According to Pew Internet, 70% of Facebook users login every day compared to 13% of all LinkedIn users:
Do you have a Facebook and LinkedIn account? Where do you spend most of your time?
Not a week goes by where Facebook doesn’t somehow improve the way you can target users when serving ads.
Just like LinkedIn, you can now target audiences based on their job title or position at a particular business. Combining these sorts of options with specific interests, locations and behaviors makes Facebook more than a worthy contender to target B2B decision makers.
Goals for targeting B2B decision makers on Facebook
Everything you do for your business is ultimately to generate profit or to grow your business one way or another. However, decisions made at the B2B level often take longer than if you were selling to a consumer, and is why I recommend using Facebook as a way to brand and build relationships rather than using direct response ads to win business.
For example, if you’re selling a $20 t-shirt, the consumer doesn’t need to think for weeks on end or consult anyone. They can impulse buy if they like the product without thinking too much.
A B2B product or service can cost in the thousands and a B2B decision maker most likely has to discuss with other people within their team. While creating ads to drive sales is all well and good, you’d perhaps be better off increasing your business’s brand/product awareness using Facebook Ads as a way to build relationships (lead generation).
The sales process when targeting B2B is a lot more complex and studies have proven that relationship building plays a huge part in their buying decision.
How to target B2B decision makers at the ad-set level
The ad objective has to align with your goal and the ad itself needs resonate with your audience, but you already know that.
The targeting of B2B decision makers on Facebook all happens at the ad-set level.
Generic targeting features like age and gender become less relevant whereas job titles, industries and business size becomes a lot more useful.
Here’s some of the targeting features you should be looking to use.
Industry, employer and job role title
Often there will be times when you want to target people in specific roles or just a few select businesses. On the ad-set level you can target your audience by the employers they work for and their job title:
The industry category has dozens of areas you can target, everything from retail, temporary and seasonal to construction and extraction. This is the perfect starting point to build your foundation audience.
Business and industry
In the detailed targeted section you can target people by their business and industry. You can target industries as a whole like Banking or you and dig deeper and targeting sub-niches within banking such as investment banking, online banking or retail banking.
Office and location
Depending on the services you offer, you may only target enterprise-level companies, or local bricks and mortar businesses that operate on a smaller scale. Facebook allows you to target users who work in large offices, small offices or even those who work from home.
If you offer an online SaaS tool then location may not be as important in targeting B2B decision makers on Facebook. However, if you only serve clients in the local area then targeting your audience by zip codes in the central business district areas becomes very appealing.
You’ll have to play around with you interest and targeting settings to really laser target your audience. Depending on the businesses you wish to win business from, they will typically only have a hand full of people who have the power to make purchasing decisions.
If at the ad-set level Facebook states your ad is going to be shown to 150,000 users, you might want to add more filters or understand who you’re targeting before you run your ad.
Summary
Every small business and marketer whether they use Facebook Ads or not knows the possibilities for B2C interaction. Very few know the possibilities it has to target B2B decision makers and even fewer know how to effectively target key players to win their business more business!
Are you struggling with targeting key B2B decision makers using Facebook Ads? Then get in touch with us today to see how we can help.