LinkedIn is usually the first (and only) social media site you think of when it comes to the B2B or professional industry. LinkedIn is primarily used by working professionals while Facebook is typically accessed by children, mums and grandparents.
So then, why even use Facebook to target B2B decision makers or key persons of influence(KPIs)?
Why Facebook?
There’s 2 key reasons for using Facebook, they are:
Better ad platform – of all the social media networks, nobody offers a better self-service ad platform than Facebook. LinkedIn is not on the level of the Facebook Power Editor in terms of objective types or audience targeting.
Facebook is accessed more – Over 70% of people login to Facebook everyday compared to LinkedIn which sits at 13%:
(Source)
There’s a better chance to get your ads seen on Facebook than LinkedIn because the amount of people who use Facebook daily. Also, if someone has created a LinkedIn account there’s a highly probable chance they are using Facebook too.
So then, how do you use Facebook to target B2B decision makers?
The first thing you have to decide is your objective. Are you going to sell a product, brand your business, generate leads, drive traffic to your website or something else?
I always suggest going with objectives that don’t involve direct selling. The B2B buying process is a lot more drawn out than selling to consumers, they don’t make impulse buys and the average cost of a sale is hundreds of times higher.
For these reasons I like serving blog content about a service, lead ads that ask prospects to download a case study or awareness adverts over conversions to websites or mobile app installs.
Targeting your audience
At the advert-set level in the detailed targeting, you can hone in on your audience by selecting work industries, employers and job titles:
If you’re targeting businesses in the local area, being able to select actual employers is perfect to niche down on your audience.
Perhaps the KPI you want to reach requires certain qualifications to be in such roles, in the demographics sub-section you can target by education level, fields of study and schools they have studied at:
In the interests section you can further segment their industry into smaller niches such as personal finance, retail, property or business:
Targeting SMEs, larger enterprises or both?
Thanks for the Internet, there are startups of all shapes and sizes, you can find everything from 100% virtual online businesses to 5,000+ office based enterprises. Depending on the nature of your product, you may only want to target a specific business size.
In the detailed targeting at the advert-set you can select whether you want to target small business owners, larger entities or those who work from home:
If your customer demographics are small businesses in the local area, using the correct geo-location and selecting a few key filters can help you find highly targeted leads. A great way to do this is to select the location to your city’s central business district or business areas.
Summary
The B2B market for online marketing is several times smaller than the B2C segment. After fine tuning your advert, if Facebook tells you that your advert will be served to 150,000 people or more (assuming you’re targeting a single area), you most likely have to go back and fine tune your targeting a little more.
Businesses will only have a few decision makers who actually have any power, there’s little you can gain from targeting entry level positions or people of lesser importance.
Nick Bridges
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