Facebook has been providing B2C marketers with a platform to reach their target audience in engaging, and even irritating, ways for many years. However, B2B marketers feel that they have not found the same success.
According to Social Media Examiner, in 2016 52% of B2C marketers considered Facebook marketing effective, compared with 38% of B2B marketers.
The perception is that people mostly use Facebook to connect with friends and family, not to network. Facebook’s News Feed updates support the theory as it promotes posts from friends and family over company advertising. However, clever marketers have cracked the code and can penetrate even the most ‘locked-down’ of accounts.
Should Your B2B Brand Advertise on Facebook?
A survey of 342 B2B marketers found that 58% of managers reported Facebook and LinkedIn as the social media platforms with the highest ROI. Advertising on the social media platform doesn’t need to be time consuming or difficult. We’ve come up with some tips to help you get started with creative ideas for your B2B strategy.
- Brand Awareness Campaign
Facebook is a great platform for generating brand awareness. It invites people to discuss your brand, products or services and rate you on a public forum. As it is a public space you are able to reply in real-time and have an honest discourse, responding to questions and offering solutions.
Keep in mind:
- Be clear about your value proposition and brand positioning
- Target a wide audience and let Facebook auto-optimize your ads’ reach
- Select the Brand Awareness campaign objective for your Facebook campaign
- Offer people to learn more about your product/service, instead of proposing a demo or sign-up right away
- Combine PR and Facebook Ads
If your company is regularly featured in the news or you’ve just won an industry campaign, why not share the good news with your Facebook audiences.
There are several reasons to include third-party media mentions on your Facebook page, and even promote the posts to amplify the reach:
- People trust product reviews more when they come from other customers or third parties and are more likely to trust a publication’s opinion than an ad. According to BrightLocal, 91% of 18-34-year-old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- Many brands add the “Featured In” snippet on their landing pages to increase trust. It will have the same positive effect on your Facebook page.
- Positive media mentions also enhance your B2B employer branding, making your company a desirable workplace.
The next time your B2B brand is mentioned by a news publisher or industry website, consider sharing the good news on Facebook as well.
- Make Product Announcements Heard
Most B2B product announcements are read by your existing customers. To make sure your product updates reach a wider audience, create a Facebook ad campaign.
Your product announcements could target multiple Facebook audiences:
- The existing customer base
- Leads about to convert to paying clients
- Cold leads that may be interested in your product
- Share Product Tips and Insights
Keep your existing customer base satisfied with pro tips, and encourage them to share your post with potential leads by making CTAs clear and inviting.
A study found that consumers prefer brands that engage them on their passions and interests 42% more often than those simply urging them to buy something. This tells us that you should focus on delivering value, both to existing and potential customers.
Here are some best practices for sharing product tips on Facebook:
- Share product tips that benefit a large percentage of your customers
- Target your existing customers and fans of your Facebook page
- Test promoting product tips articles to current leads as well to convert them into paying clients
- Create and Promote Original Research
The users of the publishing platform WordPress produce about 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments each month.
According to Kissmetrics, there nine pillars to effective content marketing:
- Originality
- Strong headlines
- The actionable nature of the content
- Providing helpful answers
- Reliable information resources
- Highly engaging content
- Images that help to deliver your message
- Smart punctuation
- Sharing the latest information
B2B brands that create original content attract quality backlinks to their blogs and position themselves as leading industry experts.
- Share Case Studies & Testimonials
B2B sales are often based on trust and can take time to close. A 2018 Demand Gen survey found that 80% of B2B buyers are using more sources than ever to research new solutions and make purchase decisions.
Dimensional Research found that an overwhelming 90% of respondents to a 2018 survey said that positive online reviews influence their buying decisions.
- Get New Leads with Quality Content
Successful B2B sales and content marketing go hand in hand. Studies show that social media and blog content are the most widely used types of B2B content marketing tactics.
You must deliver a high-quality experience that is relevant to your target audience. Offer valuable skills training or use of software to add value.
- Side Project Marketing
Side project marketing means building a new small product that parallels your main offer. The new product will solve a small, highly specific problem or help people achieve a particular goal.
For example, HubSpot’s Website Grader helps marketers evaluate their on-page SEO, loading speed, security, etc.
Promoting side projects with Facebook ads can be a great way to attract new leads and increase brand awareness.
The best practices for creating B2B side projects are as follows:
- Solve a problem you understand.
- Use existing resources.
- Simplify your solution.
- React to the market.
- Create a perfect user experience.
- Look at your side project as an independent endeavor and promote it.
- Free Demo Offers
If your product requires some time to get used to, a free trial offer might help to increase the lead-to-sales conversion rate.
You can test run a Facebook Lead Ads campaign to find new leads. When promoting SaaS products, you might want people to sign up on your landing page. From there you can lead them directly into your onboarding funnel.
Facebook Lead Ads also work great with eBook and whitepaper offers. Infusionsoft’s offering a helpful eBook
- Enhance Your Onboarding Experience
Once you get a new lead signed up for your SaaS product, you’re only halfway through the sales process.
You still need to convince people to start paying for your product. This is the time to start onboarding.
According to analysts, the main reasons why your leads do not become paying clients include:
- Prospects don’t understand how to use the product.
- They have a false impression of what the product actually does.
- Prospects aren’t brought into the product quickly or frequently enough.
- They don’t understand the value.
In addition to product walk-throughs and sales calls, you can create guides that explain how your product applies to specific use cases.
You can also advertise onboarding guides to people who have just signed up to your product by creating a Facebook Custom Audience of new trial users.
- Upsell Campaigns
Upselling campaigns can be highly effective. Depending on the nature of your B2B product, you could find upsell opportunities such as adding users to the existing subscription plan or selling additional products to existing clients.
For example, if a company ordered business cards from X Corp, they could be targeted with a cross-selling campaign of pens from A Corp.
Be careful not to ask for too much additional spending from your customers. Shopify suggests that you should upsell and cross-sell products that cost 25% or less of the overall order.
