B2B and Social Media: How to Use Facebook in B2B Marketing

In B2B social media marketing, companies still have a lot of catching up to do. Too often, the potential of high-reach platforms like Facebook, Instagram & Co. is ignored. Yet, they are brilliant channels for marketing and sales, even for B2B products.

Social Media for B2B Companies

A persistent myth slows down the effectiveness of most companies' social media activities: “Facebook and Instagram are places for cat videos. Or, at best, for selling trainers and handbags. If you want to reach professionals on social media, you can only do it on LinkedIn.”

As an agency with a social media focus, we at Bacon & Bold are confronted with strategic misjudgements of this kind time and again. Working with new clients is therefore usually preceded by an evaluation of existing channels:

• Which channels does the target audience use and how efficiently can they be reached on them?
• How scalable is the advertising channel for the target audience?
• Do current social media measures contribute to the corporate goal at all?
• Which platforms offer untapped potential to achieve these goals?

Addressing B2B target audiences outside of professional networks

Every time, we ask ourselves anew which users our clients want to reach and where they can be found. Even for B2B target audiences, the first answer is often Facebook. Decision-makers, especially in international markets, usually spend more time on Facebook than on LinkedIn and can often be reached there more cost-effectively.

Because: Decision-makers are also “just” users. They do not differ significantly from the rest of the population in their social media usage. They, too, scroll through their Facebook feed far more often than they check their Xing profile.

That was B2B marketing yesterday

The fact that many companies still strictly distinguish between “leisure networks” and “professional networks” has historical reasons. In the past, this clear separation actually existed: general-interest magazines on one side and trade journals on the other.

Broadly speaking, you paid for high reach among the general public with the former, and for high penetration and low wastage within a defined target audience with the latter.

For example, if you wanted to establish a detergent brand, you placed ads in high-reach general-interest magazines. B2B marketers researched a suitable trade journal and advertised there.

How do you reach decision-makers today?

This separation is still deeply anchored in marketing departments. A neat distinction continues to be made between “leisure networks” like Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram and professional networks like LinkedIn and Xing. They are treated analogously to the separation between general-interest and trade magazines.

BUT: Decision-makers have always been readers of general-interest magazines as well. However, they only made up a small percentage of a magazine's total readership. Likewise, they are active on “general-interest” platforms like Facebook and only make up a small percentage of the total user base there.

On the large, broad-reach social media platforms, advertising can be restricted to the small percentage of the B2B target audience, whereas when placing an ad in a print magazine, you had no control over the circulation of the printed work.

Successful B2B marketing on Facebook & Co

To summarise once more: Target audience segmentation is no longer the sole business of industry or niche magazines. Social media platforms know their users so well that B2B target groups can be well isolated in targeting.

What kind of content can be sensibly distributed via these channels:
– Content Marketing: Via Facebook, Instagram and Co, one's own content (such as blog or video posts) can be distributed in a highly targeted manner. In times of severely limited organic reach, it is also sensible to support the distribution of content with an advertising budget.
– Lead generation for B2B products: by directing traffic to a lead form on your own website (this measure is only sensible if, by installing the Facebook Pixel, it can be tracked how users behave on the site)
– or: by using the native lead form on Facebook and Instagram. These are even more effective if a whitepaper/webinar/information sheet is offered in return.

Insights: How well do B2B campaigns perform on Facebook

Lead campaigns for B2B products on Facebook regularly outperform parallel campaigns on LinkedIn, regardless of the industry. A combination of different factors is responsible for this. Firstly, the CPM on Facebook is considerably cheaper than on professional networks, and even with higher wastage, one still achieves significantly cheaper lead prices.

Secondly, for many B2B products, the advertising pressure in the target audience on Facebook is less high. We were able to observe this with leads for automotive clients, where fleet managers are less contested on Facebook than on LinkedIn. We were therefore able to achieve even cheaper lead prices on Facebook than for B2C campaigns.

What to watch out for with B2B campaigns on Facebook

However, the higher absolute number of leads can also be misleading. The quality of the leads is generally lower than that of LinkedIn leads. Due to the better prices per lead, however, the costs per qualified lead (SQL) for sales are often cheaper, even with slightly lower quality.

We nevertheless recommend establishing a clear process in advance by which the leads are classified. Lead quality must be regularly reported by the sales team to marketing in order to refine advertising measures.

Conclusion

LinkedIn advertises that 80% of all B2B leads come from their platform. It follows that: B2B social media marketing away from LinkedIn is a huge, fallow field. We at Bacon & Bold use this gap for our clients and offer solutions for B2B marketing outside of professional networks as well.

B2B target groups are, like the rest of the population, far more active on leisure networks like Facebook, Instagram and Co than on professional networks. We take advantage of this circumstance and reach decision-makers with our content in their private feeds.

‍

Conclusion