I recently recorded a podcast (audio & video below) episode with Alex Glenn, a Chicago Growth Marketing Automation Consultant, discussing what the best ways are to use Facebook for B2B Marketing.

 

We’re going to discuss why B2B companies like Clearbit, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Kabbage, and the rest are utilizing facebook ads and how they are executing those in an automated and efficient manner.

Here are the questions we will answer in this episode:

How useful is Facebook for B2B marketing?

Nolan, founder of Clemmons.io, is with me again (check out our episode on using bots in ads here) as the resident expert in Facebook ads. He’s going to start us off with a quick state of the union around Facebook ads for B2B companies.

• B2B Facebook Marketing Overview:
  • B2B is still H2H, so try and put yourself in the shoes of the user.
  • “People browse Facebook for casual fun, catching up with friends and family – but not to being sold. It is best to use Facebook to drive them to opt-in to your lead magnet before pushing them your product.” – (https://connectio.io/13-facebook…)
• Content Marketing
  • Native content (videos, events, images, etc.) vs. links – keep users on Facebook as much as possible, unless sending them to landing page
  • Use tools like Buffer, Meet Edgar, and Hootsuite to recycle and gradually share content
  • Extension of content marketing mechanics
    • Lead magnets (free ebook, guide, infographic, etc.)
    • Educational content
    • (Native) Video content
• Facebook Ads overview
  • Ability to measure exact metrics, like cost per click/lead, which you can use to scale or adjust creative/copy accordingly
  • Targeting Options within Facebook Ads
    • Interests
    • Geography
    • Previously, you could target by employer/job titles, but was removed due to abuse. Update: Professional targeting options are now available again, read more on Facebook’s Official Blog.
  • Audience Retargeting / Remarketing Options (More on Lead Nurturing here)
    • Web site visitors (via Facebook Pixel)
    • Facebook Video Viewers
    • Existing Customer data (email lists)
• Community Management
  • Facebook Groups are a better way to reach people organically than pages. Be sure to link your page with your group.
  • User Groups (for technology products like ManyChat & ChatFuel) are a great way to crowdsource support, customer success and product evangelism.
• Chat Bots
  • See more from our episode on B2B Chat Bots here
  • Great for appointment scheduling & event reminder notifications (especially the Calendly integration)
• B2B Facebook Advertising Examples & Case Studies
  • Examples: Agencies Targeting business owners (brick & mortar), and coaches targeting agencies.
  • Great for high-ticket products/services
  • See more case studies here: https://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-strategy/facebook-case-studies/
  • In my feed today:Waymark, Wordstream, Ziprecruiter, & Adzombies. Even LinkedIn uses Facebook ads to advertise LinkedIn’s ads:

    

    (If the text is too small to read, basically it’s saying that LinkedIn targeted me via a custom audience, using data they provided to Facebook. It’s likely that they segmented their users by those who have either signed-up for LinkedIn ads or some similar criteria.)

How useful is FB for B2B marketing in general?

How useful are Facebook ads for marketing SaaS?

• Will Facebook ads work for your saas company?
  • Depends on the vertical / geography / target audience
  • If you are targeting c-level at companies above 100 people… probably not too effective.
  • Anyone else (except those located mainland china), it will be effective
• It’s important to remember we are all human with our own lives outside of work.
  • You may not get your conversion to demo or sale with that FB ad, but you will get them to see your ad.
• Tips for saas companies targeting owners/heads of departments of company sizes < 100:
  • If your budget is low, or you’re focused on organic growth, use FB ads mainly for retargeting. Meaning, try to gain your first brand impressions from PR, Quora, product hunt, organic search etc…
  • Then create retargeting campaigns at specific time frames during your average conversion window length (the time after initial brand impression from search when you typically convert a prospect or lose them entirely):
    • 0-3 days – serve features and use cases – remind them how your tool can be used.
    • 4-10 days – serve case studies and client testimonials – remind them why people use your tool.
    • 11-30 days (after they came to your site) – serve an offer specific to this audience to try and grab them.
    • How: use Adroll, or creative a custom audience directly in FB (based on data collected by the Facebook Pixel on your website)
• Audiences = Integrate CRM to ensure people are put into the correct audiences and pulled out when they commit events.
• Creatives
  • Use screencast videos of your product in use – ideally, with the face of the head of product, founder, or other staff member in the video (this builds trust and credibility). Loom is a great screen recording extension for Chrome to use for this purpose.
  • Try Facebook messenger ads with chat bots – either as sponsored messages or use the comment-to-message growth tool with a keyword message to bypass the ‘get started’ button. Note: you must mention in the ad that you will send them a message.
• If you have Intercom, setup the UTM campaigns option to deploy specific welcome back messages when FB users click an ad and on the page.
• I.e. “Welcome back {{first_name}}, sorry to drag you off Facebook, but I have something important to show you…”

Now for the boring, but essential stuff – Configuring Facebook With Your CRM

Facebook lets you target your contacts by simply importing your CRM.

It’s critical to optimise your campaigns, targeting, ads and forms for sales and lead quality.

Using URLs (like your demo page, but not the demo success page) to push people into audiences is good… but your sales team will be entering people into the CRM manually, and even signing people up manually. So, you need to ensure your FB audiences are talking to your CRM correctly.

How do you accomplish this:

Leadsbridge.com

Driftrock.com

These platforms allow you full downstream analytics to ensure your ad campaigns are not spending on people who are either already closed, or no longer interested.

What are 3 best practices / tactics for B2B marketing with Facebook?

Have you website’s Digital Plumbing (Google Analytics & Facebook Pixel) in place. Leverage dynamic custom audiences as per Alex’s advice above.

Constantly test your ads (creative, copy, and targeting). Don’t expect your first ad to work. You can test out Facebook ads for as little as $1/day, which is great for A/B testing. Once you figure out what combination works best for your goals, you can then scale up your Facebook advertising budget.

Monitor comments and engagements on ads. This doesn’t mean that you should censor or delete negative comments necessarily, but rather be prepared to address concerns.