Tell most B2B marketers you’re running Facebook ads and you’ll get a look. Facebook is where people share holiday photos and argue about football; nobody buys enterprise software on it. I understood that objection, held it myself for a good while, and I’ve come round to thinking it’s mostly wrong.
The reason the objection feels right is that Facebook has no intent. On Google someone types “crm for small business” and you know what they want this minute. On Facebook nobody is searching for anything; they’re scrolling. If you’re used to buying intent, paying to appear in front of people who aren’t looking feels mad.
Here’s the thing, though. B2B buyers are people, and people are on Facebook in the evening. The targeting Facebook actually gives you is where it gets interesting. You can aim ads at people who list a particular employer, or a job title, or membership of an industry group. That’s crude next to what you’d like, and plenty of people leave the work field blank so your real reach is smaller than the raw numbers suggest. Even so, the ability to put a message specifically in front of, say, marketing managers at companies above a certain size is a long way from nothing.
What I’ve seen work, and what I’d try:
- Don’t sell the product. Nobody clicks “Request a demo” from their newsfeed. Offer something worth reading; a guide, a piece of research, a webinar. Get the click, get the email address, sell later.
- Use the image. Facebook ads live or die on the picture far more than the copy; it’s a visual place and a limp stock photo simply vanishes.
- Keep budgets small and expectations modest. This is a top-of-funnel channel. Judge it on cost per lead into your list, not cost per sale, or you’ll switch it off in week two and never know what it was building.
It won’t replace search and I wouldn’t want it to. For a business with a long, considered buying cycle, though, being in front of the right people before they’re actively looking has a value that last-click reporting will always undersell. Which is the same measurement problem I keep running into everywhere this year.
