The Best Social Platforms To Advertise On For B2B
There are a few big differences between B2C and B2B advertising strategies. For one, B2B sales cycles tend to be much longer than an average B2C purchase, and companies invested in B2B strategies tend to spend more to acquire a client because accounts often have six figures or more attached.
Along with that, these audiences are likely to be engaging with content online in a very different way compared to direct consumers.
When it comes to prospecting and landing new clients, there are a few B2B marketing platforms that truly pay off with a good strategy and budget. As a B2B advertising agency, these are a few networks that we recommend.
What to Include in the Perfect B2B Campaign
Before jumping right into a campaign on any of the networks below, there are a few things that every B2B marketing strategy should incorporate.
B2B Campaigns Have Specific Targets and Goals
Your campaign also should be attached to a goal. Sales and leads are always important, but not every goal has to be necessarily tied to those. There may be instances where you are looking for a lift in brand awareness and engagement, rather than a direct sale or lead.
Before setting up your campaign, decide what you want your audience to do – what action is most important that they take?
Define Your B2B Audience With Personas
Defining your client personas is important when it comes to selecting targeting factors and building audiences for B2B campaigns. Perhaps you want to generate buzz, invite VIPs to your event, or just launch a new product geared toward specific professions; these are all reasons to create audience profiles beforehand.
When you’re building out these audiences, ensure that you’re creating them based on data – whether that’s metrics and data from your social analytics, website analytics, external research and so on.
Decide What Your Offer Will Be
Every B2B campaign needs an enticing offer that’s better than everyone else. This makes it easier for your interested parties to convert. You also want to match the level of your offer with the level of commitment you’re asking from the prospect.
An extremely high commitment may require a phone number or address, which means that the offer has to be of equally high value to a prospect. However, a simple discount or free download should only require a quick email address sign-up for the exchange.
One campaign idea is to create premium content that’s unique to your business, such as a report, ebook, whitepaper, tutorial video or another incentive. It should be extremely useful to your target market. With social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, you can easily market your offer and target your key audiences.
Create Additional Lift With SEO
B2B companies should not just rely on paid platforms to advertise, but also create strategic SEO content to organically attract leads. These pages should be geared to keywords that are constantly searched by your target audiences, providing answers to their top questions.
Facebook B2B Advertising
Facebook has one of the largest and most detailed paid advertising platforms for businesses who need to find people with certain jobs in specific industries. When you need to target very specific audiences with income, interests, and behaviors, Facebook has nearly 3 billion active users per month to entice with your advertising. However, you also want to make sure that your industry and market has a presence on this super active social network.
With Facebook B2B advertising, it’s possible to show your campaign to only the people with the right job titles at certain places of employment, and you can advertise to those who were recently employed at an organization within your market. You can also search by university and degree to target other groups who may be looking for training and other helpful tools to get started in your industry.
To find highly qualified business leads on Facebook, you should create campaigns with messaging and forms that speak directly to their interests and problems. Your ads should be tailored to the platform as well – highly visual and animated to catch their attention.
LinkedIn Ads, Business Pages and Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn is probably the largest networking site online today. You can find businesses of all kinds on this professional community network. Like Facebook, LinkedIn allows you to build advertising campaigns and target all of their users by different demographics, interests, and job titles.
Remember those client personas we mentioned earlier? You’ll refer back to those details when choosing your targeting strategy. Be careful to craft a genuine message when developing your ad creative – you want to avoid sounding scripted to potential prospects.
Before reaching out to a LinkedIn member, take some time to check out their page and look at any social media sites they’ve connected, such as a Twitter page or blog. What are they interested in? It’s best to find some common ground and ask a question that they will care enough about to answer if you hope to hear back.
Google Ads
Another tried and true B2B marketing strategy is Google Ads. This platform, while not classified as social media, is as wide and expansive as even Facebook. Even if you were to just launch a branding campaign, it’s an efficient and effective way to get people in your audience (who are your searching for your services or business) to visit your site and convert.
When creating these campaigns, keyword research and conversion tracking are necessary. You should know all of the keywords that people in your industry Google to find your products and services.
Like all other platforms mentioned in this blog, you’ll need to install conversion tracking and Google Analytics to gain valuable insights into what actions your prospects take throughout your funnel. It’s the best way to see referral sources, actions, goals, traffic, and conversion metrics.
Start Advertising To B2B With A Digital Marketing Agency
With all of this information, it may be difficult to know where you should start. Work with a digital marketing agency that has proven success in creating and executing paid social media strategies that are going to help you reach your target audience.
