How To Use Facebook For Marketing Your B2B Business

Does Facebook actually work for B2B?

If you own a B2B company you may well be scratching your head and wondering how you can, or indeed, if should you use Facebook for marketing your business. Perhaps you have set up a page and can't understand why nothing is happening on it, or perhaps you are reluctant to even start in case it goes wrong? This article will take a quick look at how Facebook can really work in the B2B space and provide a few tips on how Facebook can also become an integral part of your marketing strategy.

Business to Consumer (B2C) companies have been quick to utilise the obvious benefits of Facebook marketing, now it's time for B2B to do the same...

A common misconception which deters businesses from starting a B2B Facebook profile is that they feel they are marketing to other large, corporate, faceless machines. STOP! Let's take an early reality check... whether you are B2C or B2B, the reality is you are still marketing human to human - H2H! Let's get over the terms and realise that no matter your type of business, marketing needs to appeal to people. We forget that at the end of the day PEOPLE manage these accounts and they're often key influencers. It's our job to create something to appeal to them and give them the right information and call to action to get you in front of the right people.

Before going any further, let's take a quick look at some of the advantages we feel B2B Facebook marketing can bring…

Advantages of using Facebook for marketing your B2B company

The human face of your company - having a Facebook profile actually allows you to put a personality behind your company. An example of this would be to add a meet the ‘expert’ article to your profile as this will show the businesses you’re trying to engage with that you’re a credible company with staff who are proud to put a face to your company. They will also learn more about what your company is trying to achieve and increase credibility and trustworthiness.

Target Key People - Facebook has a very capable advertising tool which allows you to zero in and target who you want to see your adverts and promoted posts. This will allow you to tailor your adverts for key decision makers and influencers and at the same time increase the effectiveness of your advertising.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) - the general public don’t usually see what’s going on behind your doors so using social media to promote your CSR efforts will allow you to showcase a softer side of your business. Public perception is key to creating a strong and credible social business and if you’re perceived as acting responsibly this will strengthen the reputation of your business. It goes without saying that this should never be forced or contrived as it could do more harm than good.

Increased brand recognition - if you continue to pop up on key influencers Facebook profiles with useful and interesting content this will help to increase brand recognition. Done correctly, and especially if your content ticks the right box, over time they should become more receptive to your proposition.

Increased Insight - you can find out a lot about your audience using Facebook. This will allow you to tailor your proposition and your marketing to specific audiences. For example, what content generated the most views, what time do they normally log on, where they are from and more...

How to get the most from your Facebook marketing

Planning and scheduling content - by researching the topics and content that interests your audience you will be able to develop a detailed content schedule mapping out in advance what and when you are going to post. Planning in advance really takes the pressure off and allows you to spread your content evenly over a selected period of time. Scheduling posts ahead of time also frees up your time and allows you to focus more on engaging with your audience when the content goes live. Always try to stay 5 or 6 weeks ahead of your content plan as you never know when something crops up or someone else is on leave and you have to cover. Stay ahead and your plan will work like clockwork!

Curate content to increase news flow and boost engagement - remember it’s not all about you! Other businesses will get bored reading all about you so definitely include relevant industry news, news about your community and other complementary content. This will help to increase the overall interest in your page as a source of useful information. The trick is to find out what resonates with your audience.

Vary your content - include posts which contain videos, imagery, polls and other interactive content which will catch the attention of your followers. Content and imagery about your business should feature in your content. Videos are definitely becoming much more prevalent on social media, just look at new video only apps such as Vine. Don't be shy!

Use Facebook to find out about your audience - as mentioned before, Facebook can really provide essential information about your audience, so use it! Understand what each section really means and if you need to change up your frequency depending on your findings then do it. You’re overall Facebook marketing will really benefit from getting 'under the hood' and understanding your audience better.

Be succinct - Facebook is all about learning and taking bite sized pieces of knowledge from it. Try not to overload your ‘status’ with reams and reams of text, get straight to the point and don’t be afraid to use CAPITALS or *** if you want a part of your message to stick out. Just don’t overdo the FoNt ChanGes…

Ask your audience questions - this will really drive engagement and once again will help you to find out more about your audience. Why not involve your audience in some fun decisions (obviously not business critical issues!) and let them know the outcome? For example, if you have two sample products in two different colours but you’re only going to choose one, post a picture of both on Facebook. Simply ask people to like the one they prefer.

Share links from key influencers - if you have a particular set of companies you respect or even aspire to, consider sharing advice or updates from them that are relevant to your industry. Obviously you wouldn't do this for your competitors but if applicable you will help to associate your company with this other company you share similar values with. Once again it also helps to break up your own content.

Don’t ask for likes and shares - this audience generation ‘technique’ is a little desperate… You need to think about your reputation here, it’s not good to be seen to be fishing for likes. You should be liked because you’re a credible business, not because a heap of people have shared your page in return for something. This also makes the followers on your page irrelevant if they only 'liked' you for a freebie or a competition. Why not spend a few quid on advertising and promoting your page to the specific audience you want to target instead? From as little as £5 a day you could increase both likes and engagement for your page and what's better it will be with a "relevant audience" that you choose. P.S. did you know that Like and Share competitions are actually against Facebook Terms of Service?

Use competitions to drive engagement - while we mentioned in the section above that ‘freebie’s’ for fake followers is bad practice, freebie’s for real followers however is good practice! If, for example, you’re an IT company who specialises in software for dental practices, why not run a competition to win a free trial of your software (or whatever you're comfortable with and will reasonate with your audience)? You could run advertisements on Facebook to a specific dental audience and then once they click the ad you can bring them to your website to enter their details and take part in the competition. In this example, you will create a solid database of dentists and if done correctly will be an excellent lead generation tool. Who said Facebook doesn't work for B2B?

Use the Facebook Apps feature - there are free apps you can attach to your business Facebook page which will allow you to add additional content. The Notes app is a great way to showcase your blogs and any press releases your company may have and the Video app allows you to create a kind of mini channel where other businesses can see all the videos you have posted. These apps will allow businesses to learn more about your products and services.

Boost your images - update your profile picture from time to time and make sure you use appealing images for your posts. Don’t forget about your cover picture either - this is prime real estate however make sure you test the end result on desktop and mobile to make sure any copy is not masked by something else.

There's nothing worse than hitting a company facebook page to find a cover pic with everyone's head cut off and half the text is missing because of where the profile picture is. Updating your imagery every so often keeps interest in your company will help you to stand out. Overtime people get blind to the same images in their newsfeed over and over again. Switching and image should help you to stand out as they will look at it and wonder who it is.

A Final Word About Doing Business On Facebook

If you’re using Facebook for your B2B business, the whole purpose behind it is to generate interest in your company and not sell directly. You’re trying to influence people about your overall credibility and help educate them about what you do. Don't overtly try to sell your products or services as this will just switch people off. This, however, doesn't mean you can't use Facebook to drive your sales...

Let's try things another way and play the long game. People like to consume content on social media so why not build some great content about some of the pain points your customers might have and design it into an eBook. Then give it to your audience for free on social media. You could use blog posts and then pay to promote them to a wider audience on Facebook or purchase specific ads to appear in users' newsfeeds or sidebars. The key is you are "offering" your audience this free content in return for their email address. Bingo!!! You now have a lead to follow up with in due course, add them to CRM and/ or sign them up for your newsletter.

In a future blog we will expand upon how to do this automatically and how to build a funnel to bring your leads through to sales.

Stay tuned!

To Summarise

B2B Facebook pages shouldn’t be discounted as we’ve highlighted above some really worthwhile advantages of using Facebook for your B2B business. If you’re not already there, give it a go and if you’ve got a profile - make the most of it! Always remember that at the end of the day there is always a person behind every single corporate profile and as we mentioned forget the arguments about B2B vs B2C. Let's just think about H2H!!!

Always be mindful about the content you post and remember that your reputation is on the line if you post something that could be seen as contentious or in bad taste. Even large companies can make a poor call on the posts they put out and can be forced to make a public apology. So get involved and be enthusiastic but always in good taste and sometimes we need to temper our excitement! If you're in doubt about posting something then don't. Take some time and come back to it later and see how you feel then.

If you’re considering setting up a Facebook page for your B2B company, get in touch as we’d love to hear about how you plan to get it started. Feel free to leave us a comment below or have a look around our Facebook page here - https://www.facebook.com/EnlightenIC

Photo Credit - CC - Charles Tsevis