SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING FOR B2B Driving Sales through Advertising on Facebook and LinkedIn 866.497.5505 www.bizo.com Follow us on Twitter: @bizo
If you re trying to find your prospects online, social networks are prime spots to look: Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 spend an average of 3.2 hours every day browsing Facebook and other social networking sites. 1 And lest you think business executives have more important things to do with their time, you re in for a surprise: The same study found that senior decision-makers spent 40 percent more time browsing social networks than those in lower-level positions. B2B marketers are already taking social media seriously on content development. Given sophisticated targeting capabilities, a natural next step for any B2B marketer is to tackle paid media. Social media advertising is an ideal platform for reaching your B2B business prospects, but many marketers are struggling to reach the right people with the right messaging. In this guide, we ll help you learn how to target your ideal B2B customers across the social networks they frequent and how to convert them into sales. 1 Ask the right questions about your campaign before you start. Prior to launching your campaign, it s important to clearly define your goals: What do you hope to achieve? Do you want to gain more followers for your Facebook page, generate more leads on a conversion form on your website, or raise brand awareness? Social advertising is an ideal way to educate and engage prospects as they progress along the buyer s journey. Create social ads that lead your prospects to your website with the goal of downloading highly relevant, targeted white papers and other content offers, which they must fill out a conversion form to view. You can use this gated educational content to educate them about your prospect and industry, and to further nurture the leads through your own email marketing program. 1 Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange (OTX).
TOP FUNNEL IMPACT (Brand Awareness) MID FUNNEL IMPACT (Content Engagement & Education) BOTTOM FUNNEL IMPACT (Lead Generation & Sales Conversions) MID FUNNEL IMPACT (Content Engagement & Education) Facebook Targeting LinkedIn Targeting Social advertising is ideal for nurturing and educating leads through the buying process. 2 Define the audiences that are most likely to convert and find them. A wide cross-section of Americans visit social networks frequently. In order to reach an audience of truly qualified leads, you ll need to take a highly targeted approach. Focus on reaching the end decision-maker, as well as any job functions that may have influence in choosing business solutions. In targeting prospects, consider these criteria: Current/intended customers (company types, specific company names) Target job titles (including variations such as VP and vice-president Target industries Location: Regional, national, global LinkedIn is a business-focused social network that clearly defines each user s industry and job title, so it is simple to target users according to job function and seniority, although many users don t list information such as age and gender. You can also target users according to discussion groups they belong to, such as Digital Media or IT Professionals. Because different benefits of your business solution may appeal to different job functions, consider creating separate campaigns for each target job function. Creating and optimizing your campaigns effectively can be a complex process when possible, tap into the expertise of
your advertising technology providers who can help you build more sophisticated targeted campaigns on LinkedIn to reach the right prospects and increase conversion rates. Consider creating separate campaigns for specific job titles to increase relevancy and conversions. Facebook offers B2B marketers tremendous opportunities to reach their precise business audiences through the Facebook Exchange (FBX), a real-time bidding system in which marketers can leverage third-party data to reach their target audiences when they are on Facebook, and retarget them with highly relevant ads. By partnering with advertising platforms that enable access to third-party data on business professionals, Facebook Exchange gives marketers the ability to specifically target users according to job function, industry, and other business demographics data that are not available through its own advertising platform. 3 Develop and test your ad creative. When advertising on social media, you re subject to limitations with your ad creative that you don t face with traditional display: There is extremely limited real estate, with small graphics and limited text space. However, social ads do have one significant benefit: Because each ad is not custom-designed, it is much easier to change the text or switch out an image to optimize your conversion rates based on performance. Even slight differences in your ad creative can have a big impact on conversion rates. Develop six to ten distinct variations of each targeted ad for your
campaign, paying close attention to your choice of graphics and the wording in your calls-to-action. Although image sizes are small, they can have a big impact. Use bright colors, such as red, to attract prospects attention, and select action-oriented pictures. Ad copy should be compelling, to-the-point, and focus on solving a problem for the prospect. Consider using a question for your tagline. The ad copy should be targeted to the specific type of prospect for instance, if you are targeting a CFO, focus on how your solution can save the company money. Finish the ad with a callto-action, such as get a free trial, or download a free e-book. While space is limited with social advertising, targeting specific seniority levels and job titles can yield tremendous results. Test multiple images and copy for each campaign to determine which selections are most effective with each target group. When testing your creative, conversions, rather than click-through rates, should be your primary focus. Develop a multi-channel attribution system that allows you to carefully track how many times each prospect was touched before converting often, even prospects who do not initially convert after viewing an ad will later visit a company s website or download a content offer. Done effectively, social advertising can drive significant results: In Bizo s own case study, the company experienced 43% brand lift and a 77% lift in site traffic from its target audience by incorporating LinkedIn and Facebook Targeted Advertising tactics in the context of its larger display and branding. 4 Optimize your ad campaigns in real time and don t be afraid to turn off under-performing campaigns. In order to make the most of your marketing budget, it s important to track your results across campaigns in real time, so that you can easily allocate more funds to your highest-converting campaigns, and shut down campaigns that are underperforming.
By using an advertising solution with a dashboard that allows you to track each of your campaigns on a day-to-day basis, you ll be able to instantly notice trends and invest in your highest-performing ad variants to increase conversion rates, and pause or turn off under-performing campaigns so you can focus on developing new creative to replace these variants. In the spirit of ongoing optimization, don t be afraid to turn off under-performing campaigns. 5 Set a competitive bid price. It s important to remember that, in social advertising, you will be competing with many other companies for the opportunity to show your ad to highly qualified prospects. In order to get your ads in front of the right people, set a competitive bid price, whether you are using a Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Impression (CPM) basis. Typically, marketers choose a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis so that they are paying only for actual leads generated. To determine your price, it s advisable to bid a higher amount than the recommended bids listed on your social marketing platform. Remember, you will only pay one penny more than the next-highest bid, so bid aggressively as much as $2 more than the recommended maximum bid if you want to deliver impressions efficiently.
6 Focus on the right metrics. Your metrics will be a natural extension of your campaign goals and objectives. To gauge the impact of your social campaigns, make sure you move beyond measuring only impressions and clicks, and measure and optimize to the number of actions generated by each campaign. When it comes to determining the ROI of your social advertising campaigns, actions (or conversions) speak louder than clicks. In some cases, a particular campaign may have a low click-through rate, but a high conversion rate; such campaigns are worth continued monitoring even if the CTR is lower than average. IRemember, focus not just on reaching a large number of people, but on reaching the people that matter most to your business. If you re not achieving the conversion metrics you want, re-evaluate your overall marketing approach, calls-to-action, and market segmentation to ensure that you are approaching the right people with the right messaging. Learn how we can help you with your social advertising at: http://bizo.com/marketer/social_advertising 2013 Bizo, Inc. 866.497.5505 www.bizo.com Follow us on Twitter: @bizo