Facebook is a very popular advertising platform for retailers. 

B2B businesses used to rely upon ad networks such as Google Search Ads and LinkedIn. With the increasing cost per click (LinkedIn CPC can go as high as $30), more B2B marketers are investing in Facebook.

Kobe Digital saw a significant increase in sales from Facebook ads for B2B products when they worked with them.

However, there’s a catch: Facebook B2B Ads only work if you have the right strategy…

Too many marketers give up too quickly.

These stats are important. Social Media Examiner’s poll found that 52% of B2C marketers believe Facebook marketing to be effective. 38% of B2B marketers could agree.

B2C marketers don’t have to use Facebook to sell businesses. They can use Facebook ads to promote Black Friday sales and sales.

B2B marketers are faced with a tough decision: Should they advertise via Facebook?

Your question has been answered shortly.

This guide will explain all aspects of B2B Facebook Advertising, including how to create highly-performing ads and how to build a marketing funnel.

If you’re interested in a specific topic, please use the links below.

Do you want to increase sales?

Let’s do it!

Part 1: Why Facebook Ads for B2B brands Work (and don’t work)

LinkedIn uses Facebook ads for B2B marketers. This channel must have something unique.

Irony in LinkedIn Advertising on Facebook

Facebook is the platform with the greatest reach. Statista proves that Facebook has more users per user than YouTube and WhatsApp.

Facebook is the biggest social media platform

While some social media platforms are experiencing a decline in monthly active users (like Instagram and Facebook), they are still growing steadily.

There are many B2B Facebook Ad success stories, including one software provider that saw a 51% decrease in lead costs.

A survey of 342 B2B marketers found that 58% cited LinkedIn and Facebook as social media platforms with the highest ROI.

Facebook is a well-known platform for advertising products and services.

91% of marketers use Facebook B2B ads to promote their brands. According to Statista, it is now the most popular social platform for B2B ads.

Facebook is the most popular B2B marketing channel

Facebook ads are effective regardless of the product or service.

• Facebook ads can reach more than 2 billion people worldwide. Nearly all potential buyers have a profile on social media.

• Facebook has some of the best ad algorithms available. Facebook can almost target you even if you don’t know who you should target.

• Facebook offers many types of campaigns, including those that build brand awareness and drive traffic to land pages. Conversions campaigns can be used to close sales deals.

• Facebook ads can be very affordable. A campaign can be tested with as little as $200

Many Facebook ads do not reach B2B customers.

Some B2B campaigns fail.

Social media marketing is failing for many reasons.

You should double-check your Facebook advertising results if you have tried Facebook ads for your B2B business before and failed to get the desired results.

• Your ad strategy should not be based on the sales funnel. B2B sales cannot be achieved immediately. To make B2B sales, it is important to use lead nurturing strategies in your online advertising campaigns.

• You shouldn’t use the same ad copy for everyone. Ads offering a free trial of a product are not appropriate for all customers.

• It is important to create a remarketing campaign. You should not forget to set up a remarketing campaign. 99% of B2B business sales happen at the third, third, or tenth touchpoint.

A second thing to consider: Are you marketing your products to startups or enterprise clients?

Companies that offer a $299 monthly subscription of software are very different from companies selling enterprise products, which can cost upwards of $100k per year.

A B2B company may have a different approach than another.

Before you create a Facebook campaign, it is important to understand the sales and marketing process.

Part 2: How to create a B2B channel for Facebook ads

Search for “B2B marketing funnel” to find many images.

Most marketing funnels consist of five to six stages.

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Take into consideration
4. Intent
5. Buy

Let’s take a closer look at each stage to see which funnel-based marketing strategy works best.

• Awareness – This stage aims to increase awareness about your product/service.

• Interest – Once someone has heard of your brand, it’s time to generate initial interest. But, it is not a good idea to ask B2B customers for purchase offers.

• Consider – This audience may be interested in your product at this stage. Now you need to convince them more

• Intent – These hot leads need that final push to buy.

• Purchase – This stage is for people who have bought your product because of successful sales and marketing

KlientBoost provides a beautiful illustration chart that illustrates how marketing messages and offers change as potential customers become lava-hot leads, ready to buy.

First, define your marketing funnel. Next, think about the messages you want to communicate and who they are targeting.

There are many ways to view it.

A message or special offer should be created to get people to move up the hierarchy.

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, had the brilliant idea to Use Storyboarding in the early days to learn about the customer’s experiences with the service.

Think about what steps a customer must follow to become a paying customer when you start to create your B2B marketing funnel.

First, grab their attention and tell them that your product is available Next, use a clever strategy for convincing the prospect to purchase your product

Sales might not happen in one day. They may take up to 30 days.

It is crucial to understand the stages involved in conversion.

After you’ve identified conversion events in your sales funnel, create a Facebook campaign encouraging people to convert at each stage.

These resources are recommended if you’re interested in learning more about creating a B2B marketing channel like an expert:

• Optimizing Your Conversion Funnel – Moz Blog
• How To Keep the Pipeline Moving KlientBoost blog
• Create a Conversion Funnel That Will Triple Your Profits Niel Pavtel

These Facebook ads will help you come up with great ideas.

3: Facebook Ad Campaign Examples to Help You Build All Your B2B Sales Funnels

It is possible to identify the target audience for each stage of your conversion funnel once you have a clear understanding.

Interest-based targeting can be used to identify people who are interested in your B2B offerings

Remarketing can be started with visitors who signed up for a trial, or have visited your site during the last stages.

It’s all about getting your message across to the right person at just the right time

Marketing funnel stage 1: Awareness

What was first, the egg or the bird?

Your marketing funnel should be clear. Awareness is the first step to purchasing.

How do you let everyone know that your B2B product/service has been made available, particularly decision-makers?

You can use many marketing channels to promote your business: your blog, a stand at conferences, or cold sales emails.

You can use Facebook ads to educate clients.

Idea 1: Showcase your product for quick awareness

Sometimes, the simplest strategies can prove to be the most efficient.

Advertising that clearly explains what your B2B product or service is, is the best way for people to notice it.

It sounds too easy to be true.

These are the best practices in product advertising:

• If your product is visually appealing, you can show it in the ad photo.
• Explain to your customers the benefits of
• Keep your copy short and simple

It is not recommended that you add a call-to-action (such as “sign up now”) to awareness stage ads. Make people aware of your brand.

Idea 2: Tell the truths to build trust

A first impression is only possible once.

Impress your customers with a memorable first impression

There are many options for presenting your brand in B2B marketing.

• Highly qualified
• High-quality
• For professionals
• Fast-moving
• Trustworthy

No matter how small or large your target audience is, they want to know that you are trustworthy.

How can you build trust in your Facebook ads campaign?

Another indicator of reliability is the number of clients you have.

In Facebook ads, include your user statistics

These are some tips to help you improve the copy, images, and messaging of your Facebook ads to build trust in your B2B brand.

• Mention the brands that have used the service in the ad copy.

• Include the logos of clients in your ad image. 

• Mention your service in your Facebook ads if it’s in the TOP 50.

• Customer testimonials can be a great way for customers to give feedback. (Hired example).

• List the number of clients you have. (SumoMe is an example). 

This fifth suggestion is so powerful that it deserves explanation and examples 

B2B companies often include trust magnets, but fail to realize that Facebook ads with the same message can be very powerful.

Use the logos from your top clients in your ad creatives

If you provide a SaaS service, you can also benefit from reviews and ratings.

Let’s move on to the next step to increase brand awareness through your B2B Facebook ads.

Idea 3: Encourage media coverage for your company

Are you a Forbes or other well-known business publication?

Congratulations!

Take it all in, and make the most out of every opportunity.

Tip – You may be able to guest blog on a blog that is popular or you can pay for a sponsored post.

Another example is from DDB (one of the most well-known advertising agency networks worldwide).

They won several awards at Cannes Lions and published a post on Facebook listing all the rewards.

It appears that the post wasn’t promoted on Facebook. We recommend that you set up a paid promotion to promote any posts published on your Facebook page. 

• Promoted Facebook Posts can reach 10x-100x more people, depending on how much money you have.

• The post was created with a lot of effort and time. You get $500 extra to make sure the right people know about the post. This is a fantastic return on investment.

Share Positive news and rewards posts

How to Increase Brand Awareness on Facebook for B2B Companies

This is a quick overview of Facebook B2B campaigns that can help to build brand awareness.

1. Advertisements to promote your product and highlight the benefits
2. Trust-building Ads, e.g. Customer testimonials. Impressive numbers about your company
3. Advertisements that highlight media coverage for your B2B business or industry awards you won recently

There are many messaging and creative options that you have for your Facebook brand awareness campaign.

How about the campaign design?

How do you create your Facebook awareness campaign

How to set up Facebook brand awareness ads

The following Facebook campaigns are recommended:

• Increase brand recognition by reaching a large audience likely to remember your brand in the future

• Traffic: Reach people who click your ads and visit your site.

• Promoted Facebook Pages – Set up a paid promotion quickly on your Facebook Page

Don’t sell at the awareness stage

How many ad sets and creatives should you use to create your ads?

• Facebook algorithms have more time to learn your ads and deliver them to the right people.

• Create a Facebook campaign with 5-10 ad creatives.

• Combine multiple ad creativity with product screenshots and testimonials to make your message more effective. 

How can you target your advertising campaign?

There are many options. To get the best combination we recommend testing them all. 

• Target large cities that have a wide audience who are in your target customers’ age bracket

• Target large cities with a career or interest.

• Target people who are interested in brands that are not in your industry or a different category of B2B products/services.

Targets based on location or interests

Use the “Detailed Targeting” function to list your career interests, background, and education.

To access the full list of work-related targeting options, select “Demographics”. Next, click on “Work “.

The goal of the awareness stage is to reach as many people who are interested as possible.

Limit your audience. 

The ABC of reaching your ideal audience with Facebook ads is. See the complete guide to targeting 2019.

This will increase awareness and familiarize people with your product. You can increase awareness and make people more familiar with your product. But, they need to be nurtured before becoming paying customers.

B2B marketers make the common mistake of focusing only on awareness ads via Facebook ads and not creating a strategic channel for remarketing to move prospects through their sales funnel.

This is only the beginning of a B2B Facebook marketing strategy.

The awareness stage is followed by the interest stage.

Let’s take a look at how to adjust the Facebook ads campaigns to match the level of interest in your B2B marketing campaign.   

Marketing funnel stage 2: Interest 

This stage is intended for people who are interested but not certain if they will use your brand.

Not quite sure yet

Let’s get your B2B service tested!

Idea 1 – Promote your top blog articles

HubSpot’s 2018 Inbound Marketing Report shows 55% of marketers consider blogging content creation their top priority for inbound marketing.

Marketing is all about Blogs.

What’s your primary goal when blogging for your B2B company? Convert leads into customers, or get inbound traffic through strategic SEO

There is no need to make a decision.

Blog content can be used in Facebook advertising campaigns that are SEO-friendly 

You can publish your posts on your B2B brand’s Facebook page to ensure they reach the right people.

Tip: It’s important to have a consistent branding style throughout your website, products, and ads on Facebook. 

Idea 2 – Gather leads with gated content

Email marketing is one of the most efficient B2B marketing channels.

You must collect contact information before you can send emails to people

HubSpot has compiled this list of ideas to generate B2B leads. This includes white papers, reports, and eBooks.

Create a Facebook campaign to drive people to your landing page. This will increase traffic to your gated content.

This 3-step example is taken from Advertise. Grow blog.

Create a Facebook ad for a guide, eBook, or other material that is popular with your target audience.

We would download the 200+ examples of Facebook ads guide

Clicking the ad will bring you to a page that presents the eBook and invites you to download it.

Pro tip – List the main benefits a user gets when they download gated material on landing pages.

Step 2 – Direct people to your landing pages

Click on the “Download eBook” button to open a popup window with a lead form. Once your contact information has been entered, you can access the eBook.

Sumo allows you to create lead forms for free.

Tip: Don’t waste your time creating separate landing pages to accommodate each lead magnet. Instead, use Facebook Lead Ads campaign features. This allows you to collect contact information without asking people to leave Facebook.

Lead Ads will not bring people to your website and make it harder to remarket to them later.

The HubSpot Report mentioned above was promoted on Facebook. People could then download the document from a landing page.

The interest phase: Best practices for B2B Facebook ads

The interest stage can seem like a transition between awareness and consideration.

After someone has visited your website or seen your ads on Facebook, you might be tempted to offer a trial or sales deal for B2B marketers.

It is possible to skip the interest stage in certain cases. When using B2B Facebook ads,

This is a brief overview of B2B Facebook campaigns you can run during the interest stage.

1. Promote your blog and other useful content
2. Advertisements that promote gated content. These ads can be used for email marketing or to get phone numbers for sales calls.

How do you create your Facebook interest campaign?

Limit your Facebook Ads Manager campaigns to three per stage in a marketing funnel.

Create one campaign per stage of the funnel at the beginning

• Awareness
• Interest
• Take into consideration
• Intent
• Purchase
• Customers

The following Facebook campaign types are recommended for interest-stage ads:

• Traffic – To drive traffic to your blog, lead magnets landing pages

• Lead generation-To collect contact information from people who use Facebook Lead ads

• Conversions – To reach an audience who visits your landing page, but does a specific action (in this case filling out the lead forms).

Conversions, Lead Generation, and Traffic are all options to help you achieve your campaign goals

How can you target your advertising campaign?

The interest stage assumes that people interested in your brand have seen your ads and visited your website. 

For the right interest level, there are two types of Facebook Remarketing Audiences:

• Web visitors in the past
• People who interacted with your Facebook page or ads

Let’s take a look at both the cases and how to create Facebook Custom Audiences.

1. Website users in the past

To target people from your past websites, make sure you have the Facebook pixel installed. 

Next, visit the Audiences section in the Facebook Business Manager. For each person who visited your site within the past 30 days, create a Custom Audience.

Choose “Website traffic”

Select “All website visitors” or ’30 days”.

Next up, name your Custom Audience, e.g. Next, enter your Custom Audience name (e.g. Click the “Create Audience” button.

2. People that have interacted with your Facebook page or ads 

Retargeting can be done for every person who has viewed your Facebook page or ads.

Create a Facebook Custom Audience. Choose “Facebook Pages” from the list.

Choose “Facebook Page”.

Next, expand the drop-down menu and select “People who participated in any post or advertisement”. Then, change the conversion window to show the past 30 days.

Select “People who participated in any post or advertisement. “

You have two remarketing audiences for your Facebook ads that target B2B interests.

These audiences are available for later selection when you create new campaigns’ ad sets.

These audiences can be dynamic. This means that people who have not visited your website in the past 30 days or more will be removed from the targeted audience.

This is great because you’ll be targeting the most promising leads in the next marketing funnel stages. Don’t target the same person with multiple ads.

Marketing funnel stage 3: Consideration

Picture yourself in a supermarket.

You were looking for a list and went to the grocery to buy it. A huge sign advertises Snickers bars in special editions.

Even better is the hazelnut Snickers Ice Cream

It’s tempting to grab some ice creams immediately and add them to the shopping cart.

There are many good reasons to not buy any Snickers.

• Sugar is not good for you
• Eating chocolate is not helping your diet
• This is a guilty pleasure that adds to your budget

There are many reasons why people resist the temptation to buy small items. 

When dealing with B2B products, it is more difficult to overcome fundamental objections.

• Uncertain whether the B2B product will improve or worsen existing work processes

• You don’t want to pay for services B2B (or prefer to pay less).

• It is impossible to determine if the Facebook advertisement featuring a B2B product is the best among all products in the same category.

They must overcome any objections they might have to your B2B product/service to get them to consider it.

Soft selling is the best strategy. Give them case studies and helpful advice. Offer to give them a trial period for free to determine if the product is right for them.

Let’s take a look at Facebook ads. How can they be used to increase B2B product/service sales?

Idea 1 – Offer a free trial of

New users are entitled to a free trial period.

Once a potential customer has signed up for a trial you can modify your Facebook ads strategy to move them to stage 2 (intent) in your marketing funnel.

Idea 2 – Offer a free audit

The software can be offered free of charge by not all B2B businesses.

A free audit is available to anyone who sells a service rather than a product.

Kobe Digital provides a free proposal to all website visitors.

The agency offers free audits and proposals.

Idea 3 – Continue to share high-quality content

B2B marketers need to ensure prospects are at the forefront of their minds when marketing at the interest stage.

This can be done by both phone calls (or sales emails) and paid marketing strategies

You can share and promote blog articles and other useful content that you publish on Facebook. This will enable you to reach all of your prospects with remarketing.

Share information about industry awards that you have won.

Additional updates and articles to share

Idea 4 – Show the value your B2B product brings

If the investment is long-term and profitable, it’s worth looking into

You need to convince your leads that your product is worth their time and effort.

Quantifying benefits is the best way for your business to show the value of the product/service. Business people love numbers.

Facebook ads with numbers perform better

Pro tip: A customer questionnaire can help you understand your product’s main benefits and collect data about the people who are most likely to agree with them.

Consideration stage: Best practices for B2B Facebook Ads

The goal of the consideration stage should be to:

1. Share your B2B product/service with potential customers     
2. Provide a great user experience
3. Inspire them to buy your product/service

These best practices are to be followed when creating Facebook ad copy.

• Don’t sell aggressively, it’s too soon to convert leads into customers.
• Soft-sell instead – offer your customers freebies such as a trial or audit.

Setting up your Facebook campaign for consideration

Remarketing campaigns are similar to the stage of the marketing funnel. Targeting only people who are already in your funnel will help you save a lot of money.

Remarketing can help you save money

The following Facebook campaign types are recommended for interest-stage ads:

• Conversions: If you want your audience to take a specific action (such as sign up for a trial or request an audit), then optimize your Facebook campaign around this conversion

• Traffic – Send people to your blog or guides.

• Reach: Set up ads to reach all audience members once per day for a week. This works well in conjunction with ads promoting the advantages of your product.

Use Reach, Traffic, & Conversions goals

How can you target your advertising campaign?

First, define prospects in the context of your B2B product funnel.

This refers to people that have contacted your B2B company at minimum once. They have either downloaded your whitepaper or read your blog.

All of the above examples can be tracked and remarketed. These are two Facebook Custom Audience types.

1. You can assign special landing page visitors to custom audiences 
2. You can personalize your customer base with Audiences

These steps will help you set them up.

1. Special landing page visitors can be assigned special audiences

By going to the Audiences section within Facebook Business Manager, you can target people who have visited specific landing pages. You can create a custom audience based on website traffic.

Next click on “People who visited specific web pages” and add all relevant landing pages to the list.

We suggest that you choose a period of 14 or 28 days.

Choose “People who have visited certain web pages”

2. Create custom audiences based on customer lists

Imagine your sales team attending a conference that brought together a large number of potential customers.

These prospects can also be reached via Facebook ads.

Of course, you can!

A list of names and email addresses will be needed. You may need a list of people with their first and last names, email addresses, and possibly even their phone numbers to access your Facebook account.

Create Custom Audiences using customer lists. Go to the Audiences page in the Facebook Business Manager.

Upload a CSV file with the contact information of your prospects. Facebook will match this data with users to help you target them with ads.

Upload a CSV File containing contact information for prospects

We’re close to helping you and your clients make that final purchase decision.

But, there’s still one step left in the B2B marketing funnel. It is the intent level.

Marketing funnel stage 4: Intent

You will rely more heavily on sales if you get closer to the Buy stage in your marketing funnel.

Your job as a marketer has been completed. You have helped prospects to the awareness and interest phases.

Combine sales and marketing in the final stages of the funnel

Now it’s up to the sales team to close the deal.

Many low-cost and smart Facebook campaigns can support sales teams and encourage prospects to make a purchase.

Idea 1 – Encourage success stories and use case

Customers who match perfectly with their products are a common trait in every company.

There are many stories of how your product has helped other businesses grow.

Facebook has an entire landing page devoted to the success stories of companies that have grown through Facebook ads.

Facebook Success Stories

B2B companies often post success stories on their websites and link them to sales emails.

Tip: Multiple success stories can be created for clients who have a variety of client bases. Each case study will have a different vertical. This makes them more relevant to a specific B2B audience.

Idea 2 – Show that your product is constantly improving

You need to keep up with technological advances for your B2B product to be relevant.

It was not easy to sign up for business services last year.

Your clients prefer that you introduce new products or services to the market, as well as improve existing ones.

B2B companies make the mistake of not updating their products often, which can lead to customers not being informed.

Every time you publish a blog post about a product update, share it. To ensure that everyone is aware of your promotion, you can set it up.

Tip – Prospects may not know all of the features offered by your product at this stage. A Facebook ad can highlight key features that will encourage people to sign up for your B2B product.

Facebook advertising best practice in the intent stage

As a B2B marketer, your job is to support sales and keep prospects in mind during the intent stage.

Create Facebook ads that are original and convincing people to…

• Your product has the best market value
• Your product/service gets constantly improved
• You participate in social media. You’re a social media expert.
• Many companies have already benefited from your B2B product/service 
• Your brand is helpful and friendly toward clients

Setting your intent stage for a Facebook campaign

You already have a lot of leads from the intent stage.

Facebook ads campaigns at this stage of the process are very affordable and highly efficient.

Profit.

One ad campaign is sufficient for the intent stage. Multiple ad campaigns can be included with different creatives.

We recommend using the same Facebook campaign types to create intent-stage ads and consideration-stage ads.

• Conversions: Get your prospects to sign a sales deal or extend their free trial.

• Traffic – Keep your prospects coming back to your landing pages, and blog articles that have success stories

• Reach: Set up Facebook ads to reach all audience members once daily for 2 weeks.

Use Reach, Traffic, and Conversions goals

How can you target your advertising campaign?

This stage is the same as the consideration stage. Facebook campaigns can target this stage at Facebook.

Custom Audiences should be uploaded manually once per week. Your sales team should agree to send mid-funnel leads information every Monday.

Marketing funnel stage 5: Purchase

Promote sales and offer discounts to your B2B leads to make the final purchase decision.

Promoting one feature of your product could help increase sales.

These are the best B2B Facebook advertising strategies at the buying stage

The main objective of the buying stage should be to convert all leads into paying clients.

Facebook ads that give people additional reasons to purchase are the best.

Using B2B Facebook ads in this stage of the marketing funnel stage is another way to increase sales volume. Upselling additional product features is another goal.

Working with you can help your sales team make the best deals.

How do you set up your Facebook buy stage campaign

A single ad campaign can be created with a combination of ad sets as well as different offer types.

Your marketing offers can be divided into separate ad groups and you can add up to 3 creatives per offer. This will help you determine which one is most effective.

This guide is designed to help you understand best practices for testing Facebook ads.

We recommend using the same Facebook campaign types for the consideration and interest stages.

• Reach
• Traffic
• Conversions

If forced to choose, we would recommend Reach and the Daily Unique frequency of ad delivery option. This will ensure your sales ads are only shown once daily.

The Daily Unique Frequency ad delivery system is available.

How can you target your advertising campaign?

If you’re marketing an online product, you can create the following Facebook Pixel events:

1. Register for a free trial
2. Ending of the trial period
3. Paid subscription

These Facebook Standard Events can later be used to create Custom Audiences that allow for campaign targeting.

Now your B2B Facebook Ads marketing funnel is complete!

This guide will help you set up a Facebook campaign that matches your sales strategy.

You now know how to run ads at each stage of your B2B marketing campaign

Let’s not forget to talk about how much you should spend for your Facebook B2B campaign.

Bonus: Facebook campaign budgeting for B2B ads

According to AdEspresso, it costs $0.20 to $0.80 to click on Facebook ads.

CPCs are $0.20 to $0.80, on average

The target audience, competitive landscape, and Facebook CPC are all important factors in determining your Facebook CPC.

There is no single solution for Facebook B2B ads cost-per-click benchmarks.

However, we can share some tips to help set the right budget for your Facebook marketing campaign.

Rule #1 – Awareness campaigns are more costly than campaigns at later stages of the marketing funnel.

Why? To convert customers into customers, you will need to reach more people at the awareness stage.

What’s the best budget to run a Facebook awareness campaign?

If you are targeting 100k people living in large cities, we recommend spending $1k-5k for your first campaign.

If you’re seeing positive ROI from Facebook ads, you can increase your awareness stage spending. This will enable you to attract more leads into your campaign funnel.

Rule #2 – Remarketing campaigns can also be done with a smaller budget

You should focus your B2B marketing efforts on people who are already interested. 

Set a budget of $100-$500 per day for your remarketing campaigns. Then, use frequency capping to limit the number of ads you show.

The goal is to see 4-8 ads per week.

Rule #3 – Promote your Facebook pages

On average, your Facebook posts will reach between 2 and 10%.

To get your Facebook posts seen more, create a promotion for each post.

Promote your Facebook posts to your fans and relevant remarketing audiences according to the stage of your funnel in which you want to engage with them.