Would you be surprised to learn that 46% of B2B marketers use Facebook ads? It’s true. In fact, more B2B service providers rely on Facebook marketing than on LinkedIn. But here’s the other side of that statistic: 54% of B2B marketers aren’t using Facebook…and they absolutely should be.
Sure, you might think, Facebook is a great marketing tool – for reaching individual people. But what’s the point of advertising to regular people when my clientele are corporate entities? Well, here’s five reasons why you need to get your B2B business marketing on Facebook right now:
1: CEOs have social lives too
What exactly is a company? When you get down to it, a company is nothing more than a group of people, and many of those people use Facebook. Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok may be getting all the hype and making Facebook seem like a dinosaur, but when you look at the age demographics, the same people who were joining Facebook when it was cool in 2008 are now running companies or holding executive positions, meaning your ideal market is concentrated there. Ultimately, even when you’re a B2B company, you still need to do deals with people, not abstract entities. And, despite what some might say, CEOs are just people, the same as anyone else. So, you can connect with them just like you would anyone else.
2: Facebook is massive
You may have heard a bit of negative press coverage recently about Facebook. You may have heard stories about how Facebook struggles to keep extremist content off the platform, and deliberately manipulates news feeds to be addictive. You know who doesn’t care? Facebook’s users. There are 2.936 billion monthly active users as of April 2022, making Facebook the world’s most actively visited social media platform. An astonishing 37% of the entire global population is on Facebook. 90% of companies are also on Facebook. To not be on Facebook is still to be effectively invisible, and everyone knows it. So, whatever your target market is, you can find it on Facebook.
3: Facebook isn’t what it used to be – literally
Facebook has had an interesting trajectory since its inception in 2004. It wasn’t the first social network, but it took the concept to a new level and changed the nature of human interaction. It was a virtual hangout space, where people provided a running commentary on the mundanities of their lives and bragged about how many beers they’d had the night before. However, around 2015 it began morphing from the cool place where you’d upload your holiday photos and send party invites into something a lot more corporate. People began treating their Facebook profiles like public CVs. Now, 74% of people say they use Facebook for professional purposes, while 90% of companies maintain a presence on the platform. In fact, Facebook really isn’t a social network anymore, not in the way it was. It is becoming much closer to a business-oriented platform like LinkedIn, but with a massive user base grandfathered in.
4: The lines between B2B and B2C are blurring
We live in a time of growing cultural fluidity. Boundaries that were once firm are now porous, and that is just as true in marketing as anything else. Many companies are now communicating with clients in ways originally designed for social interaction, like WhatsApp, and many companies are now positioning themselves to feel more like friends than aloof corporate monoliths. In this modern omni-channel world of ours, the distinction between B2B and B2C marketing is fading. The days of delivering a dull info pack to directors and hoping they’ll read it all is now gone. Instead, it’s now all about that human touch, keeping it light, fun, and inventive. Office management software provider monday.com says: “Though we’re considered a B2B solution, we’ve always marketed ourselves as a B2C.” And it works – we know, because we decided to use monday.com ourselves. Understanding that all marketing is actually B2C is the first step towards doing great marketing.
