eCommerce and B2B: Don’t think I’m crazy when I suggest that FaceBook should be one of your highest B2B priorities for the rest of 2015

two-guys

FaceBook?? Seriously Justin?? Are you losing your way?? I know, believe me. That is why this is one of the most important posts I have ever written.

One of my biggest pet peeves in B2B eCommerce is when newly B2C-turned-B2B consultants forget their audience and talk about FaceBook. Sometimes they just forget about a retail social media logo on a slide and say something like “oh, FaceBook doesn’t apply to B2B.” And yet, here I am — about to talk about why FaceBook should be one of your highest priorities for the rest of 2015 and all 2016. Like everything else I do, I hopefully will turn this topic upside down for you. Here is what I will cover:

Why B2B marketers MUST use FaceBook
How I use FaceBook in my B2B strategy
How to start today

I have recently realized that I have become a B2B marketer myself — a practitioner, no longer a consultant or a software guy. I have spent hundreds of hours reading, learning, and testing. Testing is the key. Everything I am about to say, I actually do every day. It is an understatement to say I have tested it. And it works incredibly well.

Why B2B marketers MUST use FaceBook

First of all, this is not about good photos, cute branding strategies, promotions, giveaways, any of that. You are not retail. FaceBook for B2B should be about one thing. Understanding your audience. In the future, I will write about advertising on FaceBook for B2B companies. In the community, it is hands down my most popular workshop. By prioritizing FaceBook in your marketing strategy for eCommerce or otherwise, you will learn more about your audience than you ever thought possible.

If not ads, then how will I learn about my audience?

It is called a “Custom Audience Pixel.” You put it in your website code like you do with Google analytics. If the person coming to your website visited FaceBook on their computer at some point, they would be tagged AND tracked in FaceBook! Have you ever wondered how you get ads on FaceBook from sites or products that you have visited recently? I had previously thought that only big retail companies could do that. I found that anyone could do it. And it is FREE! And incredibly powerful.

It is called remarketing, but we are going to start with understanding how this helps us understand our audience.

Once FaceBook has tagged over 1,000 website visitors there is an incredible amount of information immediately available to you about your audience, your customers, and your prospects.

There are over 100+ ways to segment, but here are a few

Age and Gender
Lifestyle (married, rural parents, suburban seniors, kids and clout)
Location
Education level
Job Title
Most popular likes
Household income
Household size
Home market value (yep, crazy)
What kind of car they drive (yep, it is getting crazier)
Spending methods (credit card, ATM, Travel & Entertainment, Cash versus Card)

Pretty crazy – as a marketer, isn’t that Gold information?

But wait, I haven’t even gotten to the good stuff

Interests – books, movies, sports teams, sports they like to play
Purchase behavior – BUSINESS PURCHASES!!!

Take a look at a few of the purchase behavior insights

What does all of this mean?

It means I can understand my audience in ways I never have before. I can see that my audience is 62% male, married with two kids, lives on the east coast, and prefer golf over hiking. My audience also likes Jordan Spieth, Dave Ramsey, and Seth Godin, drives a Honda, uses mostly credit cards, and buy training for their company. And that is just scratching the surface. I know a lot more about you.

If you had that type of information, could you put together the right headlines, engaging campaigns, and unbelievable product offerings? Absolutely!

How I use FaceBook in my B2B strategy

I will save most of this for the workshops, but I use FaceBook heavily. When you visit my website, I build an audience for you on FaceBook and Twitter (yes you can do the same thing on Twitter). I know who you are, what pages you have visited, even which emails you have opened, and which you have clicked on.

I know who my audience is, what they like, and what they buy. I show specific ads to only that audience that has visited my site. I test ads to see which work and which do not. I keep a swipe file. And when someone buys something, I add them to a new audience.

I segment my audience by all kinds of things to test what works best. If I am using an image of a car, and I know my audience drives a Honda, maybe I show them a Honda so we can relate. But maybe I show a BMW because that is where they want to be eventually.

If I am promoting an event, I segment my audience to see what kinds of activities they want to do. Golf? Check. Orioles game? Hmm – maybe. Hiking or mountain biking? Not for my audience.

How to start today

If this sounds crazy to you – then first start with my simple eBook on using a LinkedIN hack in a similar fashion. It is a fantastic concept.

If this doesn’t sound so crazy, then still get the eBook and then create your custom audience pixel, immediately. It is simple to do. You need to have two things. A FaceBook fan or company page and a website.

Log in to that FaceBook company page profile, and thengo to FaceBook ad manager.
On the left-hand column select “”
Click Create Custom Audience
When you create your first audience, it will give you a pixel or code for you to place in the <HEAD></HEAD> tags of your website.
After that is installed, you can create a Custom Audience. See screen shots below.

Create custom audience by website traffic. If you see the other options, your mind will start racing. Hold off for now, we will get to that.

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Facebook uses a single pixel to track everything. But based on that pixel we can create many different custom audiences. Again, as you see what the options are in the Website Traffic box, your head will start spinning. Stay with me though. Create an audience with “180 days” and anyone who visits your website for now. Give it a name called “Visited WebSite” and then let it sit.

create-custom-audience-2