Meta Launches New B2B Advertising Audiences
Paid advertising is a staple of many marketing strategies, often used to drive better results in reach and attention across campaigns.
As social media platforms become savvier to the enormous earning potential of selling ad space to marketers, we are seeing these platforms reduce organic reach and push the benefits of the ‘pay-to-play’ approach.
Of course, advertising on social takes businesses one step beyond simply publishing content – it allows for super-specific targeting, making it easier to get your brand in front of those who matter most.
In this article, we explore a recent announcement by Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta that will make social advertising more valuable to B2B marketers.
Meta Advertising to Date
Advertising on Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram is no new thing. In fact, Facebook’s first venture into paid advertising was way back in 2004 with their ‘flyers’ project. Since then their advertising features have become significantly more advanced.
In recent years, Meta’s specialist ad platform Facebook Business Manager has allowed businesses to create ads which are super targeted based on a huge range of criteria ranging from basic information such as age, gender and location to specific interests.
However, as Facebook and Instagram are primarily used as social networking sites for the general population, their advertising functionality is typically better suited to B2C businesses that want to target consumers.
Although B2B businesses can advertise on these platforms with great success, this requires a smart approach to understanding their audience and how to apply primarily B2C-focused segmentation to reach them.
This means that Click Through Rates (CTRs) for B2B businesses are typically under 0.8%, whereas many B2C industries enjoy average CTRs of 1%+.
Why B2B Matters
B2B ecommerce was predicted to be worth a massive $1.63 trillion in 2021. When you consider the fact that this only accounts for a proportion of all B2B sales, it is clear to see that there is a massive opportunity for adverting platforms that can serve this industry.
Typically, B2B marketers will focus on advertising and marketing methods with proven attention from business decision-makers. This includes running ads in industry publications, attending industry events and running ads on B2B specific platforms such as LinkedIn.
Meta’s New B2B Targeting
Meta’s announcement is big news for B2B marketers. Offering them a way to really hone in their advertising whilst benefiting from the reach and attention that platforms like Facebook and Instagram command.
The announcement outlines that new global targeting is being rolled out across Meta’s platforms, allowing B2B businesses to reach key decisions makers in 200 million businesses. New target segments include:
- IT Decision Makers – targets ads to people who are IT decisions makers based on job title
- Business decision makers, titles and interests – targets business decision makers based on job titles and interests
- Business decision makers – targets business decision makers in engineering/IT, HR, operations, strategy and marketing based on job title
- New active businesses – targets admins of engaged businesses that were created in the last 6,12 or 24 months.
Summary
It is clear that Meta has recognised the huge opportunity of facilitating better B2B targeting on their platforms. These updates to segmentation on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram will create new opportunities for B2B marketers to reach those who matter most to their businesses.