Jun 16, 2015

How to Turn Facebook Fans Into B2B Buyers

Facebook for B2B is about more than just having a large fan base. What are you really doing with them? Do they interact with you and respond well to what you’re posting? With all the time you spend posting your latest company news and offerings to your page, you need to see the benefits of having those fans become actual customers.

Create a Plan

  • Quantify your goals: Use Facebook analytics to determine goal target clickthrough, prospect to lead, and lead to customer conversion rates. Setting numbers allows you to easily analyze your results.
  • Review your B2B buyer personas: Reaching the right audience is the key to increasing the number of customers you get through Facebook. Study your personas to determine your ideal audience and the best ways to target them.
  • Create a unified campaign: What you do on Facebook should go hand-in-hand with the rest of your marketing in order to maintain a cohesive brand image that resonates well with your audience. Make sure what you’re posting and offering on Facebook is integrated into the rest of your marketing efforts.

Tips To Increase Your Facebook Reach

  • Frequency: According to bit.ly, the half-life of a Facebook post is only 3.2 hours. Posting frequently, at least once per day, will raise the odds your posts are seen by more of your followers.
  • High Quality Content: The most effective way to move people from your Facebook page to your website is to provide quality content. Listen to what your audience wants. Include data. Provide examples. Make your content relevant to your industry. Don’t sacrifice quality just to increase post frequency! Posting nothing is better than posting something off-topic or not well sourced.
  • Optimal Time: Study your analytics to determine when you get the most engagement.
  • Images: Images are far more likely to catch a user’s attention than text-only posts. This includes images populated when posting a link.
  • Link Back To Your Website: Offer irresistible Calls To Action (CTAs) that take the Facebook fan to your website. By providing an offer, you’re setting up the possibility to turn a prospect into a lead. Promotions, ebooks, demos, and webinars are all great CTAs as long as they are aligned with your business goals and brand identity. (See White Paper for more detailed info on creating forms for these CTAs.)

Create a Content Calendar

Creating a content calendar that includes what you want to post and when you want to post it keeps you organized and up-to-date. Use a social media publishing tool like Hubspot to automate your posts, ensuring you have a consistent flow of content being published, even when you’re at your busiest.

Your calendar should include everything from specific offers to industry information you want to share with your fans. Don’t forget to schedule posts that promote latest blog content. Your goal should be to publish diverse content as frequently as possible without sacrificing quality.

This allows you to focus your daily efforts on working leads, interacting with fans, creating new posts, and monitoring your analytics.

Post-Facebook: Turn B2B Leads Into Customers

  • Perfect Your B2B Lead Nurturing: Take the data you’ve collected through CTA forms, analyze it, and put it to good use. This means knowing exactly what your leads want whether they are at the top, middle, or bottom of your funnel. Set up workflows of customized emails — allowing you to easily keep track of each type of lead — while carefully maneuvering them from one step of the marketing funnel to the next.
  • Automated Workflows: Set up workflows that will send automated emails when someone completes a form or when a lead is added to a smart list. This is a reliable way to make sure you’re following up with every quality lead that is coming in.
  • Setting Up Workflows: Customize each step in your workflow to fit the needs of whoever has downloaded your form. Do this not only by personalizing offers depending on the type of lead, but also the number and frequency of emails you send.
  • Study Your Analytics: See which pages are producing the best results and which ones are falling short.
  • Fans → Leads → Customers: Run A/B Testing to determine which posts are doing the best at bringing fans to your website and converting from leads to customers. Adjust accordingly.

Closing The Loop On Facebook Marketing

Interested in learning more? Download our free guide, “How to Turn Facebook Fans into Paying Customers.” Dive deeper into what we’ve discussed and discover what comes next in the sales and marketing (smarketing) funnel, including determining ROI.

Happy Facebooking!

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