There’s a huge misconception among business owners about Facebook’s ability to generate leads with B2B Facebook ads. Facebook isn’t just for consumers sharing motivational quotes and posting holiday photos. With 1.59 billion active users, there’s surely something for B2B companies here as well. But, how can you crack the code on Facebook ads and open up the floodgates to success?

Let’s find out.

1. Don’t Limit Your Ads to Your Facebook Page’s Audience

Sharing content on Facebook regularly is a great strategy for your business. But you can’t really grow and acquire new leads if you limit yourself to the people following you. Here’s the thing: if you are sharing content with an audience of 1,000 people then they’re the only ones engaging with you. Of course, you might get some shares, but that’s not always guaranteed.

Facebook advertising gives you the possibility to target an audience of over one billion users. You don’t have to have any connection with them, and your Facebook ads will appear in their newsfeed as sponsored content. However, make sure that the people you target match your buyer’s persona profile.

2. Take Advantage of Custom Audiences

Setting a Custom Audience is a powerful tool that allows you to create lists of people you want to target. Most people use the same email address for all their social media accounts. So, chances are, you have a bunch of email addresses lying in your database, unused. Facebook allows you to upload these addresses and target users based on them.

If you want to get more B2B leads, it would be smart to segment your database into specific demographics.

3. Target B2B Audiences

You probably know already that you can set up your Facebook ads based on location, age, or gender. But, did you know that you can make the job title a factor, as well? Use this great feature to target different work categories and to secure more B2B leads.

• Employer: Take advantage of this category if you already know which companies you want to target for your Facebook ads.

• Job Title: Facebook’s advertising platform allows you to target broad categories, such as doctors, lawyers, or entrepreneurs, but also specific job titles, such as creative director or executive accountant.

If your company sells a network security service, you’d likely want to target decision makers working in IT departments.

4. Make Your Offer Appealing

B2C companies often lure prospects with discounts, vouchers, special offers, and other incentives. You can use the same strategy to get more leads. But, instead of getting a prospect to buy a product right away, you likely need to convince them to subscribe to your newsletter or visit your website. Offer them something they can’t say no to, such as free access to exclusive content or an important industry report. After you get them logged into your CRM, your ongoing marketing efforts and your sales team should be able to close the deal!

5. Focus on Lost Prospects

Sure, getting new leads is important, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore lost ones. In fact, you should use the information you get from them to improve your Facebook ads. Try to figure out why they bounced off your site without taking any action. Use the Facebook Pixel to target users who visited a specific landing page and to make your offer more attractive to them.

Facebook offers a whole spectrum of possibilities to B2B companies. But you need to take advantage of them and learn how to use them to generate more leads.

If you need help with your Facebook advertising needs, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d love to learn more about your business and help you identify opportunities!

The post Facebook Ads for B2B: 5 Ways to Generate Leads appeared first on Midas Marketing.

The science is in: video has proven to be one of the most effective content formats for businesses. Recent reports show that social media videos generate up to 1,200% (no, that’s not a typo) more shares than text and images combined. Integrate the most powerful content format with the world’s biggest social platform and you get an unstoppable weapon.

Facebook Live was launched last year, and it already became a marketer’s favorite tool. Available to everyone, Facebook Live allows you to stream real-time videos to connect with your audience. All you need is a Facebook account and a smartphone, and you are ready to go live.

One of the biggest benefits Facebook Live offers marketers is the opportunity to humanize their brands and give customers a glimpse behind the scenes.

If you are new to Facebook Live, you are probably wondering what type of video formats will get you the best engagement rates. Here are a few suggestions.

1. Daily Updates

One of the best ways to engage and inspire your audience is to share daily updates and helpful tips with them via Facebook Live. Numerous social media and business gurus, life coaches, fitness trainers, and other service-oriented businesses have implemented this tactic with great results. Just look at blogger Darren Rowse, and the engagement he gets on every live video he records.

2. Behind the Scenes Videos

People love to feel special. And what better way to pamper your prospects than to give them exclusive access to something that most people don’t have access to. Lift the curtain on your day-to-day operations and let people take a peek at the processes behind the products/services they love. For instance, a fashion designer can use Facebook Live to let followers know what it means to prepare for a show.

Behind the scenes videos normally perform very well for any business involved with the DIY crowd.

3. Ask Me Anything Videos

Ask Me Anything Video, or AMA, perform amazingly in terms of engagement. And the best part about this video format is that you don’t need to do a lot of preparation in advance. Announce your followers that you will hold an AMA session and ask them to write their questions in the comment section. Then, hit the live video button and answer their questions and curiosities.

4. Demonstration Video

What better way to persuade prospects to buy your products than to demonstrate their performance in real-time. You can show people how the product works, and you can highlight certain features, such as usability or durability.

5. Livestreamed Events

Another great way to use Facebook Live to engage with your audience is to live stream from events or conferences your company is hosting. Without a doubt, there are numerous followers who want to attend the event, but can’t afford to or don’t have the time. Make the event accessible to everyone by live-streaming sessions, keynote speakers, and other moments that might be relevant to your audience.

Facebook has created a space that can help you achieve your goal: to improve your social media engagement rate. Have you tested it yet? Contact us for a free brainstorm session around your business!

The post 5 Facebook Live Video Ideas to Engage Your Audience appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Facebook Ads Lead Generation Tips: Introduction

Let’s be honest. Setting up Facebook ads can be confusing. Sure, all the options make Facebook an efficient platform for advertising, but they also increase its complexity. Pixels, for instance, are one of the features that get business owners frustrated with Facebook advertising.

Facebook used to have two types of pixels, each with a different function. There was a custom audience pixel for remarketing to website visitors and a conversion pixel for tracking conversions. Wanting to improve their advertising platform, Facebook simplified the process in 2015, by creating a singular pixel that can be used for retargeting, optimization, and tracking.

The new Facebook Pixel allows you to:

• Create custom audiences from your website for retargeting;
• Optimize Facebook ads for conversions
• Monitor ads and track conversions

Not only does the new pixel simplify the Facebook advertising process, but it also helps you to supercharge your lead generation machine. Here’s how:

• Create Custom Audiences

Facebook uses Website Custom Audiences to help you remarket to website visitors. The pixel will drop a cookie that will track your visitors on your website. It will tell you what pages your prospects visit and when and what pages they ignore. This information can help you create highly targeted Facebook ads based on your visitors’ behavior.

However, you need to understand that you can’t pick a specific visitor and target him or her directly. Instead, what the Facebook pixel allows you is to target group of users based on their behavior. For instance, you can advertise to people who have visited a distinct product page or who have visited your website in the last 24 hours.

• Set Up Custom Conversions

One of the most interesting features of the Facebook Pixel is Custom Conversions. They are what you will use to track what’s happening on specific pages.

Imagine you are a consultant in Portland, and you create a Custom Conversion that monitors visitors to a service page. You can also include the cost of your service. That way, you can see if your Facebook ads are profitable. If you are charging $100 for your consultations, but spending $150 for every customer that comes from Facebook, then you’ll definitely need to rethink your strategy. That’s just one example, but we believe just about every business can benefit from Facebook ads if they are creative and persistent.

If you run an online sporting goods store, knowing your average order size is a key metric to develop a successful Facebook advertising strategy.

Needless to say, knowing how your Facebooks ads perform and how your audience reacts to them is a great advantage. You can optimize your ads based on your results and improve your chances at getting more leads.

• Track the Sales Process

A prospect gets on your landing page via a Facebook ad; he likes what he sees, so he clicks through your sales page. He’s convinced enough, so he makes a purchase and ends up on your success page.

Tracking the entire customer buying process is extremely important for any marketer since it can help you understand why prospects don’t convert and what you need to change. The Facebook Pixel can help you track your landing, sales, and success pages, giving you an accurate idea of how well your pages are performing.

There’s a lot more when it comes to Facebook ads and the Facebook Pixel. Hopefully, this post helped you realize how this powerful tool can help you boost your lead generation machine.

Want to explore how Facebook ads can make your business more profitable? Contact us for a free discovery call!

The post Facebook Ads Lead Generation Tips: Using the Facebook Pixel appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Do you feel like your Facebook ads should be converting at a higher rate?

It’s easy to throw a picture and a few punch lines and call it an ad. It’s much harder to create advertising that draws your audience and converts them into prospects.

There are so many boxes to be checked before hitting the launch button. Are you targeting the right audience? Are you running the right type of campaign? Which one of the 1,300 targeting options should you choose from?  It can get a little overwhelming.

Types of Facebook Ads

To help you, we’ve put together a list with five types of Facebook ads.

1. Traffic Generation Ads

Creating quality content and sharing it on social media is great, but unless you are driving traffic to your website, this strategy won’t be very effective. It’s always a good idea to use Facebook ads to expand your reach and get more people to visit your website. Make sure you choose “Clicks for Website” as your advertising objective when setting the campaign.

2. Lead Generation Ads

Facebook lead generation ads make the process of collecting email addresses fairly easy. When prospects see your ad on Facebook, they have the option to sign up with just as little effort as it takes them to like a page. The great part about these types of Facebook ads is that they’re designed for the least amount of effort possible. The form the prospects see when clicking on the ad is already filled with information like their name, email address, etc.

3. Dynamic Product Ads

Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) is one of the newest and most efficient additions to Facebook’s advertising platform. DPA allows you to display ads to your prospects featuring the exact products that they want to see. DPA uses behavioral information collected with Facebook Pixel to determine which products you should feature in your Facebook ads. Powerful brands, such as Booking.com, have been using Dynamic Product Ads with great success, reporting ROI comparable to search at a fraction of the cost.

Dynamic Product Ads can make advertising feel more like a science than a gamble, as you are showing specific ads based on interest the user has already shown.

4. Video Ads

Video content has become a vital part of any respectable brand’s social media strategy. According to one study, video content will account for 69% of all consumer traffic by 2017. So, it’s no wonder that video ads are a great way to promote your business on Facebook and gain more long-term customers.

Not only that video ads can boost the number a video is viewed, but they can also encourage viewers to take a specific action.

5. Page Like Ads

Like Ads are simple ads that show your audience that one of their friends has liked a certain page. They work because they provide people with a great social proof – they are more likely to like a page if they see their friends have done the same. Also, they are a great way to get instant exposure if you are just starting out.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to get more customers. You just have to think strategically. Use these five types of Facebook ads then analyze the result and see which one works best for you.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, maybe it’s best to give experts at Midas Marketing a chance to help you.

The post 5 Types of Facebook Ads That Will Win You Long-Term Customers appeared first on Midas Marketing.