Business-to-business (B2B) marketing has unique needs that differ slightly from marketing to consumers. The lead lifecycles can be months (opposed to hours), include multiple decision makers, and often require softer calls-to-action when advertising.

B2B Marketers' goals are to:

1. Build brand recognition

2. Increase product or service awareness

3. Reach new company influencers and decision makers

4. Capture lead contact information

5. Aid sales in driving net new revenue

Marketing is held responsible for warming up leads and qualifying them for the sales team. This involves targeting the right potential buyers and influencing them at key points within the decision making process.

Many of Facebook's recent category targeting additions help B2B markets refine their audience, reaching ideal company stakeholders.

New Demographic Categories

When creating a Facebook ad, clicking on the "more demographics" tab reveals new targeting filters.

Below are some of my favorite B2B targets:

I. Work Category

• Employers

This field has changed from "workplaces" to simply "employers"; giving you the ability to target FB users by the company they work for.

• Job Titles

Drive cost effective results by only targeting key decision makers and influencers within an organization.

• Industries

If you have a product or service that caters to a specific industry, you can filter to show ads to this audience.

• Office Type

Office type targeting is an excellent way to reach a small business, consultant, or entrepreneur.

II. Financial Category

• Income

In some companies a VP title might mean they are one of the top shot callers. In larger corporations, there might be just a progressional step up from a director, but not hold the final decision making authority. Segmenting by income can help reveal the top movers & shakers within an organization.

III. Life Event Category

• New job

A CMO brand new to the role for example, is going to want to quickly prove themselves and is more inclined to speak to a sales rep before their daily schedule becomes less forgiving. This is a great time to introduce your solution, so when the prospect enters the consideration phase, your brand is at top of mind.

I know what some of you power Facebook advertisers are thinking, “you can already target many of these using the interests field”. You’re right. However, this now opens up an AND statement opposed to an OR statement, let me explain.

Let's say we are trying to target CTOs, in the Financial industry, who like college football and prompt them to read our content piece, "How Top CTOs Act Like Quarterbacks, Leading Data Security Initiatives".

By targeting strictly within the interest field, my targets would include Facebook users who are CTOs, or they are in the Finance industry, or they like college football – reaching a very broad potential reach of 36,000,000 users.

When I use the new "more demographic" category targeting, I can narrow the audience to a CTO, who is in the Financial industry, and likes college football – reaching a highly targeted 1,000 users or less.

The newly added categories provide additional filters, helping to deliver your brand message in front of the best audience.

Forrester's blog post on the B2B buyer journey cites that, "today's buyers might be anywhere from two-thirds to 90% of the way through the journey before the reach out to the vendor". This means there is more responsibility than ever on B2B marketers' shoulders to produce great content and get it in front of the right target audience. Using social advertising is a key component to success.

For those wanting to learn more about content marketing, you can read our, " Boost Your Content's Reach with Ads " blog post.