How can you use Facebook to reach key account targets, as in account-based marketing campaigns?
Facebook is a great ad platform to use to target your content to a buyer persona relevant audience.
But what about taking ads a step further - how can you use Facebook to reach key account targets, as in account-based marketing campaigns?
Effective ABM campaigns contain a number of characteristics. They:
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You may already be familiar with using Facebook as a channel for targeted, paid content promotion and lead generation. But if you’re running an account-based marketing strategy, there are ways to enhance the bespoke/ niche targeting of your Facebook ads, to further your ABM results.
Networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have been gradually enhancing their ad targeting capabilities, with most now allowing more account-based features, designed to help you position specific content in front of a very targeted audience.
With Facebook Custom Audiences for example, it’s possible to upload a list of email addresses or phone numbers from a target account list and use that as a basis for retargeting (retargeting promotes an ad to a specific list of identified people). You can also create lookalike audiences; targeting here is based on people who have engaged already. If you’re uncertain of the exact individual details of accounts you’re targeting, it’s possible to target by job title, company and industry.
Using Facebook Dynamic product ads for remarketing can be another great way to reach and continue to stand out with a specific Facebook audience; targeting individual users with ads that are defined by their activity on the site. Facebook describe their Dynamic Ads service as a way to "Show people products that are tailored to their interests, whether or not they've been to your site or app."
With ABM, it’s important that ad targeting is specific - remember you’re trying to develop a relationship and engagement with precise members of your ideal target accounts and members of the DMU (decision making unit).
In line with precise targeting, the campaign content you choose to create and promote for ABM must be precise, personalised and 100% relevant for your account target. Your content (and therefore your ads) must offer irresistible value.
A good understanding of your account targets will help you to develop truly personalised content offers and ads. Content and ad development should be informed by:
Once you’ve got some great, account-personalised content, Facebook ads can be used to position it in front of your account targets.
In HubSpot's experience, the most successful and effective Facebook ads are:
At Strategic, we’ve found that visual ads - specifically ads with a smaller amount of account-targeted text - plus the use of video content, can actively increase engagement and help ads achieve a higher relevance score. As Facebook videos don’t take the viewer off Facebook to another site, we’ve found using video in Facebook ads can enhance engagement and increase video views by 60%.
We’ve found using video in Facebook ads can enhance engagement and increase video views by 60% - Strategic Internet Consulting
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As we’ve explored in previous posts, as the focus in ABM campaigns is on developing a relationship with a quality account (as opposed to a primary focus on lead volume), metrics for success may seem a little different.
ABM success factors to consider include:
Campaigns should also work to demonstrate that ABM activities offer value to sales, positively impacting opportunities throughout the funnel and resulting in revenue growth.
Facebook is a good platform for monitoring ABM activity success as reporting is comprehensive and ad spend is less costly than other networks. For example, it’s possible to determine click engagement levels down to a country, region, age and gender level. So, if your campaign was targeting a specific country, you would be able to see if you were gaining traction in the right regions (for example, specific states within the USA). Metrics are also good when it comes to Facebook video reporting - you can see (by country, gender etc) who has viewed a video (or dropped off) at 25%, 75%, 95% and 100% video completion. This way you can adapt your content to encourage longer views - and ensure the most important information is shared early on.
As mentioned above, it is also possible to retarget to relevant people on Facebook who have interacted with your page via custom audiences.
ABM success revolves around contextually relevant engagement and relationship building with the right accounts, across the channels those key accounts are active on.
Because of this, Facebook ad ABM activity should not exist in a silo, but rather as part of a wider engagement strategy. Tips here include:
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Used as part of a wider account-based marketing strategy, combined with account-personalised content, and executed by aligned marketing and sales teams, Facebook ads offer clear value for developing progress with key account targets.
As long as ABM activity begins with an in-depth understanding of your key account’s challenges and priorities, and content and conversations are tailored to engage individual stakeholders - your Facebook ABM campaigns will be in a position to support your long-term ABM goals.