How to Use Facebook Ads for Account-Based Marketing

For the normal public, Facebook might be a popular social media platform but is also an equally great ad platform marketers use to target their content for a defined target audience.

Speaking of account-based marketing campaigns, there are times when a set of target accounts within a market might demand some personalized campaigns from the digital agency hired. Let it be a top mobile app development company in the US or even an average retail store next door, you can always create and implement an ABM strategy to focus on specific market segments and account.

As for this discussion,

We’re going to learn about using Facebook ads for ABM campaigns.

Using Facebook ads for ABM

Here are some quality traits of powerful ABM campaigns:

• Initiate the work by finding relevant target accounts and decision-makers, draw a detailed picture of their business, and understand their buying challenges and their recognition in the buying journey.
• Create genuine, personalized content that caters the needs of particular target accounts.
• Distribute the selected content pieces through targeted channels—the channels your accounts have employed such as LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
• Gauge the campaign success with an account-based perspective. Do note that with account-based marketing, campaign measurement is more about developing and nurturing engagement and relationships with top accounts as compared to the lead-volume objective.

Can we take the ads a bit further—reaching key target accounts through Facebook, for instance, account-based marketing campaigns?

We already know that Facebook is used for targeted, paid content promotion and lead generation purposes. Albeit, if you’re planning to run an ABM strategy, here are the ways to enhance the niche targeting of your Facebook ads and extract the most out of your account-based marketing campaign.

How to use Facebook ads for ABM?

Apply a very specific targeting

Top platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are fighting to take their ad targeting game even higher, with many now incorporating account-based features with the aim to display a particular content piece to a narrower target audience.

Consider the example of Facebook Custom Audiences. The feature allows you to upload a list of phone numbers and email addresses from a chosen account database and use the data for retargeting purposes.

Furthermore, users can also create similar audiences, here your targeting strategy will revolve around the people who have already registered some engagement. Facebook states its Dynamic Ads feature as, “Show people products that are tailored to their interests, whether or not they’ve been to your site or app.”

Remember, it is important to go specific in ad targeting when dealing with ABM because your primary aim is to develop healthy relationships and engagement with the exact members of your target accounts and associated decision-making stakeholders.

Personalize your content

Alongside narrow targeting, the content you create and promote for ABM must be accurate, customized, and relevant for your target account. The idea is for the content, and your ads, to deliver top-notch value.

A thorough comprehension of your target audience will ease the process of developing truly personalized content and ads. Importantly, the content and ad development will be based upon the kinds of 3 rd party content your accounts are sharing, the content formats they prefer, and the considerable business issues that separate target account individuals wish to resolve.

Once you’re done with the task of creating personalized, account-based content, Facebook ads are in the position to be used for targeted accounts.

Determine your results

As stated above that the prime focus of any ABM campaign is to develop a quality relationship with the targeted prospect or account, success or performance metrics might be a little off course as compared to routine metrics.

The major metrics for ABM success include account-based audience growth, better brand perception, and account trust, enhanced engagement with your content, and eventually, revenue growth.

At the same time, campaigns should also contribute from the quantitative end as well, i.e., activities offering value to sales, impacting the sales funnel encouragingly, and facilitating the revenue figures.

Facebook is a great platform for measuring the ABM activities’ success as reporting is quite convenient and ad expenses are less as compared to other platforms. For example, users can check the click engagement metrics by filtering the country, region, age, and gender.

Metrics are also useful when we consider Facebook video reporting where users can see who viewed a video, or left off, at 25%, 50%, 95%, and 100% completion. This allows content creators and marketers to adapt their content for extended views and ensure the primary information is shared early on in the video.

As we know, it is possible to retarget your content to a chosen chunk on Facebook who has previously interacted with your page through personalized audiences.

Continue the relationship beyond Facebook

Apparently, the success of any ABM campaign circles around relationship building and contextual, relevant engagement with the right accounts at the right time, and on the platforms that those accounts prefer to use.

This is why ABM ad activity should extend beyond and into a larger engagement strategy as well.

• Employ your Facebook ads for brand awareness, to enhance the individual account’s trust, and to take you as a thought leader.
• Closely observe other channels that your target accounts use to extend your relationship.
• List down the people who have liked your Facebook ad and try connecting with them over other social media networks.
• Examine the topics your target accounts are mainly interested in, besides the channels they prefer using. In doing so, you become a part of their routine conversations.
• Align the activities of your sales and marketing people while responding to key account management tasks and responsibilities.

Stretch your ABM strategy

Facebook ads offer considerable value in progressing with targeted accounts or quality prospects when employed as a major contributor in a larger account-based marketing strategy, account-based content, and alignment with marketing and sales personnel.

As long as you continue catering your ABM campaigns with a thorough understanding of your accounts’ core challenges and opportunities and the customized content tailored according to the stakeholders’ needs, your Facebook ad campaigns will surely support the underlying objectives of your ABM campaigns.

Featured image source: Freepik