Why We Give Our B2B Clients Facebook Pages

Facebook, among all other things, is about connecting people together online. Many businesses have had amazing success on Facebook, although admittedly a lot of them are consumer facing.

There are those that think that Facebook has no place for big business-to-business corporations, but I tend to disagree. Whether you are marketing to a consumer or to another business, in both cases you are really just connecting with another person. Facebook has over 400 million registered users, many of whom login every single day. There are CEOs, corporate decision makers, C-level executives and thought leaders on Facebook, the kinds of people B2B businesses market to. Yes, a lot of them are only there to share photos and chat with their friends, but having a presence on Facebook will hardly ever hurt a company’s reputation.

If a user sees your company on Facebook, chances are they won’t want to immediately stop what they’re doing and buy into your service. If, however, they see you again the next day on another networking site when they are in business mode, I believe they are a lot more likely to consider your business. Creating and marketing a fan page has such a low cost and barrier to entry and every single bit of exposure helps. The power of Facebook comes when a marketing campaign targets the correct market segment as accurately as a laser, and focuses clearly on those individuals that can bring in business and their close network of friends. This can involve custom Facebook applications, groups, fan pages or even Facebook ads, but corporate exposure and brand awareness really is priceless when it’s shared among a correctly targeted network.

Facebook is a much more personal network than the others, so you can’t just shove an elevator pitch in there and hope to achieve success. As a B2B business, you need to get personal too and connect with those individuals that match your target market. In many ways it’s much easier doing this as a B2B business, since the typical customer base is a lot smaller and so a lot easier to manage and connect with online. This works for many B2B industries, including manufacturing, supply chain management and Logistics South Africa.

Also, never forget the possible SEO benefits Facebook can give you for your company website! There are just too many opportunities to ignore on this social network, and even if people aren’t going to respond to hard sells on Facebook, they will see and remember your brand.