Social media is a great marketing channel for any business. It’s a chance for you to interact directly with the people you’re serving and to show off your expertise. It’s also a huge time investment, so you should choose wisely about which network to start on.

You might find LinkedIn is your best option, especially if you want the ability to target ads to specific job titles or to have a platform to publish long-form content. If you want to spend less on individual ads or want the chance to reach a wider audience, Facebook might be a better choice.

Largest Social Network

Of all the social media networks in existence, Facebook has the largest reach. There are over 1 billion users, which mean no matter the product you sell, there is probably someone interested in it. Also, few businesses use the platform the way it’s meant to be used, so there’s always a chance for better engagement.

Facebook has groups and business pages, much like LinkedIn. While business pages are gaining very little traction now, people can still choose to follow a page, much like you’d follow a person.

Even if you don’t have a large following, a presence on Facebook can still promote your company and contribute to your position as a thought leader and expert in your field, in ways you may not have thought of.

Alternate Search Engine

Facebook is quickly moving beyond a social network. It’s not only a powerful ad platform, and can improve the SEO of your company, but it’s also a massive search engine.

While Facebook’s algorithm seems to change more than Google’s nowadays, users tend to get warning and be advised of what the changes might mean. This is beneficial in many ways, especially as Facebook is now boasting 2 billion searches…a day.

Ad Options

Facebook has one of the most sophisticated ad retargeting algorithms in existence, and it has a whole set of ad products specifically for the travel industry. If you’re interested in reaching travel buyers, Facebook is a must-have investment in time and money.

For those in the B2B travel space, Facebook still has more targeted ad options.  Like LinkedIn, Facebook has advanced options to let you choose who sees your ads or sponsored content. You can choose a preferred audience for your ad, offer, or sponsored post.

This differs from AdWords, which allows you to target people who search for a specific keyword only. With Facebook ads you are targeting specific interests, along with geographic location and age ranges.

In order to use Facebook ads, you need to have a Facebook account. The same is true of boosting posts. Or creating a lead magnet. Instead of trying to drive traffic to your website in general, you can drive interested people to specific information.

B2B buyers always need more information on products and solutions to specific problems. As SEO becomes more and more sophisticated, it requires a larger time investment and pages dedicated to a single, long-tail keyword. The algorithms of SEO change constantly, with little warning or explanation.

Instead of relying on SEO to drive traffic to a site, which changes constantly and requires a lot of upkeep; why not drive traffic for those who have expressed an interest in your topic. It’s all about exposure.

Organic Exposure

You don’t need to rely on ads for Facebook to be valuable. You can also choose to use boosted posts, or even your organic feed. With your regular feed, you can choose who it’s served to. Again, by choosing what your audience is interested in and their location.

If you have a targeted region, local SEO requires a lot of time and effort. It’s also highly competitive, with much higher PPC costs.

With Facebook, you choose a region, country, state or city for geographic locations you want to be served. Only users in that area can see your posts, pages or ads. You don’t need to ‘rank’ for a particular region.

Instead, you provide a highly curated and valuable experience to a curated audience. Your content is only seen by those who would benefit from it, which is the reasoning behind SEO algorithms in the first place.

Get to Know Your Audience

While we may all think we know the exact issues our customers want solutions to, it’s always better to ask. Instead of spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on market research or surveys, you can always ask them directly. Using Facebook, you have the ability to poll your audience.

Alternatively, you can interact with your customers directly in groups. While a lot of these same functions can be true of LinkedIn, Facebook is a growing medium for B2B.

By using Facebook, your company can get to know its audience, serve highly targeted ads to your specific audience, and guarantee your posts and updates are seen by people who’d be interested in them, improving your PPC costs and cost of acquisition with a higher chance of conversion.

Ready to prepare your social media plan? Let us help you get started.