LinkedIn not the lone ranger of B2B Paid

October 3, 2016

For years, LinkedIn stood alone as the prime channel for B2B businesses pushing Paid models to drive attributed leads in funnel. The ability to serve targeted content to specific industry, company and job function has been appealing. Understandably so.

The landscape has changed and I believe it will continue to evolve at pace.

At immediate future we’ve seen B2B success with Twitter for some years now, but it’s the emergence of Facebook that’s intriguing. Many consider the channel to be consumer focused. Historically, this may have been the case, but our evidential data (gathered from many B2B campaigns) is proving Facebook to be a credible B2B ad platform.

Unquestionably LinkedIn offers the most accurate targeting. It also offers the most crippling Cost Per Click. I recently spent time looking at IT Managers on each social platform, diving into the detail of each platform’s targeting and the associated costs. As with all media, smart targeting wins; serving to the masses, with the least wastage.

The reason I chose to look at IT Managers (and the varying roles and titles within that) is that it’s one of the most competitive audiences. Every technology firm, whether you’re product or service driven, is looking to befriend IT Managers. What I found was astounding.

I mentioned crippling CPCs on LinkedIn. To reach an IT Manager on LinkedIn your CPC (at the time of search) was £6.76. On Twitter, the forecast CPC (taken from their ad service platform) was between £1.29 and £7.71

Here’s the surprising aspect. Currently there are over 100,000 IT Managers (and similar job titles) on Facebook. Using the same budget (as on LinkedIn and Twitter) the forecast cost on Facebook was 0.44p

Consider the recent announcements Facebook has made confirming the platform now integrates with CRM platforms and you realise the channel has serious aspirations to play in the B2B Paid media game.

Immediate future has been using Facebook across enterprise and SME sized technology companies. We’re convinced of Facebook’s new role. Our clients, upon seeing the data, are converts. When will you convert to Facebook for B2B?

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