To be effective with internet marketing, you need more than a website. Using social media to drive traffic to your website has become an indispensable part of your marketing mix. Creating a company presence on Facebook can help you appear in search results more often – and give you more opportunities to generate sales leads. “B-to-B Facebook 101: Mastering Facebook for Effective B-to-B Marketing" will show you how to: • Set up and optimize your Facebook business page. • Build an audience for your business page. • Interact with your customers and prospects. • Use custom tabs to capture sales leads.

1. B-to-B Facebook 101
Mastering Facebook for
Effective B-to-B Marketing

2. B-to-B Facebook 101
Mastering Facebook for Effective B-to-B Marketing
Digital marketing success requires much more than a
corporate website. That’s why blogging and social media
are taking a lead role in today’s brave new marketing
landscape – and with more than 1 billion monthly visitors,
Facebook has become a marketing hot spot for B-to-B
companies. Whether you’re looking to generate sales
leads or expand your existing customer relationships,
a B-to-B Facebook page can help buyers find you when
they’re researching products and services.
According to a 2011 marketing study, 90% of B-to-B
marketers are active on Facebook.1 A 2012 survey
also revealed that 61% of respondents who buy
complex technical products are most influenced by
communications with colleagues – and that Facebook
is being used to share peer-to-peer information that
supports B-to-B purchase decision-making.2 In addition,
19% of business decision-makers believe that Facebook
is an important information resource when they are
researching and evaluating technologies and services to
purchase.3
With stats like these, it’s easy to see why so many B-to-B
companies are joining Facebook to generate traffic for
their websites, blogs and landing pages. And we’ve created
this guide to provide a straightforward 7-step process that
you can use to get your company started on Facebook
– and begin optimizing your Facebook presence for lead
generation.
Step 1: Create a Business Page
To get your company on Facebook, you’ll need to create a
new business page (i.e., you cannot use a personal profile
for your business, see Figure 1 on the next page). To build
your business page, log into your personal Facebook
profile, then navigate to facebook.com/business and click
Start Here, then Create a Page.
To create your page:
• Select Company, Organization or Institution
or Brand or Product as the business type (see
Figure 2).
• Select a Category that explains what your company
does (as closely as possible).
• Type your company’s name as the Page Name.
• Click Get Started.
Set up your page by:
• Uploading a 160px by 160px image of your
company logo as your profile photo.
• Typing a sentence or two about your company so
that people will understand what you do (be sure to
include your keywords).
• Type your company’s website URL.
• Clicking Save Info.
You can also engage visitors by adding a 315 x 851px
Cover Photo that highlights your company – or its
locations, products or employees.
Figure 2: Select Business Type
(Step 1 – Continued on next page)
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3. You’ll also want to explore your business page’s Admin
Panel to customize your page settings. To do this, select
Edit Page in your Admin Panel, then Update Info. One of
the most important areas to customize is your business
page URL.
To create a customized URL that you can use on your
marketing materials (i.e., Facebook.com/BoommMktg),
click the Resources tab, then Select a Username. (Be sure
to choose a username that matches your other social
networks).
Customized URL
Cover Photo
Profile Photo
Category
Page Name
Website URL
Figure 1: Facebook Business Page
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4. Step 2: Create Custom Tabs
A Facebook business page gives you a great way to
interact with your customers and prospects – and can be
an effective lead generation tool too. To generate sales
leads on Facebook, you’ll need to create an inviting page
that provides incentives for visitors to give you their email
address.
To make it possible for visitors to provide their contact
information, you need to use a Facebook App to create
custom tabs where you can offer free resources to your
page visitors (see Figure 3 below). Woobox offers a free
Static HTML Iframe Tab App that you can use to add web
content – including text, images and lead collection forms
– to your Facebook business page. (Please note that you
will need to create HTML code for the web content that
you want to display on the Tab before using this App.)
At a minimum, you’ll want to create two custom tabs:
One to promote a free resource and another to share
information about your company in a more compelling
way than is possible with wall posts.
• Free Resource Tab: Create a tab to offer a valuable
resource, such as a free ebook, white paper or
email newsletter (see our Free Marketing eBook
tab).
• Company Showcase Tab: Create another tab to
provide more information about your company
or the products and services it offers (see Our
Methodology tab).
Free Resource Tab
Figure 3: Facebook Custom Tabs
Company Showcase Tab
Please note that creating custom tabs and Apps is the
most complex task on Facebook. If you don’t have the
technical skills to develop these features, you can visit the
Facebook App Center to find Apps that other users have
created (see Figure 4). While the options are somewhat
limited for business pages, Apps are available that will
allow you to integrate other social media sites – and make
it easier for your visitors to find them.
Figure 4: Facebook App Center
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5. Step 3: Post Status Updates
While designing your Facebook business page and adding
custom tabs and Apps are important, it’s worth noting
that many people who “like” your page may never visit it
again! That’s why posting status updates is the key to the
success of your business page. Even if people who liked
your page never return to it, you can still engage them
by posting status updates that show up in their Facebook
news feed.
Facebook status updates (also called “wall posts”) can
consist of text, a photo or a video. To maximize your
Facebook exposure, you’ll need to create valuable
content and post it as one of the following types of status
updates:
Status Box
• Text: Post a text update (250 characters maximum)
with a hyperlink that displays a thumbnail image.
• Photo: Post your update as a photo, then add a brief
comment and a shortened URL.
• Video: Post your update as a video with a brief
description or comment (status updates that
include the word “video” are shared 30% more on
Facebook than posts that do not).4
To post a status update, click in the Status box near the
top left corner of your Facebook wall (see Figure 5). Then
type the text you want to share. If you want to post the
status update as a photo or video, click the Photo/Video
link above the Status box.
Post as a Photo or Video
Figure 5: Facebook Status Box
Once you begin posting status updates, you’ll also want to
opt-in to receive Email Notifications when people post to,
comment on or message your business page (this option
is on the Your Settings tab of the Admin Panel, see Figure
6). In addition, be sure to post several interesting status
updates to your page before you begin inviting others
to “like” it – and continue posting on a regular basis to
engage your new followers.
Receive Email Notifications
Figure 6: Your Settings Tab
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6. Step 4: Build an Audience for your Page
One of the key benefits of a Facebook business page is
the ability to display your status updates in the Facebook
Newsfeed; however, people must “like” your page before
they can see your updates.
To create an audience who will see – and hopefully share
– the information your company posts on Facebook, you
will need to find other Facebook users and invite them
to “like” your page. The easiest way to begin building a
Facebook fan base is inviting your company’s customers
and employees – and your personal family and friends –
to “like” your page.
• To invite your customers and employees to like
your page, go to your Admin Panel (see Figure
7). Then select Build Audience and Invite Email
Contacts. You can use this option to upload your
company’s email contacts, and then send an email
message asking them to “like” your Page.
• To invite your friends and family to “like” your page,
switch from your business page to your personal
profile, then return to your business page. Go to
your Admin Panel and you’ll see a new option under
Build Audience called Invite Friends that you can
use to ask everyone you know to like your page.
• To build a fan base more rapidly, you can also
choose the Create An Ad option to promote your
page to other Facebook users (Facebook requires
payment by a credit card in your name). A best
practice for Facebook ads is to offer a free thought
leadership asset, such as a free ebook or white
paper.
For your Facebook page to grow, you will also need to
promote your page outside of Facebook. So, be sure
to add a link to your Facebook business page on your
website and all of your printed and online marketing
communications, including your business cards.
Invite Email Contacts
Invite Friends
Figure 7: Facebook Admin Panel
Create An Ad
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without express and written permission from the author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts
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7. Step 5: Consolidate Community Pages
In addition to inviting your Facebook contacts – and
your company’s employees and customers – Facebook
Community Pages can be another way to build your
audience. Most Community Pages originated when a
Facebook user added the name of their employer to
their personal profile. If the employer had not joined
Facebook yet, Facebook would ask the user if they wanted
to “create” a page for the company. If the person said
yes, a Community Page was created. By merging these
Community Pages with your new business page, you’ll
delete an unprofessional, Wikipedia-based page about
your company – and can transfer any “likes” from that
page to your new business page.
To determine if any Community Pages exist for your
brand, simply search for your company name on
Facebook. If other users have created Community Pages,
you’ll see them listed in the search results (see Figure 8).
Figure 8: Facebook Community Page Search Result
Community Page
You can “merge” (i.e., delete) these Community Pages
about your company by:
1. Visiting the Community Page.
2. Clicking the Report Page option to ask Facebook
to merge it with your official business page (see
Figure 9).
In the dialog box that displays, click Duplicate or
miscategorized Page, then select Duplicate of another
Page and type your business page’s URL in the “Which
Page is this a duplicate of?” text box (see Figure 10).
Figure 9: Report Facebook Community Page
It will take a few weeks for Facebook to process the
request, but if the name of your new business page
matches exactly, they will merge the pages and transfer
the Community Page fans to your business page. Some
Community Pages have thousands of fans that can be
added to your business page’s fan total when you merge
the pages.
Figure 10: Report Duplicate Facebook Page
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Report Page

8. Step 6: Interact with Others
Always remember that social media is supposed to
be social. More importantly, interacting with others on
Facebook is key to your success, because you need other
users to “like” and share the content you post to receive
the maximum marketing benefit (i.e., other users must
“like” or share your content so that their connections will
also see it, which can enable content to go viral on social
media and can improve organic search rankings). So,
be certain that you are engaging with other users – and
sharing status updates posted by other pages on your
business page’s timeline.
While people who have “liked” your page will display
automatically when you log in to your business page,
you’ll also want to see when other pages “like” your page.
To see which pages have liked your page, click the Pages
that like this option (see Figure 11).
Pages that like this
Figure 11: Facebook Pages that Like this Page
To engage with other business pages, you can use
Facebook as your business page and participate in
other page’s status updates (such as liking or sharing
status updates posted by partners, suppliers and trade
magazines that would be helpful to your audience). You
can also “tag” other pages on your own wall (by typing
@ followed by the page name, i.e., @BoommMktg) to
mention and acknowledge other Facebook users.
To help you keep up with all of these tasks, it’s best to get
a few employees involved with your Facebook business
page. To do this, simply choose a few employees who
have personal Facebook pages and add them as Page
Administrators. This will give them the ability to post
content on your wall – and to respond to other Facebook
users as your business page.
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without express and written permission from the author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts
and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Boomm Marketing & Communications
with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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9. Step 7: Monitor Your Page
Daily monitoring of your Facebook business page is
a great way to build stronger relationships with your
current customers – and create new ones with your
prospects. To make this happen, you need to optimize the
timing of your status updates, tailor them to the needs of
your audience and closely monitor comments posted to
your page.
interested in using Facebook for themselves and focus on
“liking” pages and using Apps.4 To attract the attention of
these older users, it’s best to share original content from
your company’s blog or website that does not directly
promote the products or services your company sells
(such as a free ebook or white paper). In fact 60% of links
shared on Facebook are published content.5
While the youngest Facebook users are attracted to the
social aspect of Facebook, older members are more
F o riv g
a Pf ty
c
e o
b
o e ye
kA i
l
ct
b
A
i
Source: HubSpot, The Science of Facebook, 2011
Your Facebook business page is a great way to create
engagement. Posting status updates that encourage
discussion gives your prospects a chance to interact
with your current customers and most ardent brand
advocates, which can impact their decision to do business
with your company. However, always remember that that
the end goal is to get your Facebook fans to visit your
website, blog or landing pages, so that they can deepen
their relationship with your company or brand.
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without express and written permission from the author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts
and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Boomm Marketing & Communications
with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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10. Conclusion
A B-to-B Facebook business page can be an effective
way to distribute your company’s content and offers to
current and potential customers. Creating an engaging
Facebook page will enhance your company’s Internet
presence – and extend the reach of its marketing
messages.
We hope these tips will help your company take
advantage of all that Facebook has to offer. When set up
and used properly, a Facebook business page can be a key
component of your company’s lead generation strategy –
and can help establish your company as a thought leader
in its industry.
Although Facebook is a powerful tool, it is only one
component of an effective digital marketing strategy.
Before you begin using Facebook for business, you should
create a keyword strategy, develop your company’s voice
through blogging and develop remarkable content that
your current and future customers will find valuable
enough to share with their personal and professional
network.
Sources, Unless Cited:
Penton Media, Truth from the Trenches, 2011
1
Mindwave Research, Technology Advertising Planner, 2012
2
Forrester Research, How B2B Marketers Use Social Now, 2012
3
4
HubSpot, The Science of Facebook, 2011
eMarketer, Online Content Format Shared Most Often by US Internet Users, Feb 2011
5
About Boomm Marketing & Communications
Boomm Marketing & Communications is a strategic integrated marketing communications agency
devoted to creating results-producing brand conversations for our clients.
In more than 15 years of partnership with leading B-to-B brands, we’ve embraced every marketing
touchpoint to offer a complete suite of capabilities. We also provide you with cutting-edge counsel on
B-to-B best practice, from traditional marketing tools to digital technologies that are transforming
the way your brand interacts with customers.
For more information, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+, visit our website or
contact Gary Mattes via email or by phone at 708-352-9700 x222.
© Boomm Marketing & Communications, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material
without express and written permission from the author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts
and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Boomm Marketing & Communications
with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
boomm.com | 877.266.6584

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and/or duplication of this material
without express and written permission from the author and/or owner
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ications, 2013. Unauthorized strictly prohibited. Excerpts
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without express and written
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