Facebook is bigger than ever. With 2.5 billion users worldwide, it is the largest social media platform in the world. According to statista.com, Facebook crossed $70 billion in revenue last year. But as a marketer, how do you make the most out of such a large audience? More importantly, how can you target the businesses that will help your marketing efforts?

Today, I’ll be teaching you how to target business owners on Facebook. I’ll show you how to target specific interests and audiences while also showing you the different ads that you can use to appeal to your target audience. Are you ready? Let’s get started!

Why Target Business Owners on Facebook?

Facebook has over 2.5 billion active users that spend an average of 35 minutes browsing the site. Because of this, Facebook is a hotspot for B2C and B2B advertising. Which is why it is the best time for you to start targeting business owners by getting familiar with Facebook Ad Targeting.

How to Target Specific Audience on Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads Manager gives you a variety of options to narrow down your search for interests to target. You can use these features to target business owners as well. When creating an ad, you will come across the options such as the to narrow down your target audience:

• Age
• Gender
• Connections
• Behavior
• Demographics
• Interests
• Connection Type
• Detailed Targeting and more.

A proper and analyzed use of these tools can give you amazing results in targeting business owners. But simply relying on these won’t help you pinpoint the target audience you want.

How Can You Find Business Owners for Facebook Ads?

Before running your ad campaign, you need to go into Facebook’s Ad Center where you can set up your ad and audience preferences. You need to have a clear idea on what purpose your ad is for. This ensures that you will always reach out to people that are looking for your services.

Start by navigating to the audience section of the Ads Manager. Here, you will have to select ‘Create New Audience’ to begin customizing your audience preferences.

There are several ways to reach your business owners. By selecting the right interests and behaviors, you can connect to the right people. Here are some examples of interests and behaviors that you can target when you create a new audience:

• Small business owners : Targeting small business owners will show your ad to startups and businesses more relevant to your requirements. You can do so by setting the term in the ‘Behaviours’ within Detailed Targeting.
• Business Page Admins: Through ‘Detailed Targeting’ you can also choose to target business page admins – which are usually the owners of said small businesses. Engaging with them directly will ensure a higher rate of conversions.
• Industry specific admins: Your audience comprises markets and industries. You can add these demographics to target these parameters.You can narrow down your audience even more by targeting a specific market or an industry such as ‘Gaming’ or “Tourism’.
• Target Business Interest: Setting ‘business’ and related terms to target in ‘interests’ is a good measure to make sure your ads reach the relevant audience. Reaching the right audience is much efficient if you are targeting the interests that are specific to your audience. For example, a business owner would have interests like, ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘stock market’, etc.
• Job titles: By targeting job titles, you can directly reach a specific position within a business. Hence if you are someone who offers DevOps consultation, you can directly reach the Development Manager in a company.

Targeting Small Business Owners on Facebook

Setting your parameters as specific as possible brings out a higher number of conversions. A great way to do that is through ‘Detailed Targeting’. If your business is aimed towards small business owners on Facebook, you simply need to enter ‘small business owners’ in the ‘Behaviors’>’Digital Activities’ in Detailed Targeting.

Targeting Business Page Admins on Facebook

Facebook business page owners are usually the business owners or the managers of a company, which makes them an excellent target. Since we’re targeting small business owners, this makes them an ideal candidate for our target audience.

To target Business Page admins, you have to go to Behaviors>Digital Activity>Facebook Page Admins. From there you can even specify it to business page admins.

Targeting Business Interests on Facebook

To go even deeper, you can choose ‘Narrow Audience’ to target people that are interested in business publications. For example, you can target someone who reads “Forbes” or “Entrepreneur” magazine publications.

These usually include business owners, students and entrepreneurs. You can use other terms and interests that are common among business owners. Thus, targeting business interests can play a very big part in your campaign.

Targeting Job Titles on Facebook

The Detailed Targeting feature lets you target a specific group of people that see your ad. You can use this tool in various ways. This includes targeting job titles on Facebook.

You can target job titles such as COO, Sales Manager, Regional Manager, HR Representative, CEO and a lot more. If you cannot find the job title you want to target, use the ‘suggestions’ button which will bring you interests, demographics and behavioral suggestions from Facebook.

What Types of Ads and Tools Should You Use to Target Businesses?

Once you find your target audience for your campaign, it’s time to think about ads. What ads can be used to properly appeal to small business owners? There are various types of Facebook ads that you can test out. Here’s what you are going to look for:

• Dynamic Ads Dynamic ads are smart ads that observe the behavior of the consumer depending on their interaction with various sites and apps to show them ads that are highly relevant to their interests.
• Remarketing: You cannot confirm sale transactions with just one contact. Hence, it is important to repeat advertisements according to the analytical data you receive from Facebook Analytics.
• Auto Advanced Matching: Through this feature, advertisers get a better idea at where the sales are originating from since it enhances the performance of an ad by tracking where conversions initiate.
• Campaign Budget Optimization: The purpose of Facebook’s CBO algorithm is to gauge which ads are performing best and to distribute the budget towards them. This ensures better economic placement and higher cost efficiency.
• Account Simplification: This uses machine learning to put the campaign on auto-pilot and use the most efficient methods to drive sales without any human intervention.
• Automatic Placements: Similar to Account Simplification, automation placements also make use of machine learning to target the audience with a specific ad placement. This saves the advertiser time, money and effort.

Advertisements have become a vital piece of Facebook since its introduction. B2B businesses and other services can take immense benefit from all the opportunities Facebook advertisement has to offer.

If you’re looking to target small business owners, I recommend using our steps above because trying to target business owners and knowing how to target business owners are two very different things separated by the guide you’ve just read.