B2B Facebook Ads for Lead Generation: 15 Inspiring Examples

In this article, we'll tackle the B2B Facebook Ads topic that we all love so much 😍!

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Facebook now has over 2.3 billion monthly active users, and is known to be a powerful channel for helping their 6M+ advertisers reach consumers globally. But for targeting businesses and generating leads, it might seem harder to find effective ways to engage your audience with Facebook Ads.

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So if you need some inspiration to improve your B2B Facebook Ads and launch campaigns that convert, this article is for you 🙌.

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Below you'll find 15 Facebook Ads examples and creative designs used by successful and growing B2B companies.

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We’ve split the examples into 2 categories based on common B2B goals:
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• Lead generation
• Sign ups & sales

Though we're focusing on ad creatives and content - in addition to these, the key components that make up a successful ad include:

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• 🎯 The right targeting: A/B testing different targeting options and audiences is key for cost effectively reaching potential customers and converting them.
• ✍️ The right message: Creating custom messages for each audience can better increase your conversion rates, by focusing on their unique needs and interests.
• 🕒 The right time: Understanding which stage of your marketing funnel people you're targeting are in, can let you reach them with the most relevant content.

Before getting started, a great free tool for seeing active ads from your competitors or leading businesses is the Facebook Ad Library. So to find even more examples, search away! 🎉

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B2B Facebook Ads examples to generate leads

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1. Use Videos 📹

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Videos are much more engaging and effective at getting people's attention compared to images. Especially on Facebook, which has 8.4X higher video engagement than any other social channel. Cisco even estimates that global internet traffic from videos will make up 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2021.

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💡 Slack, the work messaging unicorn, uses 50-second product videos in their ads to give potential customers a glimpse into how their product works and key team messaging features.

💪 A few best practices:

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• Include audio-less options: add closed captions where possible, since 85% of videos are watched without sound on Facebook.
• Add a CTA: add a call-to-action at the end of your videos to make them actionable and better convert people watching them.

🔑 Pro tip: Facebook lets you create video ads using free templates, including templates for: promoting a product, driving product discovery, selling multiple products, and showing product benefits.

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So if you don't have resources to create your own videos, you can still take advantage of their tools and setup video ads in a few minutes (like we do at PixelMe!).

2. Test Different Ad Content

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Always be testing 👨‍🔬 this is true for all things in marketing. Testing key parts of your ads, such as the creative and text, are essential for finding what resonates best with your target audience.

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💡 Sprout Social, a social media management platform, tests many different video types as well as ad text when sharing social media marketing guides they've developed.

All of their ads lead people to a lead gen form, where the business can share some simple info to get access to their 2019 social index guide.

3. Create Charts & Graphics

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A picture is worth a thousand words, and a compelling ad image can sometimes be worth at least a thousand ad clicks. Changing up your ad creative, such as providing data charts and infographics is a great way to stand out and give more credibility to content you're sharing.

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💡 Hootsuite, another leading social media management platform, shares images with charts and stats to highlight key data in their ads. This gives people a teaser of content they can access, from yearly guides Hootsuite puts together.

The ad takes people to the following landing page, where people can download their Digital 2019 guide for free, in exchange for sharing info about their business with Hootsuite.

4. Add Clear CTAs

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People today have limited time and attention spans, so directly telling your audience what you'd like them to do in a simple way goes a long way. This can be done in a variety of forms: in the ad text, image, and/or adding a clear CTA button.

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💡 Intercom adds call to actions when providing marketing guides for churn reduction, across the ad text "Get this guide", headline description "Download our free guide", and CTA button "Download".

People get taken to a landing page, where after clicking "Download Now", they enter simple company details to get the free guide.

5. Share Free Tips

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Content marketing is all about providing valuable information that your audience is missing and needs as part of their day to day activities. So sharing this in easily digestible forms like content lists to help them meet their goals is a common content tactic used by B2B marketers.

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💡 Sleeknote provides lead gen software for E-commerce companies, and shares useful content lists, like examples of 41 high converting E-commerce emails. They also drive urgency in various ad text by telling people to download "immediately" and "before they take it down."

After clicking through the ad, people get taken to a short landing page, where Sleeknote can get more leads by asking for simple information in exchange for providing valuable E-commerce content.

6. Develop Guides, Whitepapers & eBooks

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Promoting guides, whitepapers, and eBooks are commonly used amongst many B2B companies for generating leads - including Salesforce, HubSpot, Segment, AdEspresso, and many more.

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💡 Mixpanel, a user analytics platform, partners with leading research companies like Forrester to share whitepapers on how their business and customers have impacted the economy.

The ad takes people to a standard lead gen landing page, where they can download the research paper after they've provided some simple business info.

7. Invest in Co-marketing

Partnering with other businesses that have shared goals and influencers in your target community to do co-marketing, is another effective way to promote your services. This of course takes more time and efforts planning, but can provide large dividends if you find the right partners.

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💡 Buffer invests heavily in content marketing, and promotes content series such as their 9-part Instagram Marketing Growth Series that feature tips from partner brands, such as Nike.

8. Give Free Tools

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Everyone loves a freebie, especially if it saves them time and money, and helps their business better market their products and services.

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💡 Qualtrics provides market research and analysis software, and gives away free product research survey templates to save businesses time from creating their own from scratch.

People can download the free product research survey template after providing some basic company details in their lead gen form.

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B2B Facebook Ads tips to generate Signups & Sales

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9. Highlight Social Proof

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Including social proof and stats from your customer and growth rates can set you apart from others, and help position you as a more credible and established business.

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SurveyMonkey establishes trust by adding social proof in the number of clients they have.

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They also hone in on enterprise audiences by including how many Fortune 500 companies use them, and even adding their Nasdaq stock symbol.

🔑 Pro tip: if you're a new startup and don't have thousands of customers yet, try asking some of your power users for simple quotes and include those in your campaigns.

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10. Be Personable

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At the end of the day, businesses are people too 😉. So keeping your ad text personable, informative, and easy to read, and testing different copy (questions, short/long text, benefit bullets, etc.) can help you stand out from the many other ads people see in their News Feeds. Of course, you should still stay consistent and true to your own brand and voice 😄.

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💡 Airtable, a spreadsheet collaboration platform, tests various approaches in their ad text and images that speak to their customer painpoints while still being entertaining.

11. Use Carousel Ads

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Carousel Ads let you add 2 or more scrollable images or videos to an ad. So when promoting your products and services, this is a great way to share different features in each image and video, and piece key features together to tell a more complete story.

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💡 Mailchimp, the leading email marketing platform, uses Carousel Ads and combines both simple videos and images to highlight key product features ("Email Builder, "A/B Test Results", "Audience Click Rates") and get more sign ups.

12. Provide free trials

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Although free trials aren't necessary, over 44% of B2B SaaS companies provide free customer trials. At PixelMe, we also give everyone a free 7-day trial of our product before paying for a plan.

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💡 Dropbox provides a free 30 day trial for trying out their Dropbox Business plan. They also tailor their ad messages to highlight data security, which is top of mind for decision makers in their target audience.

13. Give Free Demos

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Providing free product demos is another strategy used by many B2B companies to give potential buyers a low friction way to learn about and sign up for their products.

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💡 Segment, a customer data management solution, offers free demos and lets people speak with a product specialist after they sign up for a free account.

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14. Offer Giveaways & Discounts

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Giving people unique gifts and discount codes are another way to test campaigns that give people additional incentive to sign up quickly.

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💡G2 Crowd, a business reviews platform, runs campaigns that give away $10 Starbucks gift cards when someone signs up and reviews a software tool they use for work.

15. Share Case Studies

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Providing customer testimonials are one of the best ways to validate your business, since it's being advocated by a 3rd party. Case studies are a common request we get at PixelMe, as new customers want to understand how others have used our services and seen success.

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💡PayPal uses snippets of customer testimonials in their ad text, accompanied by a compelling case study video clip that details how PayPal helped an SMB grow and drive more sales.

16. Bonus: Link Retargeting

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Technically, this is a targeting and measurement tool, but if any of these use cases are valuable to you, then you can try PixelMe's link retargeting and conversion tracking tool for free 🎉:
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• 🔗 You share links to 3rd party sites (PR articles, industry news, Medium articles) and want a way to retarget anyone who clicked on them.
• 🚘 You need an easy tool for adding UTM tags to your links to track where your site traffic comes from.
• 📈 You’d like to know which of your marketing channels converts best, what your ROI is across every ads platform, and which paths people took before converting.

So as you can see, there's lots of creative ways businesses launch Facebook Ads with varying content, designs, messaging, and incentives to engage their audiences and get more leads and sign ups.

Here's a recap of the 15 ways to improve your B2B Facebook Ads to bring it all together:

1. Use videos
2. Test different ad content
3. Create charts and graphics
4. Add clear CTAs
5. Share free tips
6. Develop guides, whitepapers, and eBooks
7. Invest in co-marketing
8. Give free tools
9. Highlight social proof
10. Be personable
11. Use Carousel Ads
12. Provide free trials
13. Give free demos
14. Offer giveaways and discounts
15. Promote case studies

Hopefully you now have some new ideas and inspiration on how to test new Facebook Ads that can engage and convert your B2B audience too 🚀.

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Want to optimize your B2B Ads? Sign up for a free 7-day PixelMe trial.