Expand Your Foodservice Equipment Supply Customer Engagement

If your foodservice equipment supply company’s digital marketing efforts don’t include Facebook, you’re missing out on a valuable B2B marketing tool.

How valuable, you ask?

Well, let’s look at some of the latest Facebook numbers compiled by various market researchers:

• 2.3 billion-plus—monthly active users.
• 200 million—listed businesses.
• 60 million—business pages.
• 10 billion—number of messages sent between people and businesses on Facebook Messenger every month.
• 3 million—businesses that actively advertise on Facebook.
• 86.8%—percentage of U.S. marketers who plan to conduct social media marketing on Facebook this year.
• 75%—percentage of B2B buyers who report using social media to help make their purchasing decisions.
• 48.5%—percentage of B2B decisionmakers who conduct research on Facebook.
• 18.3%—percentage of U.S. adults who made a purchase via Facebook in the past year.
• 15%—percentage of people who report using Facebook to actively search for products.
• 2/3rds—amount of total Facebook users that visit a local business page at least once a week.

If these numbers pique your interest in using Facebook for B2B marketing, read on to learn more about how to get the most out of it.

How to Engage with Customers on Facebook

The first thing you need to know about marketing on Facebook (or any social media platform) is that you cannot take a “build it and they will come” approach. When you create a Facebook page for your foodservice equipment supply company, customers aren’t going to just magically start visiting the page in droves—it takes “engagement.” With 60 million or so business pages on Facebook, your page is like a proverbial needle in a massive haystack. That is, a needle no one is looking for or even knows is there.

Through engagement, you can promote awareness of your brand’s presence on Facebook to the most important people on the platform, your B2B customer base. Subsequently, continued engagement can expand your customer base and their interest in visiting your Facebook page and engaging with you.

To begin your engagement, post relevant content on your page. You don’t necessarily have to create new content, as you can utilize content from your website, blog, or other social media channels you might use. The most important consideration with your content is ensuring that it offers value to your target audience. For example, consider the following ideas:

• Focus on visual content, such as pics, videos, and memes, as visual posts spur almost two and a half times the engagement as non-visual posts.
• Make sure your profile picture showcases your brand.
• Showcase your company with a descriptive profile for your about section.
• Time your posts by figuring out when posting seems to drive the most engagement. You can use Facebook Insights tools to track this.

Boost Your Engagement with Facebook B2B Advertising

Driving engagement organically on Facebook takes time and dedication. However, you can accelerate engagement and generate leads with Facebook B2B advertising. Facebook offers a range of advertising options and campaigns focused on brand awareness, traffic, lead generation, and conversions. Facebook makes it easy to target your potential customer base with keywords and demographics. Thus, for example, you could set up a pay-per-click ad that specifically targets restaurant managers in southwest Florida. Facebook also allows flexibility in ad placement, scheduling, and targeting options to provide more control over your Facebook advertising budget. Overall, Facebook advertising is a great means of turbo-charging your Facebook marketing efforts.

Turn to Beedash for Your FES Digital Marketing Needs

If you’re interested in expanding your marketing efforts onto Facebook, but just can’t take the time out of your already busy day, turn to Beedash’s marketing services.

With more than a decade of website development and tailoring digital marketing solutions for the foodservice equipment supply industry, Beedash provides our dealer clients with the latest and most advanced software solutions and digital marketing services.