Solved: Help Needed with Facebook Ads and Audience Targeting

Hi there,

Thanks for getting in touch. I've had a look at your website and your request for help with Facebook Ads. It's a common problem, especially for B2B software where targeting can feel a bit tricky after being away from the platform for a while. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience running campaigns for other software companies. It can definately be done, but it needs a methodical approach.

I'd say you need to nail down your target audience first...

This is the absolute foundation of any sucessful ad campaign. Before you spend a single penny, you need to be crystal clear on who you're trying to reach. For a B2B product like ChatBeacon, you're not just selling to a person, you're selling to a role within a company. So, who is the ideal user? And who is the decision maker who signs off the cheque? Sometimes they're the same person, often they're not.

My thoughts would be to break it down:

-> The User Persona: This is likely someone in customer support, sales, or maybe a marketing manager. They are the ones who will use the tool day-in, day-out. Their pain point is missing customer chats, slow response times, or managing queries across different channels. You want to speak directly to these pains in your ads.

-> The Decision-Maker Persona: This could be a Head of Customer Service, a CMO, a CTO, or for smaller companies, the founder/CEO. Their pain point is more about efficiency, cost, customer retention, and scalability. They care about ROI and how your tool impacts the bottom line.

Once you have this clear, you can dive into Meta's targeting. A lot of people make the mistake of going too broad. For B2B, you need to be specific. Instead of targeting a massive interest like "Business", you'd want to layer interests that are more specific to your personas. For instance:

-> Job Titles: You can directly target people with titles like "Customer Support Manager", "Head of Sales", "eCommerce Manager", etc. This can be powerful but also a bit more expensive.

-> Interests & Behaviours: This is often where the gold is. Think about what other tools your ideal customer uses. You could target interests like "Zendesk", "Intercom", "HubSpot", or "Salesforce". People interested in these are likely already in the market for business software. Also, consider behaviours like "Facebook Page Admins" or "Small Business Owners". If you're targeting eCommerce stores, an interest in "Shopify" or "WooCommerce" combined with being a business page admin is a pretty strong signal.

The key here is to find interests that your target audience is much more likely to have than the general population. It's about finding the overlap. I remember one campaign we ran for a B2B software company, where we achieved 4,622 registrations at a cost of just $2.38 per registration by being really specific with this kind of targeting on Meta.

You probably should think about your funnel and offer...

I see you have a "Free Trial" on your website, which is excellent. Honestly, for B2B SaaS, a free trial is pretty much non-negotiable. I've seen campaigns for software clients fail simply because they were trying to get a direct purchase or a paid demo, which is a huge ask from a cold ad. People need to try before they buy, especially when it involves integrating a new tool into their workflow.

So your entire ad funnel on Meta should be geared towards one thing: getting qualified people to start that free trial. Don't worry about making the sale from the ad. The sales cycle for B2B is longer. The ad's job is to get the lead, your product's job is to onboard them during the trial, and your follow-up process (email, in-app messages) is to convert them to a paying customer.

Your landing page is the bridge between the ad and the trial. It needs to be incredibly persuasive. Right now, your homepage is doing a lot of things. For your ads, I'd recomend sending traffic to a dedicated landing page that focuses only on the benefits of the free trial. Remove the main navigation, remove any distracting links. The only action they should be able to take is signing up. Professional sales copy here can make a huge difference to your conversion rate. A small uplift in conversion rate from 2% to 4% literally halves your cost per trial signup.

We'll need to look at your campaign structure...

Don't just throw a bunch of audiences into one campaign and hope for the best. A structured approach will let you test properly, understand what's working, and scale efficiently. I always structure accounts based on the marketing funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

Here’s how it would look for you:

Campaign 1: Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting
This is where you find new customers. The goal is to drive traffic and get initial trial signups from cold audiences. Inside this campaign, you'd have different ad sets, each testing a specific audience.
-> Ad Set 1: Detailed Targeting (e.g., Interests: Zendesk, Intercom + Behaviour: Business Page Admins).
-> Ad Set 2: Detailed Targeting (e.g., Job Titles: Customer Support Manager, Head of Sales).
-> Ad Set 3 (Once you have data): Lookalike Audience of your existing customers.
-> Ad Set 4 (Once you have data): Lookalike Audience of your best trial users.

Campaign 2: Middle/Bottom of Funnel (MoFu/BoFu) - Retargeting
This is for people who've shown interest but haven't converted yet. These audiences are much smaller but often have the highest conversion rate. They've already engaged with you, so they are warm leads.
-> Ad Set 1: Retarget all website visitors from the last 30-90 days (excluding those who signed up).
-> Ad Set 2: Retarget people who watched 50% of your video ads.
-> Ad Set 3: Retarget people who visited the pricing page but didn't sign up.
-> Ad Set 4: Retarget people who started the trial signup form but abandoned it.

This seperate structure allows you to control your budget, sending most of it to prospecting (ToFu) and a smaller portion to retargeting (MoFu/BoFu). It also lets you show different ads to each group. A cold audience needs an introduction to your brand, while a retargeting audience might just need a reminder or a testimonial to push them over the edge.

You'll need a solid creative testing plan...

Your ads are what people actually see. No amount of clever targeting can save a bad ad. You need to be constantly testing new creatives to find winners and avoid ad fatigue. For software, a few formats tend to work well:

-> Video Ads: These are probably your best bet. A short, punchy screen recording showing how ChatBeacon solves a specific problem can be incredibly effective. Or a simple "talking head" video explaining the benefits. For one of our SaaS clients, we found that simple User-Generated Content (UGC) style videos outperformed slick, high-production ads by a huge margin. It feels more authentic.

-> Image Ads: A clean screenshot of your UI highlighting a key feature can work well. Or a graphic that clearly states your main value proposition (e.g., "Never Miss a Customer Chat Again."). Make it simple and easy to understand in a split second as people scroll.

-> Carousel Ads: Use these to showcase 3-5 key features. Each card can be a different benefit (e.g., Card 1: Live Chat, Card 2: Chatbots, Card 3: Team Inbox).

The message is also vital. Test different angles. One ad might focus on "saving time," another on "increasing sales," and a third on "improving customer satisfaction." You don't know which one will resonate best until you test it. I remember one campaign where we achieved 5082 software trials at just $7 each on Meta. This was driven by relentless creative and audience testing.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To pull it all together, here's a table outlining the strategic approach I'd recomend you take. This is the framework we use to get results for our B2B software clients.

Following this should give you a much more robust and effective start than you'd get otherwise. However, the real work comes in the management and optimisation. Analysing the data daily, turning off losing ads and audiences, reallocating budget to winners, and constantly coming up with new creative ideas is a full-time job.

This is often where businesses decide to bring in an expert. Not just to set it up, but to manage the ongoing process to ensure the ad spend is delivering the best possible return. I remember one instance where we helped a client in the medical job matching SaaS niche reduce their cost per user acquisition from £100 down to just £7 using Meta and Google Ads.

Hopefully, this detailed breakdown gives you a solid plan to move forward. If you feel you'd like an expert hand to implement this strategy and manage the campaigns for you, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can discuss your specific goals in more detail.

Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh