Solved: Seeking Alternatives to Facebook Ads for B2B Sales

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I've had a look at your situation with selling spare parts for asphalt and heavy machinery. It's a tricky market, and relying on Facebook alone can feel like you're shouting into the wind a bit. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience running these sorts of campaigns. It's a common problem, moving from a broad platform like Facebook to something more targeted for B2B, but there's definately a path forward.

We'll need to look at your customer's intent...

Right, so the first thing that jumps out at me is the choice of Facebook. Tbh, for what you're selling, it's probably not the best place to find new customers. Think about it from the customer's point of view. A fleet manager or a site foreman isn't scrolling through their social feed looking at pictures of their mate's holiday and suddenly thinking, "You know what, I really need a new hydraulic pump for the CAT 330." It just doesn't happen like that. The buying intent isn't there.

This is something I see a lot. When you run a campaign on Meta with an objective like 'Reach' or even just general 'Traffic', you're basically telling the algorithm to find the cheapest possible eyeballs. You're paying them to find people who are easy to show an ad to, not people who are likely to buy. These users are cheap to reach because no one else is bidding for them, and there's a good reason for that: they don't convert. You're effectively paying Facebook to find you an audience of non-customers. It's an uncomfortable truth, but it's why so many B2B campaigns fail on there.

Your business solves an urgent, expensive problem. A piece of heavy machinery breaking down isn't a casual inconvenience; it's a full-blown emergency that can halt a multi-million pound project. Your customer isn't 'browsing'; they are in a state of panic, actively and desperately searching for a solution. Facebook is for discovery and awareness, which has its place, but not for capturing this kind of urgent, specific demand. You need to be where they are when the panic sets in, not where they are when they're killing time. Your trying to sell a specialised B2B product in a B2C environment, and the mismatch is probably costing you a lot in wasted ad spend for very few, if any, qualified leads. We need to shift your budget from finding people to being found by the right people at the exact moment they need you.

I'd say you need to be where your customers are searching...

So, where do they go when a machine grinds to a halt? They don't go on Facebook. They go to Google. This is where your focus should be, without a doubt. Google Search Ads are built for capturing intent. You're not interrupting them; you're providing the solution they are actively looking for. This is the single biggest shift in strategy you can make, and it'll change everything.

You need to get inside the head of that stressed-out site manager. What are they typing into that search bar? It won't be generic. It'll be specific, desperate, and full of detail.

You'd want to target keywords like:

• -> "emergency asphalt paver parts UK"
• -> "next day delivery [specific machine model] spare parts"
• -> "[part number] supplier near me"
• -> "heavy machinery hydraulic hose replacement"
• -> "Volvo EC220D final drive repair kit"

See how specific these are? Anyone searching for these is not just kicking tyres. They have a problem that needs solving immediatly. We've seen this work for all sorts of service businesses. I remember one campaign we ran for an HVAC company in a competitive area; we got them leads for around $60 each. Now, you might think that's a lot, but a single commercial repair job was worth thousands. The same logic applies to you. Paying £30, £50, or even £100 for a click might seem expensive, but if that click turns into a £2,000 order from a customer who will come back again and again, it's a bargain. The key is that the traffic is pre-qualified by its own search query.

Your ad setup should be geared towards speed. You need to enable call extensions so they can ring you directly from the ad. You should have ads that run 24/7 if you can handle emergency calls, or are scheduled for when you're available. A callback widget on your website is also a good shout. The entire process from search to contact should take less than a minute. Your ad copy should scream speed and availability: "In Stock Now," "Same-Day Dispatch," "UK-Wide Next-Day Delivery." You are selling the end of their downtime, not just a metal part.

You probably should re-think your social media strategy...

This doesn't mean social media is a total write-off. You just need to use the right social platform, and for B2B, that's LinkedIn. Forget Facebook for prospecting; LinkedIn is where you can be surgical with you're targeting.

On LinkedIn, you don't target broad 'interests'. You target the actual job titles of the people who make purchasing decisions for spare parts. Think about you're ideal customers. Who signs off on the orders? Who's responsible for keeping the fleet running?

You can build audiences of people with job titles like:

• -> Fleet Manager
• -> Maintenance Supervisor
• -> Plant Manager
• -> Operations Director
• -> Site Foreman
• -> Head of Procurement

Then you can layer that with company specifics. You can target companies in specific industries like 'Construction', 'Civil Engineering', or 'Quarrying'. You can even target companies of a certain size, say 50-500 employees, to find established firms with decent-sized fleets. You can even upload a list of your dream 100 target companies and show ads only to the decision-makers within them. This level of precision is impossible to acheive on Facebook for your niche.

We've had great success with LinkedIn for B2B. I recall one campaign for a B2B software client where we were getting leads from senior decision-makers for about $22 per lead. While your costs will be different, it shows that the platform works for reaching very specific professional roles. You could run a simple sponsored content campaign with a strong image or a short video of your warehouse or a specific part, leading to a landing page where they can download a catalogue or request a quote. The goal here is less about the immediate emergency sale (that's for Google) and more about building relationships and becoming the go-to supplier for non-emergency stock-ups and planned maintenance. You're building a pipeline of future business, so when the next emergency does hit, they think of you first.

You'll need an offer that solves their nightmare...

Let's get brutally honest for a moment. You don't sell spare parts. You sell uptime. You sell the continuation of a project. You sell the solution to a financial and logistical nightmare. Your entire marketing message, your ads, your website—everything—needs to be built around this core truth.

Forget listing features. Nobody cares that your steel is a certain grade. They care that it won't fail and cause another breakdown in three months. Your ICP isn't a demographic; it's a problem state. The nightmare is a £5 million project grinding to a halt because of a £500 part. The nightmare is having a dozen guys standing around getting paid to do nothing. The nightmare is facing penalty clauses for missing a deadline. Your marketing needs to enter that conversation.

We use a simple framework for this: Problem-Agitate-Solve.

Here’s how it would look for a Google Ad:

Headline: Excavator Down? Get Parts Same-Day
Description: Project at a standstill? Every hour costs you money. We have OEM-quality hydraulic pumps in stock. Order by 4pm for next-day delivery.

Here's a version for a LinkedIn Ad:

Ad Text: "Is your parts supplier letting you down? Waiting days for a critical part while your project deadlines loom is a nightmare. At [Your Company Name], we stock thousands of parts for heavy machinery, ready for immediate dispatch. Reduce your fleet's downtime and keep your projects on track. Download our full parts catalogue."

The offer itself also needs to be frictionless. The typical "Request a Quote" can feel slow. For your Google Ads, the offer is an immediate phone call. For your website, it could be a "Live Inventory Check" or "Get a Call Back in 15 Minutes". You need to remove every possible barrier between their problem and your solution. Your value is speed and availability, so your calls-to-action must reflect that. Make it incredibly easy for them to give you money to solve their expensive problem. It's not a hard sell; it's a rescue mission.

We'll need to look at what a customer is actually worth to you...

This is where things get really interesting and where most businesses miss a trick. They get scared by high per-click or per-lead costs without understanding the bigger picture. The question isn't "how low can my cost per lead (CPL) go?", but "how high a CPL can I afford to acquire a great customer?". To answer that, you need to know your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Let's run through a hypothetical calculation. You'll need to plug in your own numbers, but this will show you the principle. It's a game-changer for how you'll view your ad spend.

Let's make some assumptions:

• -> Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) per month: Let's say a typical business customer spends £400 a month with you on average.
• -> Gross Margin %: After the cost of the parts themselves, let's say your profit margin is 35%.
• -> Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? For long-term B2B relationships, this might be low, say 1.5% (meaning the average customer stays with you for over 5 years).

Here's the calculation:

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

LTV = (£400 * 0.35) / 0.015
LTV = £140 / 0.015
LTV = £9,333

Let that sink in. In this scenario, every new customer you acquire is worth over £9,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. Now, let's think about ad costs. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is often cited as 3:1. This means you could afford to spend up to £3,111 (£9,333 / 3) to acquire a new customer and still have a very profitable business model.

If you know that your sales process converts, say, 1 in 5 qualified leads into a paying customer, you can now calculate your maximum allowable CPL:

Max CPL = Max CAC / Conversion Rate
Max CPL = £3,111 / 5 = £622

Suddenly, that £50 click on Google Search or that £150 lead from LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like an absolute steal. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads on platforms like Facebook and gives you the confidence to invest properly in channels that deliver high-value customers who will stick with you for years. You stop playing for clicks and start playing for lifetime value.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Getting all of this right—the channel strategy, the targeting, the financial modelling, the ad copy that speaks to the 'nightmare'—it's a lot of work. It takes expertise and constant testing to dial it in and avoid wasting money on the wrong keywords or audiences. You could certainly try and implement this yourself, but it's a steep learning curve and mistakes can be costly.

This is where expert help can make a huge difference. We could help you build this entire strategy from the ground up, manage the campaigns, and optimise them based on real data to ensure you're not just spending money, but investing it to acquire those high-LTV customers.

If you'd like to chat through this in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look at your specific business and give you a more concrete plan of action. Just let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh