How to Target Companies on Facebook

Thinking you can't reach B2B decision-makers on Facebook is one of the most common myths in marketing. The truth is, CEOs, marketing directors, and company founders scroll through their feeds just like everyone else. This guide will walk you through the exact methods, from simple to advanced, to get your business in front of the right companies on Facebook.

Myth-Busting: Why Facebook is a Goldmine for B2B Targeting

For years, marketers have treated Facebook as a B2C-only playground and LinkedIn as the undisputed king of B2B. While LinkedIn is fantastic for hyper-specific job title targeting, ignoring Facebook means missing out on a massive, highly engaged audience at a potentially lower cost. Remember, you're not targeting a logo or a building, you're targeting the people who work for that company.

These decision-makers use Facebook to connect with friends, follow interests, and join communities. By placing your brand message within that feed in a helpful, non-intrusive way, you can build awareness and drive action where they’re already spending their time. Facebook’s huge scale and sophisticated ad platform give you powerful tools to do just that.

The Foundation: Define Your Ideal Company Profile

Before you spend a single dollar, you need to know exactly who you're trying to reach. Going into Ads Manager with a vague idea of "businesses" is a recipe for wasted budget. Get laser-focused by building an Ideal Company Profile (ICP). This goes beyond basic customer personas to define the attributes of the businesses you want to target.

Grab a notebook or open a document and answer these questions:

• Industry: Are you targeting SaaS companies, local construction firms, e-commerce brands, or healthcare clinics? Be specific.
• Company Size: Do you serve solopreneurs, small businesses with 10-50 employees, or enterprise-level organizations with over 1,000 employees? This affects their pain points and budget.
• Key Job Titles: Who is the actual person that makes the purchasing decision? Is it the "Marketing Manager," the "Head of HR," the "CEO," or the "Office Manager"? List several key titles.
• Geographic Location: Are they located in a specific city, state, or country?
• Tools They Use: What software or technology platforms do they already use? For example, targeting users interested in "Shopify" is a great way to find e-commerce businesses. Targeting people interested in "Salesforce" helps you find sales teams.
• Their Pain Points: What specific problem does your product or service solve for them? Ads that speak directly to a pain point perform far better.

Once you have this profile built, you have a roadmap for choosing your targeting options inside Facebook Ads Manager.

Method 1: The Direct Approach with Detailed Targeting

Facebook's built-in detailed targeting is the most straightforward place to start. This method uses the information people willingly add to their profiles. While not always 100% accurate, it’s a quick way to build an initial audience. This happens in the "Ad Set" level of your campaign setup, under the "Detailed Targeting" section.

Targeting by Employer

This is as direct as it sounds. You can type in the name of a specific company (e.g., "Microsoft," "HubSpot") and target people who have listed that company as their employer. This is most useful when you have a specific list of large, well-known companies you want to reach. For smaller businesses, this data is less likely to be available or accurate.

How to use it:

1. Navigate to the Ad Set level of your campaign.
2. Find the "Detailed Targeting" box.
3. Type the name of a company you want to target and select it from the "Employers" list.

Pro Tip: Use this sparingly for "whale" hunting specific enterprise accounts, but don't rely on it for your entire B2B strategy.

Targeting by Job Title

Similar to targeting by employer, you can also target people based on the job title they list in their profile. Type "Marketing Manager" or "Founder" into the Detailed Targeting box and select the corresponding "Job Titles" option.

How to use it:

1. In the "Detailed Targeting" box, enter a job title from your ICP.
2. Be sure to select the option that specifies it’s a Job Title.
3. You can layer multiple job titles to expand your audience. For example, "CEO" OR "Founder" OR "Owner."

Heads up: People often get creative with their job titles ("Lead Growth Ninja") or may not update them frequently. So, like employer targeting, this can be a good starting point but has its limits.

Method 2: The Power Play with Custom Audiences

This is where B2B targeting on Facebook gets serious. Custom Audiences let you use your own data to find your exact customers and prospects on the platform. It's the most effective way to reach a defined list of companies.

Create a Customer List Custom Audience

If you have a CRM, an email newsletter list, or even just a spreadsheet of leads, you can upload it to Facebook. The platform will then cross-reference the data (like email addresses and phone numbers) with its user base to find those exact people.

This means you can take a list of 500 decision-makers at target companies and run ads specifically to them.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to your Facebook Ads Manager menu and select "Audiences."
2. Click "Create Audience" and choose "Custom Audience."
3. Select "Customer List" as your source.
4. Prepare your list. A CSV file with a simple "email" column is usually enough, but you can add more data points like name and phone number for a better match rate.
5. Upload your file. Facebook will hash the data for privacy and then match it to user profiles. This process can take a few hours.
6. Once the audience is populated, you can select it in the "Custom Audiences" field at the Ad Set level.

This strategy is perfect for account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns where you have a specific list of businesses you are trying to reach.

Retarget Website Visitors

Another powerful Custom Audience is based on website traffic. By installing the Meta Pixel on your site, you can create audiences of people who have visited specific pages. For a B2B business, this means you can target people who have viewed your "Pricing" page, a specific service page, or a case study. These users have already signaled interest in your company, making them some of the warmest leads you can find.

Method 3: The Scaling Strategy with Lookalike Audiences

Once you have a high-quality Custom Audience, you can ask Facebook to build a "Lookalike Audience." This is where the platform's machine learning shines. It analyzes the thousands of data points of the people in your "source" audience and then finds millions of other users who share similar characteristics.

For B2B, this is game-changing. You can create a Lookalike Audience based on:

• Your Best Customers: Upload a list of your most valuable clients. Facebook will then find more people like them. This is the gold standard for finding new high-value leads.
• Your Leads List: Create a Lookalike based on a list of qualified leads.
• High-Value Website Visitors: Create a Lookalike from an audience of people who visited your pricing page or filled out a demo request form.

How to create a Lookalike:

1. Go back to "Audiences" and click "Create Audience," then select "Lookalike Audience."
2. Choose a quality source audience (e.g., your customer list Custom Audience that has at least 100 matched users).
3. Select the country or region you want to target.
4. Start with a "1%" lookalike. This creates the audience most similar to your source. You can test larger percentages later (2% to 5%) to expand your reach.

Lookalike Audiences are the key to scaling your B2B efforts beyond your existing contacts and finding brand new companies that fit your ideal profile.

Method 4: The Creative Angle with Layered Interests

Think beyond job titles. What are the interests and behaviors of the decision-makers you’re trying to reach? By layering different interests, you can build a highly specific B2B audience.

Consider targeting interests like:

• Industry Software: Target people interested in "Salesforce," "Slack," "Oracle," or "Adobe Photoshop." This is a huge clue about their professional life.
• Industry Leaders and Publications: Go after users who follow thought leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk or Brene Brown, or publications like Harvard Business Review or Wired.
• Business-Related Behaviors: Facebook categorizes some users under behaviors like "Facebook page admins" or "Small business owners." These can be excellent layers to add to your targeting.

The trick is to combine these. For example, you could target people who are (INTERESTED in Salesforce) AND (Facebook Page Admins). This narrows your audience from general Salesforce users to people who are likely managing a business page, indicating a professional role.

Don't Skip the Ad: Craft a Message That Lands

Perfect targeting means nothing if your ad creative and copy don't speak to your audience. A decision-maker on Facebook might be in a more relaxed mindset, but they are still thinking about business challenges.

• Focus on Solutions: Your ad headline and copy should immediately address a pain point. Instead of "Try Our New Software," say "Stop Wasting Hours on Manual Reporting."
• Use Professional, Clear Visuals: Your images or video should be clean and reflective of your brand. A simple graphic explaining a benefit or a short testimonial video works wonders.
• Offer Value: B2B audiences respond well to value-driven offers. Instead of a direct "Buy Now," try a "Download Our Free Report," "Get the Case Study," or "Register for the Webinar." This builds trust and captures leads you can nurture later.

Testing different ad formats and copy is essential to finding what resonates best with your target companies.

Final Thoughts

Successfully targeting companies on Facebook is entirely achievable when you move beyond basic demographics and use layers of data to your advantage. By combining direct targeting with powerful Custom and Lookalike audiences, you can effectively reach decision-makers where they are actively spending their time.

Once you’ve used these targeting strategies to earn attention, the real work of community building begins with your organic content. We built Postbase because we know that staying consistent across all your social channels is how you turn passing interest into genuine trust. Our simple visual calendar and rock-solid scheduling, especially for the short-form video formats that humanize B2B brands, helps you manage that entire content strategy without the headache.