Digital marketing success requires much more than a corporate website. That’s why blogging and social media are taking a lead role in today’s brave new marketing landscape – and Facebook has become a marketing hot spot for B-to-B companies. Whether you’re looking to generate sales leads or expand your existing customer relationships, a B-to-B Facebook page can help buyers find you when they’re researching products and services.

According to a 2011 marketing study by Penton Media, 90% of B-to-B marketers are active on Facebook. A 2012 survey by Mindwave Research also revealed that 61% of respondents who buy complex technical products are most influenced by communications with colleagues – and that Facebook is being used to share peer-to-peer information that supports B-to-B purchase decision-making. In addition, Forrester Research reports that 19% of business decision-makers believe that Facebook is an important information resource when they are researching and evaluating technologies and services to purchase.

With stats like these, many B-to-B companies are joining Facebook to generate traffic for their websites, blogs and landing pages. It’s also why we’ve created a four-part blog series to help you build an effective presence for your company on Facebook and optimize it for lead generation. You can read the rest of the series here during the next three weeks – or subscribe to our blog to get the rest of the series delivered to your inbox.

Build a Business Page
To get your company on Facebook, you’ll need to build a new business page (i.e., you cannot use a personal profile for your business). To build your business page, log into your personal Facebook profile, then navigate to facebook.com/business and click Start Here, then Create a Page.

To create your page:

• Select Company, Organization or Institution or Brand or Product as the business type.

• Select a Category that explains what your company does (as closely as possible).

• Type your company’s name as the Page Name.

• Click Get Started.

Setup your page by:

• Uploading a 160px by 160px image of your company logo as your profile photo.

• Typing a sentence or two about your company so that people will understand what you do (be sure to include your keywords).

• Typing your company’s website URL.

• Clicking Save Info.

You can also engage visitors by adding a 315 x 851px Cover Image that highlights your company – or its locations, products or employees. Please note that Facebook allows you to include a call to action in your Cover Photo. You’ll also want to explore your business page’s Admin Panel to customize your page settings. To do this, select Edit Page in your Admin Panel, then Update Info. One of the most important areas to customize is your business page URL.

To create a customized URL that you can use on your marketing materials (i.e., Facebook.com/BoommMktg), click the Resources tab, then Select a Username. (Be sure to choose a username that matches your other social networks).

Create Custom Tabs
A B-to-B Facebook business page gives you a great way to interact with your customers and prospects – and can be an effective lead generation tool too. To generate sales leads on Facebook, you’ll need to create an inviting page that provides incentives for visitors to give you their email address.

To make it possible for visitors to provide their contact information, you need to use a Facebook App to create custom tabs where you can offer free resources to your page visitors. Woobox offers a free Static HTML Iframe Tab App that you can use to add web content – including text, images and lead collection forms – to your Facebook business page. (Please note that you will need to create HTML code for the web content that you want to display on the Tab before using this App.)

At a minimum, you’ll want to create two custom tabs: One to promote a free resource and another to share information about your company in a more compelling way than is possible with wall posts.

• Free Resource Tab: Create a tab to offer a valuable resource, such as a free ebook, white paper or email newsletter (see our Free Marketing eBook tab).

• Company Showcase Tab: Create another tab to provide more information about your company or the products and services it offers (see Our Methodology tab).

Please note that creating custom tabs and Apps is the most complex task on Facebook. If you don’t have the technical skills to develop these features, you can visit the Facebook App Center to find Apps that other users have created. While the options are somewhat limited for business pages, Apps are available that will allow you to integrate other social media sites – and make it easier for your visitors to find them.

Now that you’ve set up your company’s business page, you’ll need to begin populating it with interesting content. We will talk more about this in next week’s blog post on posting status updates.