From Metadata User to Employee: How to Master B2B Marketing on B2C Channels

It was 2021. Mike Winkelmann—also known as Beeple—sold the first non-fungible token (NFT) for $69 million. Bernie Sanders went viral, and we officially entered the COVID era.

In 2021, I also joined Optimove as their Director of Marketing Growth & Ops. While that event didn’t make front-page news, it was a headline in my career because I got to use Metadata and MetaMatch for the first time.

If it had made the news though, the headline would’ve read: Metadata and MetaMatch Completely Change Adi Hagig’s Life.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and I’ve gone from Metadata customer to General Manager (GM) of MetaMatch, our proprietary targeting platform that helps B2B marketers build more accurate audiences across channels—even those pesky “non-conventional” ones like Facebook and Instagram.

I want to take you through my journey from customer to GM and share some best practices I learned along the way that’ll help you build and reach B2B audiences across channels with MetaMatch.

My journey from Metadata user to employee in less than two years

Again, it was 2021, and I’d recently joined Optimove, the go-to CRM for gaming and sports betting operators like Mohegan Sun and BetM365. My goal? The same one as every other B2B marketer: fill our pipeline and convert those in-market buyers to revenue.

A hefty dose of LinkedIn ads should do the trick, right? That’s what I thought, but I quickly realized I was embarking on a journey unlike any I’d been on before in my B2B marketing career—and that journey wouldn’t include LinkedIn.

Why? Because people in Optimove’s ideal customer profile (ICP) weren’t on LinkedIn. Sure, many had profiles and pictures, but few actively used the platform. Instead, they were surfing Facebook and Instagram, two corners of the Internet most B2B marketers won’t touch with a ten-foot pole because no one’s thinking about software when they’re just scrolling for fun, right? (Spoiler: Wrong.)

Optimove needed a presence on these channels, but how? Most people use personal emails to log into Facebook and Instagram and very few add pieces of job-related information to their profiles.

Tim Davidson, the former Sr. Director of Digital Marketing at Directive and now founder of B2B Rizz, shared my challenge: “I knew our buyers were on Facebook. I just couldn’t find them without wasting my budget.”

Enter MetaMatch, which allowed me (and Tim and thousands of other demand gen marketers) to reach our target audience on Facebook and Instagram by matching their personal email addresses with a single business profile. We could also use technographic and intent data to dial in our audiences even more.

The ability to reach my B2B buyers on B2C channels was enough to turn me into a fan of Metadata, but the platform’s automation and revenue optimization capabilities made my heart grow even fonder.

You see, back in 2021, when Senator Sanders’ mittens were going viral across the pond (I’m based in Israel), I was on a team of three at Optimove. Myself and two colleagues used the native ad tools to manually launch, manage, and optimize all of our campaigns. There are many words I could use to describe this process, but scalable isn’t one of them.

I needed a better way to manage our campaigns, but also reduce the chance of human error tied to manual launches, optimizations, and reporting. Metadata and MetaMatch checked both boxes and allowed our small but mighty team to do what marketers with 50X the resources would find challenging.

I was all-in on Metadata, so I jumped at the opportunity when Gil (Metadata’s Founder and CEO) asked me to lead the team tasked with taking MetaMatch to the market as a standalone product.

Now, I’m the GM of MetaMatch and committed to making it a platform no B2B marketer can live without—from mature teams with big budgets to founders with a dream and $5k to spend on Facebook.

What every marketer needs to know before using MetaMatch

Metadata makes B2B marketing dreams come true, like budgeting at the ad group level and optimizing for pipeline and revenue instead of vanity metrics.

B2B targeting on B2C channels is another reality thanks to MetaMatch, but as exciting as that is, I urge even the most seasoned marketers to refrain from blindly throwing money Mark Zuckerberg’s way.

Facebook and Instagram are two completely different beasts that present unique challenges, thanks primarily to their mobile-first nature. While LinkedIn still sees its fair share of traffic from desktops and laptops, most people (98.5%) use their phones to access Facebook. Even more telling? More than 80% of people use only their phones to scroll Facebook.

What does that mean for you? The conversion path for your target audience—and how they engage with your ads—on Meta-owned channels is entirely different from that on LinkedIn. It’s up to you to evolve your strategy accordingly.

That means saying goodbye to easy conversions with long-ass forms because nobody fills them out on their phones.

You can also trade those 16:9 ads that look great on desktops for their 9:16 counterparts that blend naturally into mobile feeds.

You should also lean into video ads since Facebook and Instagram both have such a fondness for interactive content lately.

And what about nurturing the leads? Should you treat a lead from Facebook or Instagram the same as one from LinkedIn? Most B2B marketers would say no, but I’d argue they should go to the front of the line because you can bet your bottom dollar that someone raising their hand on a “personal channel” is doing so with intent.

If you’re getting ready to move some of your budget to Facebook and Instagram (or other channels not called LinkedIn), remember this: Facebook and Instagram have distinct requirements, and people using the channels have different expectations. While MetaMatch swings the door open for B2B targeting on these channels, you can’t just walk through it and expect your LinkedIn advertising toolkit to work. That’s a recipe for disaster and a ton of wasted ad spend.

How B2B marketing pros think about audience building and segmentation

Someone new to B2B marketing—a rookie, if you will—will build audiences to reach the biggest chunk of their total addressable audience (TAM).

On the flip side, a B2B marketing pro will segment their addressable audience and personalize the ads to each segment’s unique needs and pain points.

How? By thinking about their audiences in three buckets:

• Zero-party: People using their product, i.e., customers
• First-party: People visiting their website or on their email list
• Second-party: People from partnerships with companies like G2

Third-party data is in the picture, too, but it plays a different role in audience-building. Unlike the above data types, which come from those who already know you, third-party data comes from unfamiliar faces.

It still has value, though—you just have to do a little work. I like to think of third-party data as a giant mountain of coal with gold nuggets scattered around. But to get those gold nuggets, you have to carve into the mountain (read: test audience segments and run paid experiments).

So, instead of targeting every Chief Executive Officer, you carve into the mountain of third-party data and pull out Directors at companies with 100+ people who also use HubSpot. Then, you can experiment with these segments. If the segment responds to your ad (you struck gold), keep using them. On the other hand, if the segments don’t do anything for your bottom line (you struck coal), chuck them and test another slice of the mountain.

Now you have all the data you need to set the ultimate honeytrap for your audience—like I did with this ad of me using Metadata. I created the ad in less than five minutes with about an ounce of energy and not a penny of my budget.

While I’ll admit the ad is rough around the edges, it generated revenue.

Seriously.

My audience (built with MetaMatch) was spot on and delivered something of value to that customer. This ad proves you don’t need a fancy production studio or a blank check to hit all of your goals; you just need to target the right people with the right offer. Frankly, the rest is bullshit.

Zingtree’s Marketing team also set a honeytrap by pairing a combination of technographic, intent, and eCommerce data with account and contact list uploads and dynamic Salesforce audiences. And guess what? They closed a deal sourced from one of these audiences within the first 30 days.

Two pieces of advice I give to every B2B marketer

As much as I appreciate Taylor Swift for not giving unsolicited advice, I’m going to blaze my own trail and leave you with two pieces of advice that I think will help you be a better B2B marketer.

1. Talk to B2C marketers

I don’t want to say B2B marketers look down on B2C marketers, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear someone say that in the cafeteria (aka, LinkedIn). For whatever reason, B2B marketing is often put in a brighter light than B2C because it’s harder, and B2B buyers are so much more complex.

I don’t want to hear it. Find the closest B2C marketer and ask them about a typical day, including how they:

• Build audiences
• Optimize messages and bids
• Improve conversions

Most importantly, ask them how their bosses measure their success.

I’d argue it’s just as challenging in B2C land as it is in B2B. Their success is tied to revenue, just like the Sales team, which is why it’s common to see B2C marketers on edge at the end of every quarter.

Now compare those answers to the way you build audiences, measure success, and so on. I’m not a betting man, but I’d put down a good chunk of change that you’ll feel a lot better about yourself. Talking to a B2C marketer is a great way to put things in perspective, think outside the confines of the “prestigious” B2B world, and realize it’s nuts that we’re still complaining about third-party cookies going away.

2. Find your marketing identity and stick to it

Behind Door #1 is sales-led growth (SLG), and behind Door #2 is product-led growth (PLG). You can only walk through one. Which one do you choose?

I know how easy it can be to embrace a do-it-all mindset or search for leads under every rock. Please don’t. I realize times are tough and the economy is putting pressure on your budget, but you don’t need to invest in every marketing motion. You just need one.

Figure out which identity works best for your team (and business model), and commit to the bit by investing all your resources into succeeding. Be patient, embrace your strategy, build on that foundation, and the growth will come.

Want to learn more about how MetaMatch can help you build better audiences? Try it for free today.