How to Target Business Owners on Facebook: Step-by-Step Guide

Facebook is still one of the best ways to connect with business owners in 2025. Despite newer social networks, Facebook’s targeting options, massive user base and ad formats make it a must have tool for B2B marketers.

But targeting business owners requires more than just creating ads and hoping for results. Business owners are busy, selective and informed, so your approach needs to be intentional, data driven and value focused.

This article will walk you through the best ways of targeting business owners on Facebook. From advanced audience targeting to content that builds trust and engagement, you’ll get actionable tips to connect with the right audience and achieve your marketing goals.

Why is Facebook Good for B2B in 2025?

These are 6 reasons why businesses should join Facebook:

How to Target Business Owners on Facebook?

To effectively target B2B audiences, you need a comprehensive and multifaceted strategy. This goes beyond a single plan or approach — success in B2B marketing requires brainstorming multiple hypotheses, testing various combinations, and optimizing continuously. Here are top ways how to target businesses on facebook in a more actionable and detailed manner:

1. Apply a complex of steps and strategies

To target business owners with Facebook, you need to take a holistic and multi-faceted approach that involves multiple steps, strategies and continuous testing. It’s not enough to have one plan or one Plan B. You need to brainstorm and develop multiple hypotheses, scenarios and variations to cover all bases. The B2B space is diverse, different industries, company sizes and decision making processes so a one size fits all approach won’t give you the best results.

Start by analysing your business objectives and understanding the unique challenges of your target audience. Consider the diversity of the B2B space — some businesses will prioritise cost efficiency, others will value innovation or scalability. By listing all your hypotheses you can explore different strategies such as targeting different customer segments, testing different messaging or trying multiple marketing channels.

2. Write down the portrait of your ICP

The most important step in targeting B2B Facebook audiences is to create a detailed and accurate portrait of your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This means creating a full picture of your target user, not just basic demographics but deeper insights into their professional and personal traits. You may have multiple ICPs depending on the products or services you offer and the industries and roles you are targeting.

The best decision is to ask yourself: Who are they? Are they business owners, executives, department heads or decision makers within a company? What industries do they work in and what kind of businesses do they own or manage? What size of company are they in terms of revenue, number of employees or geographic reach.

Next, dig deeper into their demographics and background. Don’t stop at professional details — explore their technological preferences and tools. Also, consider their everyday habits, preferences and behaviors.

By taking the time to create a detailed, multi-dimensional profile of your ICP, you’ll be able to create more personalized, targeted and effective marketing campaigns. Each ICP should be a roadmap that guides your decisions on messaging, content, channels and even product development so your efforts align with your ideal customers.

3. Use Facebook’s detailed ad targeting options

To hit your B2B audience hard, use Facebook’s targeting options. It is super powerful and lets you reach specific groups of people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. This goes beyond basic demographics and gets into deeper insights like interests, behaviors and professional details.

Start by identifying interests that align with your target audience’s needs and goals. For example if your product or service is for entrepreneurs or small business owners you can select interests like “entrepreneurship”, “small business”, “startups” or even “business development”. These categories target people who are actively growing their business or looking to improve their operations.

For more niche targeting focus on industry specific interests. If your product is for a specific industry like healthcare, technology, education or real estate you can select interests related to that industry. For example if you’re targeting real estate professionals you might select interests like “real estate investing”, “property management” or “real estate marketing”. If you run Dating campaigns, you may check our article “Facebook Ads for Dating: Tips and Best Practices”.

What is more, you may use Facebook’s ability to target audiences based on behaviors and professional attributes. For example:

• Use job titles like “CEO”, “Founder”, “Business Owner” or “Managing Director” to target decision makers within businesses;
• Narrow down by business size if applicable and target small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) or larger companies;
• Select behaviors that indicate professional activity like frequent travelers (who often attend business meetings or conferences) or users of specific business tools.

By using Facebook’s targeting options thoughtfully and strategically you can create campaigns that will resonate with your audience, drive engagement and achieve your business goals.

4. Target by job titles

As we’ve already mentioned, it’s necessary to target B2B audiences on Facebook focusing on job titles. This way your campaigns will reach the exact decision makers or influential professionals who will benefit the most from your product or service.

Start by targeting job titles that match your ideal customer roles. For example if your product or service is aimed at high level decision makers you can target titles like “Business Owner”, “CEO”, “Founder”, “Managing Director” or “President”. These titles usually represent individuals with the authority to make purchasing decisions for their company. If your offering is more relevant to middle management or operational roles you can target titles like “Marketing Manager”, “Operations Manager”, “IT Director” or “HR Specialist”.

5. Target to lookalike audiences

One way to expand your B2B reach and find new customers is to create a lookalike audience using your existing business contacts. This uses the data you already have — email lists, CRM data, customer databases — to find people who are similar to your current customers. By targeting these lookalike audiences you’ll increase the chances of reaching people who are more likely to be interested in your product or service.

To get started upload your existing business contacts to the ad platform (e.g. Facebook Ads Manager). This should include email addresses, phone numbers or other identifiers. The platform will then match your data with its user database to create a custom audience. From this custom audience the platform will create a lookalike audience of users who are similar to your existing customers — demographics, job titles, purchasing behaviour, digital activity patterns etc.

6. Retarget Warm Business Owners

Retarget people who have already visited your website, especially business owners or decision makers. This uses retargeting technology like the Facebook Pixel to track and engage with people who have shown interest in your business but haven’t converted yet. By targeting this warm audience you can turn website visitors into leads or customers.

7. Explore your competitors

Find your competitors in your niche and look at their audience engagement. Look at the content they post, their followers demographics and the engagement they get. By knowing who is engaging with your competitors you can find potential customers that may be interested in your products or services.

Once you have this information, tailor your Facebook ads to these specific audiences. Use Facebook’s targeting options to reach people and businesses that are similar to your competitors’ followers. We’ve already mentioned this in the paragraph “Use Facebook’s detailed targeting”.

8. Use relevant ad copies and visuals

When you’re advertising on Facebook for B2B, you need to create ad copy and visuals that speak to the specific needs and pain points of your audience. Understand the challenges businesses face in your industry and address them in your messaging.

Use simple language that talks to decision makers, explaining how your product or service can solve and deliver value. And use professional and relevant visuals that show your offer in a way that appeals to businesses.

Whether it’s through infographics, videos or images, make sure your visuals match your ad copy and your brand. By matching your content to your audience’s interests and needs you’ll get more engagement and better results.

Short video content, like Facebook Reels, is taking off and is a great way to get attention. Business owners are scrolling for inspiration or advice, so this format is perfect for:

• Quick business tips or hacks;
• Product demos;
• Testimonials or success stories.

Reels are loved by Facebook algorithms so they’ll show up in users’ feeds organically.

9. Share cases and reviews

Sharing real life case studies and customer reviews is a great way to build trust in your B2B Facebook marketing. Don’t be afraid to share successes and failures; being transparent shows you’re authentic and committed to growth.

By showing how you’ve navigated challenges or learned from mistakes you’re showing you can adapt and stay in tune with your clients needs. This resonates with potential customers and positions your brand as relatable and knowledgeable.

10. Test with different business audiences

To get the most out of your B2B Facebook ads, you need to test across different business audiences. Try different combinations of interests, demographics and creative assets to see what works best for your target market.

Start by segmenting your audience by specific characteristics like industry, company size or job titles. This will allow you to tailor your message more. Also try behavioral habits like frequent travelers or businesses that do international trade. You can combine these audience segments to increase your reach and relevance.

By testing these combinations you’ll get valuable insights into what works best for engagement and conversions. This iterative approach will refine your targeting and help you create ad content that speaks directly to each audience segment.

11. Key tip

Experiment, be different — use different tones of voices to see what resonates best!