How to Target Developers with Facebook Ads

In the event of a growing number of tech start-ups, entrepreneurship, small business owners and independent developers, there’s a vast audience sector opening up for marketing.

What is B2D marketing?

B2D marketing (business-to-developers) means a set of activities aimed at promoting and selling products to developers.

As multiple companies in various industries already use software development products (financial sector, healthcare, banking etc), B2D marketing is growing every month.

B2D tips and tricks

Targeting developers is not always easy, and there are certain hacks you may need to know before to focus on B2D marketing:

• Quite often developers work independently for a company. It means targeting this company owner or its development team should be done from different ends (sometimes they are even located in different countries);
• Developers don’t like any type of aggressive marketing. They clearly see the intention to sell and promote goods to them. And they are unlikely to accept this kind of marketing;
• In order to target developers, it is important to provide a vast range of free utilities and product features to let them play with them and make their choice;
• Engaging developers into learning courses may be also a good way to raise brand awareness and get them as future clients;
• In any case, providing interesting and free activities, online, desktop and mobile tools, platforms, courses, conferences, and online meetings – that is a good way to become successful in B2D marketing.

B2D social media marketing

Developers are not well-targeted on common social media. Among the most popular social media networks, probably the best ones to target them are LinkedIn and Twitter.

However, if you’d like to focus your effort and make it straightforward, it is even better to keep track of developer-specific platforms such as Stackoverflow, GitHub and others.

How to Target Developers with Facebook Ads

Why you might need Facebook Ads for developers targeting? This is a good way to check tendencies for new tools and interests as Facebook provides fast results and good audience targeting. The experiment costs can be relatively cheap if you set proper audience options.

What is the best targeting for a software development audience?

1. Interested in Software Targeting

If you like to have a broader targeting on those who are interested and involved in software development activities, you may choose the following interests:

• Software development;
• Software engineering;
• Free Software;
• Network storage;
• Hard drives;
• Software;
• Computer memory;
• Computer servers;
• Computer processors;
• Computer monitors;
• Tablet computers;
• Desktop computers;
• Mobile phones.

You may also tighten up this broad audience by setting a restricting “and” condition and specifying “jobs” of the targeted people. The job may include:

• Web developer;
• Google developers;
• .NET developer;
• Java developer;
• And others.

If you intend to sell goods that you promote on Facebook, it is good to target people with a purchasing behavior, for example:

• Engaged shoppers.

2. Involved in IT Sector Targeting

Sometimes you need a more diverse audience for testing and targeting. If the products you sell are made not only for developers but also for people on different jobs in the IT sector, it would be convenient to focus on those people.

Here are a few interests you might target in this case:

• Information technology;
• Smart technologies;
• GPS devices;
• Projectors;
• Televisions;
• Smartphones;
• Cameras;
• Portable media players;
• Free software;
• Hard drives;
• Computer memory;
• Network storage;
• Audio equipment;
• Game consoles;
• Software or E-book readers;
• Camcorders;
• Computer servers;
• Computer processors;
• Computer monitors;
• Tablet computers;
• Desktop computers.

Specifying the industry will also help to focus the right people:

• IT and Technical Services;

Behaviors:

• Small business owners;
• Facebook admins.

The last 2 targeting options will group people who own or manage a company website. If you add interests “and” industries (not “or”), it will restrict the audience and make it more straightforward.

And of course, if needed, focus on the purchasing behavior:

• Engaged shoppers.

3. Small Business Owners Targeting

Using the targeting explained below, you will pick start-up owners, independent business owners or company website managers.

Interests:

• Business owners;

Behaviors:

• Small business owners;
• Technology early adopters;
• Facebook Page admins.

Job Title:

• Business Owner/Engineer.

You may use the following targeting options with “or”/”and” depending on how broad your audience should be and what kind of people you’d like to target.

Adding “Engaged shoppers” behavior will help you define people ready to make a purchase.

Conclusion:

We’ve examined a few Facebook targeting options for B2D (and B2C) marketing. You can choose any of the proposed variations for your project experiments. The most important is to define the goal, the audience type you need and the budget you’d like to spend.