B2B · Meta lead generation
Set up a B2B lead generation campaign on Meta.
Answer ten questions about your deal size, sales cycle, CRM and tracking. You get the objective to run, the conversion event to optimise for, the audience shape your addressable market supports, and the lead-quality controls that stop sales receiving rubbish.
Built by Jonas Sluijs, former Meta growth lead, $500M+ in ad spend.
What this is not. It does not connect to your ad account or your CRM. It applies B2B campaign rules to the numbers you type. Deal values, cycle lengths and close rates vary hugely by market, so treat the output as a starting structure and confirm the economics against your own pipeline. For a plan built on your real numbers, book a free strategy call.
How B2B on Meta differs from ecommerce
Ecommerce gives Meta a purchase event within minutes, at a known value. B2B gives it a form fill, whose real value is unknown for weeks and is often zero. Optimise for that form fill and the algorithm does exactly what you asked: it finds the people most likely to fill in forms, which is not the same population as people likely to buy.
That single gap causes most B2B Meta failures. The fix is to send a later, rarer, truer event back to Meta, so it optimises toward pipeline rather than paperwork. Everything else in the setup follows from that decision.
The event hierarchy, best first
| Event sent back to Meta | When it works |
|---|---|
| Closed won, with deal value | Rarely achievable. Needs enough closed deals to hit the weekly optimisation threshold, and a cycle short enough for the signal to arrive in time |
| Sales qualified lead | The usual right answer. Rare enough to mean something, frequent enough to learn from |
| Marketing qualified lead | Low volume accounts that cannot feed anything further down |
| Raw form fill | Only to start. Move off it as soon as you have qualification data |
Sending these back needs a server-side connection from your CRM. The Conversions API guide covers how, and event match quality covers making the events actually match a person.
Why addressable audience size decides structure
B2B targeting is usually far narrower than consumer targeting, and narrow audiences on Meta get expensive fast. Frequency climbs, the same people see the same ad repeatedly, and cost per lead rises even though nothing about the campaign changed. Under roughly 50,000 addressable people you should expect to refresh creative often and accept a higher CPM. See frequency up, reach down.
Common questions
Should I use Instant Forms or send people to a landing page?
Instant Forms produce more leads at a lower cost per lead and lower intent, because nobody leaves Facebook. Landing pages produce fewer, better leads. If your sales team is the bottleneck, use a landing page or add qualifying questions to the Instant Form. If you need volume to learn from, start with Instant Forms and tighten later.
My leads are junk. What do I change first?
Before touching targeting, check what event you optimise for. Optimising for form fills selects for form fillers. Send a qualified-lead event back from your CRM and let the algorithm optimise toward that instead. Then add friction to the form. The low quality leads guide works through it in order, and spam or fake leads covers the case where they are not real people at all.
Why does Meta report more leads than my CRM?
Usually attribution windows and deduplication rather than lost leads. Meta counts a lead in the window in which the click happened; your CRM counts it when the record was created, which can be a different day, and a lead reaching your CRM twice may be counted once. The Meta versus CRM guide covers reconciling the two.
What budget does B2B on Meta need?
Enough for the optimisation event to fire often enough to learn. Meta wants around 50 conversions per ad set per week to leave the learning phase. If a qualified lead costs €300, that is €15,000 a week for one ad set, which is why most B2B accounts optimise for a cheaper, earlier event instead. With a long sales cycle and a high deal value you can justify it. With a €5k deal value you often cannot, and the honest answer is a different channel. See minimum budget and learning limited.
Does this connect to my CRM or ad account?
No. There is no login, no OAuth and no integration. It applies B2B campaign rules to the numbers you type on this page. Nothing is read from your systems and nothing is written to them.