B2C brands, the ones we passionately love and personally identify with, have nailed the ability to build an emotional connection with their customers.

While this has historically been easier for B2C marketers due to the nature of the content and level of customer interaction, times are changing. It’s no longer sales who makes us fall in love with the brand. By the time a prospect reaches sales, in fact, they're already 57% of the way through the decision-making process. It's up to the marketer to make sure they’re in love with and educated about the brand -- just like in B2C.

To help you get started, here are four key B2C plays every B2B marketer should borrow:

1. Know your target audience.

It's not rocket science — the better you know who your audience is, the better you can target them, and the more effective your advertising will be. Of (B2B and B2C combined) high-performing marketers, 83% are using CRM to power their digital advertising, and advertisers with CRM-powered advertising on Facebook had a 47% higher engagement rate than those with just standard targeting, according to the Salesforce Advertising Index Q1 2017 report.

Now you may be thinking, “how do I find my customers on Facebook if all I have is their work email or phone number (likely not associated with their Facebook account)”? Fear not. Just map the fields you know -- including email, phone, name, and location -- to Facebook, and Facebook Advanced Match will take care of the rest!

By using your customer (CRM) data to inform your digital advertising campaigns, you'll be able to use what you know (such as email, sales, or service interactions) to message them accordingly, as well as drive always-on lead generation. For example, if you want to find new leads who are similar to your best customers, just sync an audience of your existing most passionate advocates from Salesforce to Facebook to build a lookalike audience across Facebook’s 1.8B global users, and augmented with demographic, location, interest, and/or market category data.

2. Capture leads right from Facebook.

Getting people to fill out a form, especially on mobile, has always been tricky. What many retailers, e-commerce businesses, and even car dealerships, have had great success with, however, is using Facebook lead ads to capture sign ups.

With Facebook lead ads, you can increase sign-ups (i.e. for a webinar, white paper, or demo) by reducing the friction of filling out a form on mobile. Whether you're targeting an existing customer or prospect with a Lookalike Audience, Facebook will automatically fill out the form with information a user has already given to the platform, like their name, email, phone number, or any other information you've synced from your CRM.

Additionally, using the Salesforce Lead Capture App, you can send leads directly from Facebook lead ads into Salesforce, automatically and in real-time.

3. Reach your customers where they are.

I'm sure you've noticed that whenever {insert favorite consumer brand here} has a promotion going, you usually see it advertised on more than one channel. Maybe you receive an email about it, then see an ad on Facebook or a clip on YouTube. And if the given product/service is relevant to you, it’s an effective strategy!

We don't see this happen with B2B brands, but we should. This tactic isn’t just for B2C brands or for big promotions. It can be extremely effective in nurture, re-engagement, or upsell campaigns as well because, let’s face it, even the best performing emails aren’t being seen by everyone you’re targeting. By coordinating email and ad campaigns, brands are able to reach 77% more subscribers and increase intent to purchase. People who see a message as both an email and ad are 22% more likely to make a purchase than someone who just sees the email. Not too shabby!

4. Draw prospects to you from where they already are.

For both consumers and business buyers, search (i.e. Google) is the go-to starting point for gaining more information about a product or service. Ninety percent of B2B buyers use search specifically to research business purchases and conduct an average of 12 searches prior to visiting a specific brand's site.

B2B marketers can and should take advantage of advanced search targeting options to optimize bidding and customize ads based on where the researcher is in their purchasing journey.

If an existing customer searches for your product/service, for example, you don’t want to bid the same amount for the ad as you would for a prospect. You also wouldn’t want to show them the same message. By leveraging your CRM data, you can suppress acquisition ads to existing customers, as well as serve them relevant up-sell ads based on their profile.

In Closing...

Customer experience starts at the very first touchpoint a customer has with your brand. As the marketer, you have the power to use CRM data and the tools (custom audiences, advanced match, lookalikes, lead ads, search ads, marketing automation) at hand to make 1-1 customer experience your competitive advantage. By doing so, you'll not only build an emotional connection with your customer -- like the best B2C brands -- you'll drive more high-quality leads to your sales team.