GM Says “No Thanks” to Facebook Advertising
May 24th, 2012 by Bob Bly
Stephen Booser sent me an e-mail today in which he notes that GM has pulled its advertising program out of Facebook due to lack of results.
“Could this be the beginning of a realization by those who have things to sell that they have been sold a bill of goods by the young marketers most of whom, it seems to me, have never asked a closing question in their lives?” he asks rhetorically.
He suggests that “social” is not a synonym for “sell.” I believe the trendy marketing imperative of “having a conversation” is not the same as “selling a product.” In fact, having a conversation may be the fall-back position for those marketers who don’t know how to sell.
Your thoughts?
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2012 at 10:01 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 24th, 2012 at 8:50 pm
Hear, hear Bob. At last someone’s had the guts to point out the emperor is mightily underdressed…
May 25th, 2012 at 5:31 pm
or maybe GM’s marketing team is incompetent re social media. It works for others.
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May 29th, 2012 at 10:53 am
Ivan: Who does it work for? What are their sales from it?
May 29th, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Getting “Likes” and giving away freebies doesn’t pay the bills. Did I just repeat myself from another post?
May 29th, 2012 at 5:16 pm
And I might also add: You can talk yourself right out of a sale. I’ve seen poor sales people do it all the time.
This hip notion that “having a conversation” just wastes a prospects valuable time. So much for Social Media being a marketing mechanism.
June 5th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
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August 16th, 2012 at 1:43 am
Introduce new product with attractive ad in FB captures the attention of most of the users, in that sense Facebook advertisement is good.
August 23rd, 2012 at 1:15 pm
I don’t blame them at all. Facebook is a testy media. Most of the people on it are not necessarily the people who are looking for new cars. Cars sales are pushed through word of mouth more than anything. I personally own Subarus and will talk them up until I’m blue in the face. Conversely I’ve owned two fords and I will never purchase them again and if asked I will tell anyone why I wouldn’t purchase them again. I feel car sales are a personal experience type of sale and no amount of facebook likes or updates are going to ever beat word of mouth references and test drives. Facebook marketing isn’t for everyone.
September 5th, 2012 at 4:42 am
Yes, I agree Facebook marketing isn’t for everyone. There might some ads that won’t be suitable to all Facebook users.
October 14th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
I agree with Jim (above) – intuitively I knew the people on Facebook or other “social media” sites were typically the younger folks doing the posting – Word of mouth is by far the best “selling” done either online or off.
Good for GM – we dropped our social media marketing a long time ago – who we found using these apps are our competitors and rarely the customer looking for our products/services.
January 25th, 2013 at 12:48 pm
I haven’t done any Facebook ads on the OEM level, but I have on the dealership level and while it’s not always perfect science we seem to do pretty good.
For instance I did an ad in a city in New York on both Facebook and Adwords. It was for the Lincoln Navigator and both ads had the same copy. I set it for a 20 mile radius and the ad on Facebook had double the number of clicks. The conversion rate was less but it sold more vehicles than the Google ad. Also, since the clicks were less both ads spent roughly the same amount so as for as an ROI standpoint the Facebook ad was better.
April 7th, 2013 at 11:46 am
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate your efforts and
I am waiting for your next post thank you once again.