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GM Pulls Ads From Facebook

GM Pulls Ads From Facebook

On Tuesday, General Motors pulled its ads from Facebook.
 
The auto giant had a $10 million ad buy on the site, a tiny fraction of GM's $4 billion global ad budget; but after determining their ads had little impact, they walked away from paid Facebook advertising. GM will continue to promote its products on Facebook using free business pages.
 
In light of Facebook's IPO, the incident has sparked questions about the limits of Facebook advertising, and whether other companies will follow GM's lead.
 
What does this mean for you?
 
Keep an eye on how your marketing dollars are working, and always be flexible in your strategy. GM is one of the world's biggest brands, but their pulling out of Facebook is no different than a property manager canceling an underperforming ILS listing. Our experience with Facebook ads is similar to GM's, and we think your budget is better spent in SEO, Google AdWords or content development. But your results may differ, and you don't know until you try it out.
GM's new Facebook plan -- focusing on their business page as a customer service portal -- is what we recommend to our clients. Our metrics show that this, combined with a dynamic marketing strategy elsewhere, is the strongest course of action.

 
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I'm becoming less bullish on Fan Pages, as well. Facebook already doesn't like Pages, as evidenced by their constant removal of functionality, and this news is a clear marker that their own Pages compete with their advertising, which means they will probably make it even more difficult for Pages to be successful.

Not only that, but specifically for apartment communities, the goals are quite different than a larger brand like GM. We want our residents to connect together directly, so the communication flow must not just be Page to fan, but also fan to fan. And Pages simply do not facilitate that very well.

Previously, everybody wanted to jump on FB because that's where their audience was and it was free, but as it becomes harder and harder to engage with that audience, it potentially becomes less of a constructive use of time, in my opinion...

  Brent Williams
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Thanks for your comment, Brent. I have always expressed caution about having a Facebook-only strategy. I don't see why everyone doesn't want to to drive traffic and build engagement on their own proprietary web assets.

That said, we have seen a handful of cases where there is a huge amount of activity on Facebook pages. In these cases, residents are using Facebook walls like virtual bulletin boards. Interestingly, one community had to urge people to stop submitting maintenance requests on Facebook. It's the exception, not the rule, but the metric support the fact that some residents prefer to communicate via Facebook.

That said, I agree with you. I think many people have unrealistic expectations about Facebook. That may be where the people are, but if I am anything like the average user, they are mainly there to see what their friends are up to.

  Ellen Thompson
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Wow great advice around using ones facebook page as a customer service portal... that is spot-on. I'm suprised more companies aren't doing that.

That is awesome, thank you.

  Lippi
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Thanks, Lippi. I think the industry's mindset about Facebook is moving in that direction.

  Ellen Thompson
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I agree. SEO is a great option rather than hoping the results bring your company into the top 3% of results. Probably a better value per $$$$.

  Steve Dicker

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