Just days before Facebook’s stock hit the market, General Motors’ decided to pull $10 million dollars of their advertising budget. This decision has led some to believe that Facebook’s advertising service may not be strong. However, the advertising service brings in a billion dollars per quarter in ads, so their main concern was not that GM pulled their money but the timing of the publicity before Facebook’s IPO release. One of the reasons for the budget change may be related to other consolidations of GM’s global advertising and marketing spending by chief marketing officer Joel Ewanick as reported in The Business Insider.
Here at Pro Marketing Matters we agree with much of the analysis in the article and suspect that it’s not so much that Facebook ads were not performing but that they were not integrated into a comprehensive plan designed to reach GM’s fans using the Facebook platform. It was likely a smart decision to pull back, reevaluate, plan and take a new approach. We see GM coming back to Facebook.
When using any marketing medium, but especially social media you want to make sure you know your target audience and build a strategy catered to their interests and the time of day they are online. Build a community first. There are many ways to reach people on Facebook without spending any money. After building a solid base then consider paid advertising based on your knowledge of how your community interacts with your brand.