General Motors just pulled $10 million of advertising from Facebook because it wasn’t working.
Would you like to know why?
It’s because Facebook is a bad environment for selling commodity items like cars.
See for yourself: Go to www.IsFBforMe.com and plug in the answers for GM. GM gets a 4 out of 10, a pretty low score. General Motors should have consulted my free web tool before they blew their $10 million.
What works in Facebook advertising? Let’s compare it to Google:
- Google is about the itch you’re trying to scratch today. Facebook is about your identity, the tribes you belong to and your culture.
- Google is the Yellow Pages. Facebook is the Coffee Shop.
- People go to Google to make decisions. People go to Facebook to avoid making decisions.
So how do you sell cars on Facebook?
Well, think of it this way. If you put a car on display in a coffee shop, what kind of car would it need to be for customers to not get an “aw yuck” reaction?
I bet a 1934 Ford Street rod would look really cool in a coffee shop. It would probably also sell well on Facebook.
If the cars you sell are a form of escapism, you can sell your cars there. Facebook is a good place to advertise Mini-Coopers and VW Bugs and Corvettes.
But Facebook is a bad place to sell Ford Escorts and Buicks and Toyota Corollas. Ho-hum.
Whatever you sell on Facebook, it has to have personality. Make your product an escape from the humdrum and it’ll have a fighting chance on Facebook.
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
5 Comments on “The Real Reason Why General Motors Pulled Their Ads from Facebook”
I wonder if Real Estate services are a good product to market on Facebook?
Never thought about that before, really valuable advice. Thanks Perry. :) Will definitely buy your book.
But the Fiesta is different! Believe it or not. Shake ’em up marketing can work for it…and seems like it may be…
Except Ford — the 6th largest advertiser in the world — is doubling-down their Facebook advertising, and they’re advertising the Ford Fiesta largely through Facebook and linked-up YouTube and Twitter events.
It’s not that Facebook is necessarily the wrong place to sell cars, as Ford is proving — it’s just the wrong place to ADVERTISE cars.
Thanks for the great advice, as usual. I used your points on a yahoo finance message board thread that was attacking facebook for how ineffective the advertising was vs. google.
And as you’ve mentioned before, FB is a place to try and get their attention, get them to opt in, and sell them later.
Neil