Google Hates You and GM is Stupid
I spoke at a conference this week about affiliate marketing. I did my thing about digital reputation development and it was well received. Much thanks to the organizers for hosting me. Hanging out with those folks got me thinking. Add in the news story about GM pulling their paid Facebook ads and my mind is a smorgasbord of ideas.
The affiliate marketing audience focuses heavily on search engine optimization and traffic – driving huge numbers to their paid advertisements and appearing as high up on the page as possible in organic (non-paid) search. Sounds a lot like traditional advertising, doesn’t it?
When I gave my talk, fewer than half of them had ever googled their own name (so had done little to build up their own digital reputation – unlike the very most successful guys in the biz) and nearly none of them had heard of the Long Tail or network theory/science. They didn’t seem to know that Google is using contextual filtering. They were particularly angry about Penguins and Pandas. Hmmm….they schlepping through the numbers and not noticing the environment that is shifting around them.
The first day of the conference, GM released info about pulling ads from Facebook. Many a PR, media, and blogging prognosticator are giving their point of view and I, frankly, am not in the mood to mince words – GM is being a bonehead. Whether they are looking to renegotiate their ad spend budget and using Facebook as a sacrificial lamb, or worried about lack of metrics tracking, or just…who knows. My evil twin thinks the truth is not out.
Asserting that they (GM) have effective content and it’s just that Facebook is a bad platform…well, it makes me wonder. Their stuff seems kind of friendly, but for me, it feels contrived. They seem to inherently still be thinking social media is a media buy and an advertising stream. Much like the affiliate marketers, they are schlepping through the numbers and not noticing the ground shifting. You have to actually care, not just post things that seem warm and fuzzy. It might be intangible and I could be wrong, but I don’t feel the social media love (even though I am a hardcore Chevy fan).
Rather than assert what I think further, I want to ask you: Love or hate Google? Like how they’re serving you and doing their thing? Is your advertising PPC budget taking a hit from the changes happening over the last few months? Do you even notice or care?
And what about GM? Are they brilliant or bonehead for pulling their paid ads on Facebook (or something in between)? I want to hear what you have to say. Add in your comments and commentary below. What say ye?
Vicki
[graphic by epSos.de]
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If nobody clicks on the ads, or if it doesn’t lead to a sale at some point, what’s the point of spending all that money? GM can still keep the free pages, still post stuff, still engage (if that’s what they’re doing), etc etc etc. But if the click-through rates aren’t translating into revenue, or even into projected revenue, then it’s a waste of money. Plain and simple.
Nobody says they can’t change their minds later… if they want to.
Agreed, Donna – if the points you mention are in fact true. I wish they would confess the more likely truth – for example, “we don’t understand our customer’s buying cycle anymore and the triggers that actually work”, or perhaps “we don’t know how to track an online lead to offline conversion accurately”, or even “we don’t engage like loving human beings yet so we need to work on that” – painful, yes to say publicly and maybe not even a good idea to do so, but to say they have good, effective content but FB just doesn’t work? Kind of bogus and chicken-hearted for a leader in the industry.
If I were a betting woman, I’d put odds on the idea that they will return to FB ads, b/c the organic thing is not what they do very well. It will fun to watch.
Thanks for dropping by. You are absolutely right, though. Please don’t let my rebuttal muddy that point – if it isn’t actually working stop doing it. Agreed. My issue is only that they don’t actually know if it’s working or not b/c they haven’t spent the time to know their sales funnel and their customer very much. You can bet they wouldn’t be belly-aching about FB not providing them with the proper metrics if they already had them.
Vicki
Our public policy research organization (Mineta Transportation Institute) uses Facebook every day, and I’m still trying to figure it out. (I know my personal pages are effective.) The best response seems to come from the silly “photo of the day” that I post, and the polls. I’d hoped those items would attract people to the page, where they then would read about the cool things we do, along with the material we post that other people are doing. Does it work? I dunno. They aren’t commenting much on the “serious” stuff.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s wasted effort. But our web site numbers are going through the roof. So maybe there is a correlation. I don’t have the bandwidth to check our Google Analytics to see if visitors are coming in from Facebook.
We do it because it’s what everyone else is doing. So why not?
Thanks for the response.
I love both your open mind and your no-nonsense approach, Donna. Bridging the sometimes frivolous entertainment feeling of social interaction with serious brand or product messaging can be tough. I think many marketers (myself included) will be well-served going into a social media future becoming really really good at analytics. In the meantime, we experiment in this new field, do our best to find best practices, and continue delving deeper and deeper into connecting why people love us with why they buy from us. I believe it’s possible and am happy to being walking that path with a professional such as yourself.
Thanks for commenting!
Vicki
*high five*