General Motors, Facebook and IPO

Have you heard that General Motors Co. plans to stop advertising with Facebook?

GM announced that paid ads on Facebook have ‘Little impact on consumers’. The move by GM, one of the largest advertisers in the U.S., puts a spotlight on an issue that many marketers have been raising: whether ads on Facebook help them sell more products.

On Friday the 18^th, Facebook is expected to sell shares in an initial public offering (IPO) that could put a market value on the company of as much as $104 billion. This to me highlights questions such as why would GM do that right before the IPO? People who were interested in this issue were wondering why they haven’t seen any GM ads on Facebook.

How come GM didn’t showcase their story? This is what I think… Social media starts with strategy, and ends with strategy. You can never blame a medium for the failure of your objective. If you had as little as 10 dollars and want to reach your objective whether through social media or traditional media, then YOU WILL. It all goes down to this, an equipped team that is professional enough to understand the brand and understand how to communicate it across. Facebook advertising gives you the benefit of targeting the exact audience.

From a social media specialist point of view, Facebook advertising is more precise to reach the audience needed than any other social media platform, and definitely more accurate than traditional media. At the end of the day and as we get close to the IPO of Facebook, if companies are trying to teach Facebook a lesson by publishing stories that have no proper leads and evidence then they are only hurting their own reputation. It is important for companies to think first and foremost about their reputation before pointing the finger on an intangible medium.