How many of us buy motor oil at Disneyland?
We’ll buy souvenirs, food and pictures at The Magic Kingdom, but probably, not motor oil if it were pitched to us. Why? Because it’s the last thing we expect to do in an entertainment venue like Disneyland. Our goal and objective entering Disneyland is to have fun and buy items related to achieving that experience. I don’t know how you have fun at Disneyland, but I’ll bet motor oil is not germane to that experience. So why would I buy, much less click on, GM ads that seem more like a distraction from my experience of social connecting?
For GM and some other frustrated Facebook advertisers, that’s the problem. Sure Facebook has 900 million users. Most of them are logging on to connect with friends or around certain group interests. Facebook is mentally positioned in most of our minds as the Disneyland of social connections. NOT Pep Boys. When you run a Facebook ad for cars or another off-topic item, you’re doing the same as selling motor oil at Disneyland.
Even if you use Facebook-collected data to market and expose your message to the right demographic, the timing is still wrong to my current objective in logging into Facebook–social connection. If I’m about to fall off a cliff, an offer to get a free diamond is not a priority right them. Life insurance might be. But a non-experience aligned message doesn’t translate in to the immediate motivation for people to click through a Facebook ad.
Forum is important. That’s the reason why Google adwords are often more effective than similarly formatted Facebook ads. Google ads are timed and exposed to people who are, at the moment, actively searching for keywords around a certain product. If I’m looking for motor oil, I’m likely more open to looking at your motor oil ad.
How does Facebook solve this problem for all the hesitant GMs of the world?
Focus less on immediate ads that demand click-through for product consideration and use profile data to craft and offer incentives to take action or next steps.
In the case of GM, I’m likely not going to buy a car today-especially while logging on to tell my friends my daughter rocked in the school play. But if while I do that, I see a message or ad that offers a time-sensitive opportunity to see rarely seen concept car models, or win special discounts on my next GM car by joining GM’s Facebook page, you might make me take a few sections to act on an interesting, urgent but lower-level demand.
GM should regroup rather than run from Facebook. Facebook ads are not a bad idea. Expecting users to click on ads not considerate of their desired experience is.
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Brooks Richey
Strategist, Writer and Author of the Book “Does This News Make Me Look Fat”