Facebook is probably not as "effective" at large spends as traditional media buys are, but Facebook is an INCREDIBLY lucrative system for advertising and social interaction if dealt with in an intelligent way. I think the problem people are having is the impedence mismatch of treating pull based engagement to traditional push marketing.
Traditional advertising is about pushing people to buy a product like a car or soda. Pull based engagement is more about people seeking you out and your business interacting with them at a time and place of their choosing.
Facebook is a social network, not a shopping mall or yellow pages. Google is more of a yellow pages for most people. I bet GM would be more successful if their $10 million spend went to push local dealerships and created customer to dealer relationships via coupons or creating local car clubs for various brands/models.
Local businesses would be more successful on FB if they treated as a lead gen system to build up their own mailing lists to offer ongoing coupons, sales, information, etc. You know, creating a relationship with them.
The point is, all of this goes against traditional advertising and marketing ideas where you just had to blast out a bunch of ads to TV, Radio, Newspapers, or more recently Google. Buying ads on Facebook isn't about flipping $1 of advertising into $2 in sales. That works for a few niches. For everyone else, use the cheap lead acquisition cost to build a long term relationship. It's harder, but it's WAY more valuable.
Traditional advertising is about pushing people to buy a product like a car or soda. Pull based engagement is more about people seeking you out and your business interacting with them at a time and place of their choosing.
Facebook is a social network, not a shopping mall or yellow pages. Google is more of a yellow pages for most people. I bet GM would be more successful if their $10 million spend went to push local dealerships and created customer to dealer relationships via coupons or creating local car clubs for various brands/models.
Local businesses would be more successful on FB if they treated as a lead gen system to build up their own mailing lists to offer ongoing coupons, sales, information, etc. You know, creating a relationship with them.
The point is, all of this goes against traditional advertising and marketing ideas where you just had to blast out a bunch of ads to TV, Radio, Newspapers, or more recently Google. Buying ads on Facebook isn't about flipping $1 of advertising into $2 in sales. That works for a few niches. For everyone else, use the cheap lead acquisition cost to build a long term relationship. It's harder, but it's WAY more valuable.