Advertising with Facebook

In today's tough economic times, everyone is feeling the financial pinch. A quick and easy way for businesses to "find" extra money is to cut back on marketing and advertising expenses. This is particularly true now. Just the other day, I heard an interesting story on the radio about a local car dealership and their move to implement an advertising strategy with Facebook instead of the more traditional forms they used in the past. This web 2.0 social platform is a much cheaper means to advertise and was the dealership's answer to necessary advertising cuts. From their perspective, Facebook allows the dealership to advertise in a cost effective manner.

Though this move away from more traditional advertising methods to a social networking platform is a progressive answer to tough economic times, I have concerns with using this method in isolation. First, the target audience on Facebook is more likely too narrow to fully rely on and might not capture those customers currently in the market to purchase a vehicle. This phenomenon will no doubt change as more and more people migrate to social networks. Nonetheless, it is still a reality that social networks do not have the same reach as traditional forms of advertising. Second, Facebook enables users to supply comments directly on the dealership's page. This particular feature can definitely be a good thing, but there are also scenarios where user contribution might not be desirable. Negative posts about quality, comments making fun of particular models, or posts that complain about service would actually hinder the desired efforts of the dealership's more progressive form of advertising.

All in all, I feel that advertising with Facebook is a great idea and can produce high returns as compared to the extremely low initial investment. It is important to kind in mind, though, the negative aspects that can result by pursuing this form of advertising, especially if it is in isolation and not coupled with more traditional methods.

Tyan Muckensturm
Marketing & the Internet
B8699-025