No Volt for Facebook Employees

[firebirdbandit]

CNN Money article says the Volt would have made the list of potential cars to be purchased by Facebook billionaires but due to GM's withdrawal of Facebook ads it might not be a good choice for them.

Enjoy:

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/...ok-cars/4.html

[vdiv]

This doesn't mean that individual Facebook employees won't purchase a Volt or two themselves. My employer didn't buy my Volt or even my cell phone used for business all the time either.

[JamesMcQuaid]

Interesting write up; thanks for the post:

Given Joel Ewanick's public dissing of Facebook ads -- who clicks on those, anyway?

The following article speaks more to problems with Facebook's revenue model than any deficiency in GM marketing. If you are interested in this, you will want to read the entire article. The excerpts below just scrape the surface:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles...h-facebook-ads

Why GM And Others Fail With Facebook Ads

But the truth is that Facebook ads work better for some businesses than others. GM did what any savvy marketer facing a budget squeeze does—it optimized away from underperforming media channels. Advertising, after all, is an investment. You need to put your funds against what works best.

Most Facebook ads are bought on a cost-per-click basis. This means the front-end cost of getting a potential consumer to respond is low, typically less than $2 per click. Each click on a Facebook ad puts a consumer on your product web site. If you then can get only 1 percent of those consumers who click on ads to “convert” and buy your product, you’ve achieved a $200 cost per sale. In essence, marketers try to buy customers at the lowest cost per sale possible. Paying $200 per new customer isn’t bad for many business models.

The challenge with Facebook, though, is that conversion rates can be very low in some product categories. Social media users are being social, after all. Unlike the pay-per-click ads that Google (GOOG) serves up only after consumers type in the names of products they are hunting, Facebook ads pop up while you’re bragging about your five-mile run. Curious tire-kickers might click on a GM Facebook ad to see the sexy Chevy Volt, but that doesn’t mean they want to buy one. If your conversion rate—the portion of people who eventually buy after clicking on your Facebook ad—falls from 1 percent to 0.1 percent, you’re now talking a $2,000 per-sale cost. That’s an expensive customer acquisition.

In a world where liking is as common as blinking, a like no longer signals that a consumer loves your brand...

I then checked into Facebook 31 times over the next week, each time scrolling back through several hours of friends’ posts, to see which brands would reach out to me. On average, the brands I had liked engaged with me 0.6 times over seven days—an awful performance, given the basic marketing precept that three or four interactions are required per week to trigger consumer response.

[mczajka]

And Volt owners who bought Facebook at $38 per share will be closing their Facebook accounts!

[Bob_Livonia]

With the IPO fiasco and pending lawsuits, I would think (or at least hope) the Facebook billionaires have more important things to do (including spending their money before they go broke) than buying a Volt and discussing endlessly the pro's of driving in L. (Smile!)

Good call by GM!

[rhodomel]

Now that FB is public, expect flood of advertisement on its page. There has been a tremendous increase of ads on my FB page lately. Then another social network comes in, promising less intrusive ads, and it would become the next "in" thing, and the cycle begins anew.

[jeffhre]

also..."GM has a robust presence on Facebook and in other social media, beyond paid advertising. When I riffed on Twitter, “Wow, GM yanks $10M from FB…” Mary Henige, GM’s director of social media, tweeted back: “We have more than 8mil friends on FB; not leaving them; engagement & content isn’t same as advertising.” Fair point, Mary."

[stuart22]

BFD. Who cares if a company made up of 10 people decides not to choose the Volt as an employee car.

[ianjay]

When I finally get my Volt tonight, I will have something that I can touch and enjoy using. The car will depreciate, but I will still have something. Facebook has nothing but a different model to generate revenue, the key word here is nothing. Nothing is a risky place.

[jeffhre]

Congratulations on your Volt.

BTW, I figure, just back of the napkin scribbles and nothing scientific, a billion people typing away on my, "different model to generate revenue," would be an acceptable risk to me What the heck, if it didn't work out the economy should be better and McDonalds will be hiring by then anyway.