Measuring marketing success is like quantum mechanics:
How long is a piece of string?

^{I have borrowed this image of Alan Davies tackling that old physics chestnut, "How long is a piece of string?", from an interesting site called BrainPickings.org, which I encourage you to check out for all kinds of reasons.}

With the Facebook IPO in full swing, it's not surprising that when GM said they were pulling $10 million worth of advertising spend on Facebook, the financial press took note.  And of course there was no shortage of commentators ringing the alarm bells about the imminent demise of Facebook's ability to monetize.

I can't help but think of department store magnate John Wanamaker's famous comment, circa 1912: "I know half my advertising dollars are wasted.  I just don't know which half."

Marketing works.
It's just sometimes hard to know how or why, and social media is no exception.

The worst part about working in marketing is that 2+2 almost never adds up to 4.  Sometimes it adds up to 3, sometimes 10, sometimes a vivid shade of yellow.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is either naive or the kind of person who calls themself an 'SEO Ninja' and thinks everything can be measured in clickthroughs.

And therein lies the problem.  

Before the internet, we had to measure most advertising exposures in GRPs (gross ratings points), which is essentially a way to measure reach (how many people saw/heard your tv/radio ad, saw your billboard, etc.) and frequency (how many times they saw it).  You might spend $1 million buying 400 GRPs for 8 weeks for your billboard campaign, but you really had no way to determine whether all those people speeding past your billboard on the highway were actually looking at your billboard, registering the message, and then making a purchasing decision based on it. 

In the meantime, of course, you were probably spending money on other initiatives like tv ads, print ads, direct mail, promotions - all of which have varying degrees of measurability when it comes to purchasing decisions.  The only way you could really know whether your efforts had been successful was to wait until the campaign was over and hope there'd been a demonstrable uptick in sales.

The people who say that social media marketing dollars are 'wasted' if they don't generate the right clickthroughs - and there are lots of them - have forgotten that marketing success is generally a result of a complex alchemy that happens when you reach your target market in multiple ways, via multiple channels, over a (sometimes long) period of time.  

Why GM's decision isn't that momentous

Though the GM's announcement made headline news, it really isn't that significant in terms of Facebook's long-term prospects or GM's overall strategy, and here's why:

It's a drop in the bucket

Worldwide, GM spends $1.7 billion dollars in advertising every year.  They're still spending $30 million on Facebook 'marketing' - they're just not spending $10 million in paid ads. That sounds like a lot to us regular people, but it's nothing for a big-budget advertiser like GM.

Clickthroughs aren't everything

Much has been made of the stat that 83% of people say they don't click through Facebook ads. I'd say the number is probably even higher, but it doesn't matter: No one clicks through billboards or magazine ads, either, but that doesn't mean they don't drive brand awareness, equity or sales in the longer term.

You can't get a 'conversion rate' on buying cars

People who advertise online like to talk about 'conversion rates': The percentage of people who clickthrough your ad, then make a purchase on your site.  This can be an excellent measure of success if you're trying to sell something on, say, Amazon.  It's never going to work for cars, because almost no one is going to buy a car via a website.

We don't know enough about GM's overall media mix

A senior marketing exec from McDonald's once told me that it takes 4-7 'touchpoints' (interactions with the brand via different channels) in order to get someone to buy an order of large fries.  If that's what it takes to generate a $2 purchase, imagine what it takes to generate a $35k purchase of a car.  

GM themselves probably don't entirely know what works

Once GM realized that its announcement had caused an uproar, they hastily released a statement about how they regularly review their marketing mix and make adjustments.  I believe them:  All large advertisers make changes to their media mix on an ongoing basis, based on new information or a change in focus or whatever.  GM isn't abandoning Facebook altogether, and plenty of other carmakers are still spending money on Facebook ads.  

The bottom line

There's a reason that advertisers are increasingly turning to neuroscience to understand buying behaviour:  95% of human decisions are made by the subconscious mind, so even when you ask people directly, they simply can't tell you why they made a particular purchasing decision.  GM's decision to pull a very tiny fraction of their budget from Facebook tells us almost nothing about the true efficacy of Facebook advertising.

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So yesterday I wrote a post about how the Susan G. Komen foundation has now become inextricably linked with religion and politics, thanks to their actions regarding Planned Parenthood and Karen Handel in the past week or two.

It wasn't a controversial post:  I didn't take a stand on religion, politics, abortion or Planned Parenthood - only on how getting associated with controversial topics like that can have serious, long-term consequences for your brand.

Imagine my surprise, then, when this morning a couple of people let me know that the link I posted (which was automatically fed to my Facebook account from my Twitter account) was being 'blocked' by Facebook.  I wish I'd done a screen cap, but basically what happened was when you tried to click on the link, a notice popped up saying that Facebook had blocked the link on improper 'terms of use' grounds.  There was nothing wrong with the blog or my website itself, and when I posted the link to a friend's page, it wasn't blocked or flagged.

I don't know what happened.  Did someone complain about the title of the post?  Did someone complain about the blog post itself?  If so, who complained?  And why?  Or did a Facebook algorithm just not like my use of 'religion' and 'lethal' in the same headline?  

Facebook offered no reason, of course, and no way to get to the bottom of it.  

A couple of people have suggested that I not write this follow-up, lest I get in bigger trouble with Facebook.  But I wrote the piece in the first place because I noticed that other people seemed reluctant to talk about it, and it gets my goat that I have to be leery of making what seemed to me an obvious - and not particularly incendiary - connection based on a topic that's had widespread media coverage.

Anyway, go read the original blog post, and let me know:  Is it really the kind of thing that Facebook should be blocking?

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^{This is the control panel for a Winnebago.  But I thought it was a nice metaphor for having your social media channels managed from one central, delightfully wood-panelled, location.}

These days I find myself doing a lot of social media consulting, usually helping small businesses start using social media.  And the first question I'm always asked is:  "What social media channels should I be using?"

99% of the time, my answer is the same:  Start with the trifecta of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

"I get that I should be using Twitter and LinkedIn," they say.  "But Facebook?  Isn't that just for personal stuff, like friends and family?  I don't want the world to see my family pictures.  That's not appropriate for my business.  And Facebook can't help build my business anyway."

When you're a small business, you are your personal network

The thing is, when you're a small business owner, much of your business is going to come from your personal network.  Your sister-in-law, the guy you shared an office with 10 years ago and still keep in touch with, the neighbour you always hang out with on Friday nights when your spouses have other things to do - these are people who are often in a surprisingly good position to refer you, your business and your product to others.  And they're likely to be surprisingly enthusiastic about you.

In fact, they'd probably recommend you to more people more often if they could remember what you do and that you're doing it - and that's where Facebook can help.  

For example:  The other day, a friend from grade school posted a note on Facebook about how she was having trouble with her nanny.  I don't speak to her on a regular basis, and she lives in another country, so without Facebook I wouldn't have known that she was having an issue.  As it happened, my cousin-in-law, who runs a babysitting business, had just posted a note about how her company can help find nannies in that area.  So all of a sudden I was able to connect my friend with my cousin-in-law's business.  

It wouldn't have happened on Twitter (since my Twitter feed is too busy and my grade-school friend isn't on there anyway), and it definitely wouldn't have happened on LinkedIn (since 'trouble with nannies' isn't the kind of content that tends to find a place on LinkedIn).

If you aren't linking Facebook to your professional profile, how will these kinds of connections happen?

Stop worrying about the invasion of your personal life

Guess what?  The convergence of your personal and professional life has already happened.  If you're a small business owner who's been out there doing small-business-owner things like meeting people, attending events, publishing articles and making contacts, your personal life isn't a mystical secret.  Anyone with 30 minutes and some basic deduction skills can find out a lot about you, and can probably find a whole heap of photos, too.  

This is a good thing.  You want to be accessible; you want to turn up in Google searches.  The more findable you are, the more credibility you have.  And unless you've been a complete idiot, and posted a whole slew of photos of yourself doing jello shots off the naked torsos of strange men, attaching your Facebook profile to your personal brand - and associating it with the company you lead - isn't going to be a problem.

When you're too private, people wonder why

The other day I wrote about how authenticity and transparency in advertising isn't as popular as the gurus would have you believe. However, where they're right about transparency is when it comes to personal branding, and when you're a small businessperson, personal branding is everything.  

Before you ever get into a meeting with a new client, someone in the decision-making chain is going to Google you.  If they can't find much information about you, they're going to assume you're not as prolific, influential or important as you want them to think you are.  They're simply going to wonder why someone who calls themselves an 'expert' only has 3 search returns.  Facebook can increase your searchable content volume while you're building up your other channels - and that can be a big advantage.

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