The first thing that comes to mind nowadays in discussions of social advertising is GM’s move to pull out of Facebook advertising, claiming it wasn’t seeing the results it was hoping for. Despite GM’s claims, many brands are bullish on social advertising and the potential to connect with consumers on social networks using paid media.
Digiday reached out to some of the top brands in the social space on their take. Here’s what we were able to get:
George Haynes, social and digital media manager at Kia Motors America
Kia’s strategic approach is to be an active brand participant compared to a spectator, given social media requires active engagement. Kia advertises on social media platforms when it’s combined with other content and contextual elements that may be interesting or exciting to the audience of that social platform. We start with the idea and then decide which platforms, elements and media provide the best opportunity for amplification.
Social platforms and their ad products are evolving quickly and should be tailored to each brand. Each platform is working through the balance of desired effectiveness for advertisers while mitigating negative impact to the user experience. We prefer to be strategy- and idea-led and determine which social platforms make sense to breathe life into those strategies and ideas.
We are increasing our social advertising budget as it still offers an opportunity to reach people beyond our communities.
Erich Marx, director of interactive and social media marketing at Nissan
Over the past year, social advertising has accounted for a small part of our overall digital advertising spend. When we do allocate budget to this particular tactic, it’s almost exclusively done in support of a new product reveal (at an auto show) or to build buzz around the start of sales of a new model.
Nate Luman, Facebook marketing lead at Zappos.com
Social advertising is an emerging part of our overall digital advertising budget. We have found that it is a good channel for discovering new customers. Through a lot of hard work and patience, we have gotten our social ad budget to perform as a direct-response channel.
Karyn Sarago, marketing manager at IHG
IHG understands that one of the best ways to truly engage with customers is through social channels in innovative, impactful and meaningful ways. It may not be as easy as tracking click-through rates on digital advertising; however, the payoff for the brand and the relationship it further extends with consumers is extremely valuable. This year alone we have employed several innovative ways to connect with our core customers not only through traditional marketing promotions but through social extensions of each.
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