Volkswagen Commercial and facebook

I just saw a Volkswagen commercial where instead of showing their website URL, they showed their Facebook URL - facebook.com/vw.

I find it interesting that they chose to send people to their Facebook page instead of to their corporate website. I guess they are giving social networking a try although not doing the best job of it.

This was a fairly good commercial because it was focusing on a major benefit - free scheduled maintenance on all 2009 models. Very smart marketing.

But here is where they fell short. They should have given people a reason to go to the VW corporate website to get more information on the free maintenance program, to see virtual tours of the cars, to enter a contest to win a 2009 VW, etc. If you are going to spend all of that money on TV advertising, at least excite your potential customers into taking action so you can get their contact info (sign up for an email newsletter) to do more personal direct response marketing to them via email and direct mail.

In regard to them social networking on facebook, instead of just showing the URL for a very brief second, they should have told viewers to come and be their friend on facebook and enter a contest to win a 2009 VW. Give people a reason to do something and to interact with your company. By just showing their URL, they missed out on so many great opportunities to create relationships with people who viewed their TV commercial.

Large companies must do a far better job of using direct response marketing tactics to excite prospects into taking action so the company can get their contact information in order to do one-on-one personal marketing via email and snail mail.

To your business success!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group marketing agency
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate"
http://www.geisheker.com
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