True Clean Carpet entered into a 9 month contract to have Drive Social in St. Louis elevate the True Clean position in social media with the primary purpose to achieve additional revenues from Facebook advertising. Drive Social uses Facebook as its primary vehicle to grow a companies revenue in social media. The contract was structured so that Drive Social would have an active role August thru October 2017 and then take 4 months off (November – February) and then take an active role again in March – May 2018. Drive Social would receive revenues in excess of $20,000 from the contract and True Clean would have to pay another $2,000 to $3,000 in Facebook advertising.
The staff at Drive Social were all very friendly and appeared very competent. The sales force made a very compelling case for how effective Facebook advertising is in targeting a companies key customers and revenue growth its clients achieve in this kind of advertising.
Upon completion of the first half of the contract True Clean evaluated the results Drive Social produced. True Clean spent more than $10,000 to Drive Social and more than $2,000 for Facebook advertising for the first half of the contract. For this cost True Clean booked only 5 Facebook jobs with revenues of less than $1,500! True Clean clearly lost more than $10,000 on the first half of the contract!
It should also be stated that all jobs booked by True Clean go through a detailed process to understand how a customer became aware of True Clean. If a customer says they found us on the internet we ask how did they find us on the internet. We believe we understand very well how customers find us on the internet. We believe we have a very good handle on where our customers are coming from including TV and radio ads, customer references, returning customers, and other various business networking initiatives. So, when we say we only received revenues of $1,500 in Facebook advertising over a 4 month period we are very confident in that number.
When Drive Social was presented with these results they maintained that True Clean does not truly understand where our customers are coming from. Drive Social maintains that customers don’t really remember where a customer hears about True Clean and that they are just saying the first thing that comes to their minds. Drive Social maintains that True Clean really received a lot more business from Facebook than it realizes. Finally, they also maintain that it takes more than 4 months to gain the promised revenue benefits and that it’s the last 3 months of a contract that does most of the producing.
Upon assessing the Drive Social results and their response it was felt it would be better to terminate the contract immediately. True Clean has a much higher trust level in what customers are telling us than what Drive Social believes a customers’ memory recall is. True Clean was facing additional costs of more than $12,000 for the second half of the contract and to terminate the contract True Clean would need to pay more than $5,000 to get out of the deal. True Clean felt so strongly that the results would continue to be very poor that it would rather give away $5,000 to save $7,000. It’s interesting that Drive Social is such a strong advocate of Facebook and yet they have eliminated the opportunity to put a review about Drive Social on Facebook by removing this option on their home page.
Drive Social also puts out fake Google reviews. As of 3-25-2018 there were 5 reviews and two 5 star reviews were fake, one of which was posted by a prinipal in the company.
This will go down as the worst marketing/advertising venture that True Clean ever entered into.
Drive Social Media Reviews
True Clean Carpet entered into a 9 month contract to have Drive Social in St. Louis elevate the True Clean position in social media with the primary purpose to achieve additional revenues from Facebook advertising. Drive Social uses Facebook as its primary vehicle to grow a companies revenue in social media. The contract was structured so that Drive Social would have an active role August thru October 2017 and then take 4 months off (November – February) and then take an active role again in March – May 2018. Drive Social would receive revenues in excess of $20,000 from the contract and True Clean would have to pay another $2,000 to $3,000 in Facebook advertising.
The staff at Drive Social were all very friendly and appeared very competent. The sales force made a very compelling case for how effective Facebook advertising is in targeting a companies key customers and revenue growth its clients achieve in this kind of advertising.
Upon completion of the first half of the contract True Clean evaluated the results Drive Social produced. True Clean spent more than $10,000 to Drive Social and more than $2,000 for Facebook advertising for the first half of the contract. For this cost True Clean booked only 5 Facebook jobs with revenues of less than $1,500! True Clean clearly lost more than $10,000 on the first half of the contract!
It should also be stated that all jobs booked by True Clean go through a detailed process to understand how a customer became aware of True Clean. If a customer says they found us on the internet we ask how did they find us on the internet. We believe we understand very well how customers find us on the internet. We believe we have a very good handle on where our customers are coming from including TV and radio ads, customer references, returning customers, and other various business networking initiatives. So, when we say we only received revenues of $1,500 in Facebook advertising over a 4 month period we are very confident in that number.
When Drive Social was presented with these results they maintained that True Clean does not truly understand where our customers are coming from. Drive Social maintains that customers don’t really remember where a customer hears about True Clean and that they are just saying the first thing that comes to their minds. Drive Social maintains that True Clean really received a lot more business from Facebook than it realizes. Finally, they also maintain that it takes more than 4 months to gain the promised revenue benefits and that it’s the last 3 months of a contract that does most of the producing.
Upon assessing the Drive Social results and their response it was felt it would be better to terminate the contract immediately. True Clean has a much higher trust level in what customers are telling us than what Drive Social believes a customers’ memory recall is. True Clean was facing additional costs of more than $12,000 for the second half of the contract and to terminate the contract True Clean would need to pay more than $5,000 to get out of the deal. True Clean felt so strongly that the results would continue to be very poor that it would rather give away $5,000 to save $7,000. It’s interesting that Drive Social is such a strong advocate of Facebook and yet they have eliminated the opportunity to put a review about Drive Social on Facebook by removing this option on their home page.
Drive Social also puts out fake Google reviews. As of 3-25-2018 there were 5 reviews and two 5 star reviews were fake, one of which was posted by a prinipal in the company.
This will go down as the worst marketing/advertising venture that True Clean ever entered into.