Sometimes, a gut check works just as well as, or better than a guru. More than two years ago, when Nolo was a book publisher rather than a content source for an marketing content provider, I blogged about whether lawyers should use Facebook to market a practice. Ultimately, while I suggested that lawyers might play around with Facebook to see what kinds of results it might yield, I concluded that Facebook ads probably wouldn’t be very effective because after all, who wants to think about legal problems at a recreational site like Facebook.
Of course, this isn’t rocket science – and I suspect that most lawyers felt the same. Turns out, too, that our guts were right: a recent survey by Reuters concluded that four of five Facebook users have never bought a product or service as a result of advertising on the site. The survey applied to all types of services and products; presumably the one of five who did buy weren’t purchasing professional services.
Bottom line: sometimes a gut works as well a marketing guru.
I’d say the results are just the opposite. A 20% conversion rate is pretty huge for online advertising.