Click Twice if You’ve Heard This One Before

(Place pacifier in baby data's mouth if it screams)

 

For anyone even peripherally involved in Marketing in 2014, this headline is an eye-catcher:  “We Have No Idea if Online Ads Work.” It starts the way every single published article must now start – with an anecdote. This one is pretty funny. A CBS executive is fearful, in 2003, that Google offering companies data on which ads work and which ads do not work will ruin the magic. The article goes on, the way every single published article must now go on, with data. This time the data is about data which makes the article twice as sexy. There was a study. Some people were going to buy some thing regardless so online ads may or may not be effective.

It’s not that interesting of a study or an article, even to a marketer. The main takeaway of the article is that it is not presented in an easy to read, single-page format. Instead you have to click on a button to go to the second page of the article.

That seems pretty benign. Why would that ever be a main takeaway? It’s an utterly forgettable action on behalf of the reader. Because clicking on to the second page is only there so that Slate.com can show you more ads. And here I thought David Foster Wallace laid irony to rest for good in 1996.

The best content in the article is the quote in the finale from one of the study’s co-authors:

“If you were comfortable for the past 100 years, if you were comfortable pissing in the wind and hoping it goes in the right direction, don’t kid yourself now by looking at this data.”

Let’s jog right past the juicy part to arrive at the point – don’t bother with the data. For companies selling goods on the internet this is, quite obviously, absurd. Listening to what your customers want and spotting trends before your competitors is too reductive to even be considered Marketing 101.

But what about legal marketing? Specifically, what about legal marketing for mid-sized firms and smaller? In other words, can we please make this about me?

I took the free Google Analytics classes. I read a book on data. In other words, you are enjoying the thoughts of an expert. And this expert agrees, in part, that you should not bother with the data. (I’m sorry, I realize nuance makes poor copy, stay with me here and we’ll land eventually. There is some bad weather here on the ground so we’re just going to circle the runway a few more times).

Oh, not because marketers are not savvy enough to detect causation and correlation, as the article suggests. This would be about as helpful as telling an attorney that the legal issue s/he is arguing is tricky so s/he shouldn’t bother. Yes, it is hard to determine where to allocate money and resources when marketing a service. Presumably that’s one of the reasons we receive a paycheck for our services.

Don’t bother with the data (in part) because the sample size is too small. This is not big data. This is little baby data. It can’t walk, talk or even roll over. It just sits there looking adorable all the damn time. Example: You run your web analytics report for April and notice that 200 more unique visitors went to your law firm’s website that month than average. To me, bothering with the data would mean drilling down even further and parsing out exactly where this surge of visitors came from, where they specifically went and how long they stayed.

To what end? Why? Are you going to change your strategy based on 200 unique visitors to your law firm website? If the answer is yes then, by all means, drill down that data! But the answer probably shouldn’t be yes. Maybe if you were blessed with unlimited staff resources and time it might be novel to spend a little bit on projects like this, but you’re not. Is this really the best use of your time?

Lead with a question that data may be able to be one piece of evidence in figuring out an answer. Say, for instance, you want to know how effective a partner’s recent publishing tear has been. Some baby data on profile visits, article shares and the like can be one helpful piece of evidence.

But be careful.

Recently I heard, twelfth-hand, of a firm that scrapped practice group pages entirely because no one was visiting them, or, more accurately, less people were visiting them than they found acceptable. Did they lead with a question or did they look at data blindly and allow the data to tell them what should be done? There may be a very great strategic reason to abandon practice group pages. Plenty of firms are doing it and/or getting more creative with how they present their myriad of services.

But right now a client is on your webpage. Your client has used you and your firm to handle their real estate closings. The client is on your webpage because s/he is bored at work and wants to know what the new associate that was so nice over the phone looks like. As s/he is clicking around to their ultimate destination, they see that your firm handles Premises Liability. And for 0.2 seconds, the client registers this in his/her head, “I didn’t know that.” They don’t click on the page because your client is pretty sure what “Premises” and “Liability” means and is brilliant enough to, when combining the two words, ascertain meaning.

Since they don’t click, baby data doesn’t know. Baby data doesn’t talk, remember? The data goo goo ga ga’s that practice group pages are worthless.

Or, maybe you’re lucky. Maybe your firm’s data isn’t baby data at all. It’s all grown up and even has its own apartment. And it’s telling you, “Ads don’t work.”

Somewhere a smart marketer listens to that big, bad data and responds: “We Have No Idea if Online Ads Work. Click here, and then click again to the second page to find out why.”