I wish social media would work as consistently as traditional media. Alas, it does not. Facebook and Google Adwords can produce results; however, based on our experience, you cannot rely on this new media to produce consistent and reliable results. Sometimes these sources generate leads and sometimes they don’t.
Another issue is that the leads generated act flakey. For example, when we promote seminars on Facebook, the leads that reserve seats have a hard time showing up. It’s not unusual to see a 50% no-show rate at seminars from Facebook leads.
On the positive side, the advantage Facebook and pay-per-click advertising have, is you can advertise on a much lower budget than you can with traditional media. If you want to spend $100, $200, $300, or more, you can do it. On the other hand, spending such a low budget would be nearly impossible with newspaper and direct mail. So, social media offers the opportunity to advertise on any budget.
So here’s my suggestion for where Facebook and Google Adwords fit in… I recommend relying on traditional media (e.g., newspaper & direct mail) to generate consistent and reliable response, and then add a little to your budget to supplement your advertising with new media — Facebook ads/events and Google Adwords.
If you’re using social media, I’d love to see your comments about your experience.