Social media advertising is ineffective and on its way to dying! I know it’s true, because I read it on Forbes.com in an article called “Facebook’s Advertising Fallacy: That It Works!.” Quick! Short FB! Its tens-of-billions-of-dollars in annual ad revenue are going to zero any day!*

500 million users. How quaint.

Wait. Maybe I should read more than the headline. Apparently, in a survey, fewer than one-third of U.S. consumers say social media influences their purchasing decisions. Whew. Guess I can ignore everything that comes after this lede, then.** Because human beings are horrible at understanding what influences them.

Take the study that asked people to rank how important 16 influences were on them. They rated “sexual satisfaction” at #14. Then, they tested how people reacted in real life. Sexual cues were number one in this ranking. These were shocking results only to people who had met no other people in their lives.

Or consider subjects in Dutton and Aron’s study of arousal. They had men talk to a female researcher who gave the men her phone number. Half of the men talked to her right after crossing a suspension bridge, where their heart was racing and they were short of breath; half had time to catch their breath. More of the men who had just crossed the bridge called the woman afterward. They mistook their thinking that their arousal came from the woman, not the bridge.

In short, we lack metacognition. That is, we don’t think about how we think.

“But wait!” I hear you yelling. “Don’t you always preach asking your donors for their opinions? If we don’t know why we do things, aren’t all surveys garbage?”

Nope. Only bad surveys are garbage. We’ve all seen people led astray by surveys where people said what they think the researcher wanted to hear. It’s even worse when married with the nonprofit executive who wants to hear a specific answer.

But there is a good type of survey. While we stink at answering why we think things, we are great at answering what we think. I hate that I was double charged for a donation. I like the donor relations staff person who helped me. It was great that you took it off my credit card. I like the organization. These are trivially easy for us to answer and answer accurately.

Just don’t ask us why we feel these things or how important they are. We think that we like the donor relations person because she was crisp and efficient. Actually, her voice subconsciously reminded us of our favorite 2nd-grade teacher.

That leaves us with a conundrum. If we can’t ask people who important something is, how do we know what’s important?

The answer? Don’t ask people. Ask math.

All you need for this is an outcome variable (e.g., level of satisfaction with the organization) and all your input variables (e.g., satisfaction with all experiences with the organization). Then, a bit of modeling later (even a regression analysis can get you some data), you can tease out what’s working, what’s not working, and what doesn’t matter.

A simple example: let’s say that, controlling for everything else, people who like your acknowledgment letters a lot like your organization a lot and give more. People who don’t, don’t.

This is not necessarily causal. However, it is enough evidence to make your acknowledgment program a point of emphasis. After all, does it matter whether your acknowledgments cause someone to be more committed or more committed people like your acknowledgments more? Either way, acknowledgments are important.

This is how we do our DonorVoice commitment studies – getting all the experience and commitment data and finding out what experiences drive commitment. We then go a step further and see how much commitment relates to lifetime value. This allows us to say draw a line between increasing satisfaction with an experience and donations in your pocket.

An example from an anonymous organization: they found that their donation appeals were 70 times more important to a donor’s lifetime value than the no-ask engagement communications. Yet they got comments about both at the same pace and were putting a similar amount of effort into each.

So when you do your next survey, take a look. Are you asking someone to analyze why they believe something? If so, random results are a best-case scenario.

And don’t shed a tear for Facebook just yet. Despite people saying they aren’t influenced by their ads, I think this scrappy little startup just might make it yet.

* For legal reasons, I should say this is not actual investment advice, nor am I a licensed financial advisor. That said, if you are inclined to take financial advice from a guy ranting about nonprofit marketing, feel free to send your money to me. I’ll take really good care of it.

** The rest of the article is moderately interesting***, talking about how Facebook ads work best when you have compelling content and target narrowly. It just doesn’t come close to justifying the headline.

*** The article is also highly ironic for two reasons: 1) it’s on Forbes.com, which is so advertising centric it makes NASCAR cars look bashful, and 2) each section of the article encourages the reader to connect with the author on the social media platforms that allegedly don’t work.