Bombs Gone Wrong (Part 2)

Let's keep talking about "bomb" marketing tactics - and avoiding blowing your own house up in the process!  (Start at Part 1)

Shortcut Shenanigans

Nope, this won't hurt a bit.

I shared this story via Twitter once before, but I'd like to talk about it a little more here, so go read it (I'll wait):

A Confession: I Bought 50,000 Twitter Followers

This "bomb"  literally bombed, didn't it? Not only did it compromise her integrity (as this is cheating, kids, no matter what anybody says), it didn't even work!

You will be tempted to engage in shady bomb tactics - such as passing out flyers on the sly at an expo where only exhibitors are supposed to do marketing, such as buying likes or followers on social media, and other tactics that are shortcuts and opportunities only suckers won't pursue.

Some people will imply that you have to do such things to be successful or get ahead.  I call shenanigans!

My advice?  There are no shortcuts and don't compromise your integrity, ever.

Good Bomb, Bad Target

Bomb tactics need to be well targeted in order to be most effective.

Here's a story from my casino days to illustrate this problem.

INCOMING!!!

In order to have a big day, Casino X wanted to do a prize giveaway on a very competitive night of the week. Usually such giveaways were given to customers with certain behaviors - the ideal would be generation of an "incremental" trip (that is, for a person to come into the casino when they typically wouldn't have) so usually, they would target people who aren't as frequent or were high value so the incremental nature of their visit was offset in top line revenue.

However, they wanted to have a HUGE day, so they went very deep into their database and included their very most frequent, high-redeeming customers (for this market, some of them were at the casino every single day).

Result?  More than twice the anticipated redemptions (they ran out of prizes and had to issue rain checks), very long lines full of very angry customers, gummed up operations for hours, and a lot of customer care needed post-event.  Plus, the people who actually came were the very ones who didn't need an offer to come in the first place.

Great bomb, wrong target.  Completely missed the mark!

If you're going for a high-impact marketing bomb, just make sure you:

1. Plan and execute follow-up
2. Collect and record results
3. Keep your tactic above-board
4. Choose the right audience for your tactic

Do you have any horror stories of bombs going off in your face?  Let's talk about it!