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!

Bombs Gone Wrong (Part 1)

On Tuesday, I wrote about marketing tactics, using the metaphors "farms" for slow growth long-term tactics, and "bombs" for short-term high-impact lead generation tactics.

I love the smell of marketing in the morning.

A bomb tactic will generate a lot of leads or attention or revenue, but the impact is very short-term. This would include promotions, events, sales, grand openings, coupons, sweepstakes, giveaways - anything that makes a big noise but has very little ongoing effect after the fact.

Setting off a marketing bomb is awesome and fun, but done poorly, it can be very bad news.  Setting one off the wrong way can at best waste your money, and at worst, damage your business (sometimes irrevocably).

Here's some examples of bombs going wrong.

Follow-Up Failure

You bought a booth at that big, well-attended, high-visibility expo.  You gave out a tons of stuff, collected a lot of leads, talked to a lot of great people, and got a lot of attention.  You just really had an awesome show...

... and then you just dropped the ball, as you did not plan time and process after the event to follow up and close with the leads.  Eventually, you might have gotten around to it weeks or months later, but by that time, it's no use, the "halo" of your event is now gone and those leads are now stone cold.

I'd bet this is the number one mistake we make with this kind of tactic - the lack of adequate follow-up.

When you set off a marketing bomb like an event, you MUST have a follow-up plan in place.  If you have to do it yourself, clear time in your schedule and put a process in place.

If you don't follow up, don't waste your time and money with the event.

Coupon Collapse

Or let's say you decide to send coupons out to drive business during a specific period.  Awesome, you have a huge uptick in leads, trials or sales during the coupon redemption period.

The coupon equivalent of the unmarked bill.

You didn't have in place a way to measure redemptions associated to sales nor did you plan out time after the redemption period to do this analysis.  So you're not really sure, objectively, what your margin erosion on sales associated to those coupons was nor what lift you may have had vs. a non-coupon redemption period.

Also, you decided to saturate the community with these coupons - and now, you've given away tons of margin without any way to follow up with the individuals who redeemed the coupons.

You've got to track what any tactic does for you!  You've got to have a way to follow up with customers!  Without that, you are just giving money away.

I'll continue expounding on this in Part 2 on Tuesday.

Need help with the issues I bring up here?  That's right up my alley!  Let me help - contact me today or leave a comment below!