Learning from Sales/Marketing Campaigns that FAILED

As much as we love success, sometimes FAILURES taught us valuable lessons os well..
And sometimes these failures taught us MUCH MORE (well, at least for me)..

I hope that we can take a positive view and share about the Sales/Marketing campaigns that we had thought will work but in the end, flopped BIG time..
We take them as valuable lessons and milestones towards our goals..

Lets hear about them and learn together..

PS:
I am starting this thread so that we can learn in a positive light from each other's misadventures so that we are aware and can spot pitfalls easier..
So I hope there will be honest feedback with positive suggestions to each stories..

I personnally think that there isnt any sales/marketing campaigns that is a failure.

While that particular campaign did not work out the first time, it might have meant that it is not the right time, or that particular prospect do not want it at that point of time.

Every rejection brings us one step closer to a YES.

Subjecting yourself to rejections after rejections is one of the most powerful lessons you can have in the real biz world.

1. We tried conventional mass faxing... Other than getting nasty scolding from some people, I don't get any real leads from there...

2. We team with vendor to have a booth in International Plaza in Acra office, we've got leads, but not really effective. Better than nothing...

3. We tried mass emails, we got a little response but generate some traffic to our website...

4. We tried conducting workshops, very tiring and takes up a lot of resource... Not bad actually...

Do feel free to give suggestions...

Last edited by inle on Tue Sep 29, 2009 12:34 pm; edited 2 times in total

WealthCreator,
From your post, I figure what you have described is known as the Sales Process, rather than Sales/Marketing Campaigns..

In fact, there are differences between the terms "Sales" and "Marketing"..
Only that sales personnels like to coin themselves as marketing personnels because of the "not-so-favorable" perception of sales-related work nature in the society..

Marketing is the preparation of receiving sales (which includes the Branding process)..
It is the process of Analysing existing resources, trends & factors that we can leverage on or to watch out..
This set the background to directly create DESIRABLE BENEFITS & VALUES that CONCERNS our Targetted customers..
Various strategies (including ads, flyers, internet marketing, telesales, having a MLM system, events etc)are used to translate this analysis (with testings and measurings) for various success rates to achieve this value exchange between the business and its customers..

The results of this value exchange process is Sales..
Sales Processes are the activities carried out after Marketing..
That's where you got the pre-qualifying, presentation, rejection & objection handling, closure, follow ups etc..
And the better the value exchange process developed on Marketing, the better the results, and therefore the more PROFITABLE is our Sales..

Wealth Creator wrote:: I personnally think that there isnt any sales/marketing campaigns that is a failure.

While that particular campaign did not work out the first time, it might have meant that it is not the right time, or that particular prospect do not want it at that point of time.

Every rejection brings us one step closer to a YES.

Subjecting yourself to rejections after rejections is one of the most powerful lessons you can have in the real biz world.

I assume the following activites are done correctly and to the best to generate sales as much as possible..

1. Mass Faxing: Who did you fax over? What did your company fax over? What's the exact content?

2. Booth: How's the layout of your booth? How's the traffic? How well trained is your staff who is manning the booth?

3. Email: Who did you email? What did your company email? What's the exact content?

4. Workshops: Where are the workshops held? How do you get people to attend? Who attend? What are taught in these workshops?

In all, what's your overall marketing's goals and plan that justify these activities?

amcpl1 wrote:: 1. We tried conventional mass faxing... Other than getting nasty scolding from some people, I don't get any real leads from there...

2. We team with vendor to have a booth in International Plaza in Acra office, we've got leads, but not really effective. Better than nothing...

3. We tried mass emails, we got a little response but generate some traffic to our website...

4. We tried conducting workshops, very tiring and takes up a lot of resource... Not bad actually...

Do feel free to give suggestions...

Of course it will be 10 pages of essay if I am going to answer to this questions. But somehow, its a good learning curve that says "being there, done that". To do more, we know where are the shortcoming and strength.

Overall, I guess we just need a good marketeer to assist us in this area. In SMEs we hardly can afford marketing people as we focus on daily bread through sales. Like I mention, we hardly have time for planning. The moment we stop and think, our members goes hungry...

But as it grows, we now think that we would want to either outsource or do better marketing...

I will want to seek you advice on this...

Marketing is always about "Testing and Measuring"..
Lets arrange some time together and see if we are able to work something out to add value to you and your company's long term marketing plans, amcpl1..

You can surely share more with me in person rather than writing long essays ya..

I will contact you and hope we can get together some time next week..

Yes, I would be glad to. Do contact me.

I can share some of mine.

1. Went to many entrepreneur meet ups and gave my name cards with "SSuF" written across the middle to 90% of the attendees. Few sign ups on SSuF. Meet ups are a good way of finding mentors and business partners, but not member it seems.

2. I tried an idea to give lesson on how to perform magic. Flyers was the only form of advertising. Pitiful response, no sales. I think flyers on average don't really work that well.

3. I knocked on doors of bridal shops, tried to sell them the idea of putting a TV outside their shop with a video snippets of their brides, so they could stand out from competition. If they liked the idea, I could do the video editing for them. No market research: turns out that they could do this on their own if they really wanted to.

Well, marketing strategies that fail in one industry, may work well in another industry. For example, we got good response from advertising in Greebook for cleanroom products, however it does not work for IT services at all. This is because Greenbook is a popular resource media for industrial product buyers but not commercial companies sourcing.

Actually, before any marketing strategies are implemented, we need to know the concept and rationale why we chose that particular strategy and how it is able impact to our profits..

It is a complicated process and depends largely on different goals of the business owners, the businesses, the environment, the industry and the targetted customers..

Once we get hold of it and do a thorough analysis, we can even predict what we can do and when to do what and measure how it works to our bottomline, EVEN before we start..

Every SMEs starts from nowhere or somewhere. Especially all SME bosses knows more of product know or operation than marketing or sales. Unfortunately, business is mostly reliant on sales or marketing for survival. That is where we need specialised people who knows marketing, accountancy or other functions to compliment. When we are just a startup, the concentration is always on cost saving, therefore we perform all these function as ad hoc by ourselves. However, when we are looking to grow, we really need to have specialised people focusing on such functions to come onboard to assist.

I will share my experience on my internet marketing biz. Although I have managed to get my webpage to the 1st page, no. 9 ranking for the keyword I wanted, so far, the sales have been quite average. I was wondering whether is it the campaign or is it the product/biz which failed to attract people.

My question is whether the marketing campaign or the product/biz is more important?

Maybe I could share with you why the following did not work....
I figure that your name cards and flyers are not designed to be sellable, add value and appeals to the particular audience's concerns you are seeking....
Most of the time, it is not the "methods" issue here but how we use the methods that make the differences....

Maybe you can consider doing certain methods of Testing and Measuring ya....

SSuF Admin wrote:: I can share some of mine.

1. Went to many entrepreneur meet ups and gave my name cards with "SSuF" written across the middle to 90% of the attendees. Few sign ups on SSuF. Meet ups are a good way of finding mentors and business partners, but not member it seems.

2. I tried an idea to give lesson on how to perform magic. Flyers was the only form of advertising. Pitiful response, no sales. I think flyers on average don't really work that well.

3. I knocked on doors of bridal shops, tried to sell them the idea of putting a TV outside their shop with a video snippets of their brides, so they could stand out from competition. If they liked the idea, I could do the video editing for them. No market research: turns out that they could do this on their own if they really wanted to.

There are generally TWO aspects of businesses...

ONE: to produce the products and bring them ON our shelves....
TWO: to bring these products OFF our shelves...

From what I seen so far, many businesses seem to be very good in the first part: to bring the products ON the shelves...
Maybe that's the reason why they are in that particular trade in the first place with all the relevant resources, experiences, expertises, know-hows etc etc....

As for the second part on getting the products OFF the shelves, which usually involves Marketing (which results in Sales), many businesses are clueless....
Most of them just try to launch projects based on luck and hear-see and hope to hit the jackpot which little or no knowledge of the impact and extent of these projects to the profits....
Usually, it results in many fire fighting methods that continue to haunt them for a very very long time....

amcpl1 wrote:: Every SMEs starts from nowhere or somewhere. Especially all SME bosses knows more of product know or operation than marketing or sales. Unfortunately, business is mostly reliant on sales or marketing for survival. That is where we need specialised people who knows marketing, accountancy or other functions to compliment. When we are just a startup, the concentration is always on cost saving, therefore we perform all these function as ad hoc by ourselves. However, when we are looking to grow, we really need to have specialised people focusing on such functions to come onboard to assist.

The best case scenario will be getting the BEST products to work with the BEST marketing plan and strategies....
At the same time, this is rather difficult in real life....

From what I seen so far, as long as the marketing is done correctly, even though your product is not the best in the market, the business is usually going to hit the jackpot....

A very good example is "McDonald's".....

Wealth Creator wrote:: I will share my experience on my internet marketing biz. Although I have managed to get my webpage to the 1st page, no. 9 ranking for the keyword I wanted, so far, the sales have been quite average. I was wondering whether is it the campaign or is it the product/biz which failed to attract people.

My question is whether the marketing campaign or the product/biz is more important?

Actually, talking about namecards, any advices on what are the essential things within a namecard? I have seen too many 'normal' namecards. I have yet to seen one which really capture my attention. I am also in the midst of doing up my name card.

As a conventional person, I always look out for the services this person/company provides. So do have your services/products in your name card so that your recipients knows what you provides.

Fonts cannot be too small... My last business card generate complains from many customers that they cannot see my phone number or email as it is too small...

How about trying to offer a small fee for art students at Laselle or NAFA to help you design one? Maybe put it out as a small project or competition or something. I have seen some of them design and they are quite creative. Maybe you could also tell them your requirements in the name card, like a more outstanding design, more prominent placement of the email and stuff.

Tks for all your comments. Well, I have redone my namecard, hope to share with all you for some advice when we meet up again Smile

namecards????

they are one of the marketing tools that have being overlooked over and over again....
and they are one of the most sellable tools you can do for your business's sellablity....

and coming from an artist and business person's background and point of view, one of the major mistakes is to engage an artist with zero or little business and marketing background to design for you.....
no point having an award winning, creative piece of Monet miniature with us and it does not sell a thing for your business....