Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Why Doesn't My Marketing Campaign Work?
I got a question I got today that I thought might be of interest with you.

A reader has been working an affiliate campaign, trying to get webmasters to post banner ads on their sites to promote an upcoming promotion for that company. The reader was surprised that the campaign wasn't working. He saw his request as a "can't lose" situation for the website owner. All they had to do was post a banner on their site and they would be eligible for $1000 in prizes.

Here's my answer:

"I think your lack of response comes from the fact that as good as this promotion sounds to you, it’s indistinguishable from the many offers that claim that “if you spend five minutes adding our banner to your site, you’ll make tremendous money from all the people who click on it.” The only thing that distinguishes your offer from all the others is that it offers only the recipient MIGHT receive a prize in return.

"About the only webmasters who will consider offers like this one are either webmasters who are so new that they haven’t experienced the lack of success that comes from these “just-add-a-banner-to-your-site” offers, or webmasters who take a gambler’s approach to marketing, jumping on every offer in the hope that the next one will hit the jackpot for them.

"The reality is that just putting up a random banner is not effective. Banner advertising can be effective, but only when:

• the banner is in a location where the target market frequently visit
• the banner addresses a problem that people from that target market have, and does so in a way that raises their curiosity enough to click on it
• the destination of the banner effectively solves the problem

"Looking at the promotion you described, I don’t see a single one of those qualities. I don’t see:

• any mention of the way you selected your target sites; I get the impression you’re sending out to any and all small business sites with the idea that it's conceivable that people from that audience MIGHT also frequent that site
• any specific problem that the target audience is struggling with; I get the impression that the message is just, “here’s a new site you might want to try out”
• any solution to the audience’s problem; it’s just another site like any other site they’re already using

"You expressed surprise that people aren’t putting up the banner because “they have nothing to lose.” In reality, they do have something to lose: their time.

"The five minutes it would take to sign up and post the banner may seem insignificant. But then multiply that by the dozen other offers they’ve received that will take only five minutes of their time each. And add to that the time it will take in the future to log in and check their stats on each offer.

"The time starts to add up. And if they’ve done many of those “five-minute” tasks before and gained absolutely no money from them, they can certainly find more profitable ways to spend their time.

"Rather than viewing an offer from the perspective of “what do they have to lose by signing up for this offer?” I encourage you to view a potential offer on the basis of "what are they assured of gaining?”

"If you plan to continue promoting this offer, I suggest that you make sure you target sites where your target market frequent. Sites that already serve that audience will be more likely to post something that is relevant to the people they already serve than will be sites that simply MIGHT have someone from that target audience wander through.

"You still will have the obstacle that your offer is indistinguishable from the many other similar offers that reach website owners every day. Maybe the company that is running this promotion has additional help to make this more unique."

Shotgun approaches don't pay unless you have the resources to crank your message out to millions of people. The more you can identify your audience and target your message to their most pressing needs, the more responsive you will find them.
Jeff

Labels: marketing