What do you do when a promotion completely bombs?

First instinct: quietly turn off your ads, take the web page down, and convince yourself you really are awesome 100% of the time.

And, never, ever, ever email your entire tribe about it. 

Welp, here goes: 

Last week I launched a new promotion to cold traffic. 

Within 2 days I had a small pile of negative comments, GIFs and snarky remarks on my ads.

Cost per click was high, cost per lead was horrible, and the landing page conversion was 18.16% (about ⅓ of my other active funnels).

This promotion was a full-on DOG. It stunk at every turn. 

I got it wrong (and that’s OK). 

(My after-action report: this was a poorly worded offer. I chose a unique combo of words that no one ever says. I tried to solve a problem that literally no one is thinking about).

But… 

I know other marketers that would have grabbed a small subset of the data that appears favorable, screenshot it and post to FB with #winning. 

Example: For one of my private clients, we always run a retargeting ad set to super hot traffic on the last day the cart is open. We will ROI 3,000 – 4,000 (spend $1 and make $4000). 

But those insane numbers are not representative of the entire campaign. 

That’s cherry picking stats to make my marketing prowess appear more favorable. 

It’s like pushing all your clothes under the bed before company comes over so it *appears* tidy. 

Takeaways:

1 –

  •  You’re never going to “win” with every promotion you try. Keep trying. You only lose if you quit. 3 days later I launched a new funnel that is getting leads for $1.03 (my best cost per lead in 2 years) and the landing page converting over 60%.
  • Any marketer that tells you they can guarantee results is lying. If they won 100% of the time they don’t need you as a client. Run. 
  • Share the full story of your journey; warts and all. 

We’re called to make a positive difference in the lives of those we seek to serve. 

It’s not always pretty, and that’s OK.

Links: 

To see the funnel that bombed click here

To see the funnel that’s killing it click here

To your success (and occasional, inevitable failures).

You got this.

~ Cody

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