Nothing to Fear

Thomas Edison holds more than 3,000 patents. Many are for items we now take for granted such as electric lights. Edison was a man who achieved immense success. He was quick to acknowledge that success comes as the result of persistence. Edison himself claimed, “I have never failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.”

Discovering what doesn’t work is part of the process that leads to achievement. Fear of failure, however, often prevents people from taking the necessary risks and time to do the things that will ultimately lead to their fortune.

This is true in all disciplines, from scientific invention to marketing. In marketing, I have learned much from the successful campaigns I have worked on or created. I have learned even more from the testing and campaigns that have not delivered the desired results.

These lessons continue to be relevant. They transcend changing marketplaces because they show what makes people respond to advertising, and what doesn’t. Here are the two most important to remember.

Keep It Simple. You’re all familiar with the KISS rule (Keep it simple, Stupid!). I saw this reinforced by a failed campaign when working with a client about 13 years ago. We were selling a very popular line of children’s books. The line had been introduced about ten years before. We were now re-introducing it to a new generation of parents.

The books included cassette tapes of the stories. Parents could read the books to their children, or have the children follow along while listening to the cassettes. What made these books so compelling is that the cassette tapes were narrated by the biggest names – the stars - in the film industry. A subsequent set of videos was also produced and included the books and tapes.

Our marketing campaign was to sell the series as a negative option book club, with the success rate based on the desirability of the top three titles and stars. That would give us a solid guarantee of at least three purchases before parents might start cancelling out of the club. With a three to one sales/expense ratio, any subsequent sales beyond the first three would be total profit. Sell the first book and they’re hooked.

It turned out my client had not done their legal diligence. Just before launching our marketing campaign we were told that we would have to renegotiate fees with some of the stars. My client simply hadn’t counted on that amount of money. (Meryl Streep, Cher, Jack Nicholson, Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington don’t come cheap!) We were told to market only the sets we had rights to. This eliminated the five best-selling titles.

Without the best-selling titles my client decided to let the customer choose which titles to purchase and in what order.

The package had everything to make the product desirable, including a color wall poster and free gift incentives. The product was priced reasonably with payment options.

However, because we let the customer choose the first title the decision process was no longer simple. There was too much for the customer to think about. In a typical negative option book club, the marketer offers one title at a time, always leading with the most popular title. The customer makes one decision – do they want that book or not?

In our package the customer had to look at the entire series at one time and decide which of the books they would start with, then which to continue with. (All without the five most popular titles to influence them.) The complexity of the decision severely depressed response.

The lesson learned was that regardless of how well written and designed the campaign is, if the decision required by customers is too complex, they won’t buy.

Product Samples and No Risk Offers. These are powerful incentives when selling a product that has an unbelievability factor. This was reinforced for me in a campaign for a weight loss product.

Weight loss products, which are plentiful, all follow the same advertising strategy. Show before and after pictures of people who have successfully trimmed down and shaped up due to the product, along with their personal stories or testimonials.

The offer for most weight loss products is either a free product sample or a no risk guarantee so the buyer gets a full refund if dissatisfied with the results.

My client didn’t want to do either of these offers. They wanted to market differently.

They decided to offer free personal fitness coaches as part of the purchase. The personal coach would be on-call to “pep talk” customers through the weight-loss process. They felt that the encouragement from another person would be more persuasive than the free sample or money-back guarantee.

We designed the campaign the normal way, showing before and after photos of success stories with personal testimonials. The only variance from the norm was in our offer. And our advertising campaign failed.

If you are getting your message to the right prospect, the offer becomes the most important part of your advertising campaign. It is more important than the product you are selling. The wrong offer can create a disaster. If that happens, don’t throw away the entire campaign. Test a new offer.

Sometimes there is a good reason why certain products are always sold certain ways. It is good to test new ideas, however, if only to verify that the old ones are valid. Without testing a new approach, you’ll never know if you could have improved your results. Here’s an example:

I was marketing a women’s magazine. We did our biggest new subscriber campaigns between Christmas and New Year’s every year. Repeat testing throughout the magazine industry showed that was the best time to get new subscribers, regardless of the type of magazine. We had good results, but nothing beyond normal expectations.

One year I tested a different type of campaign in August, a month usually avoided due to vacations and a focus on back-to-school. We used direct mail for the campaign and dropped it to arrive just before Labor Day. As an incentive we offered a free book about Christmas, packed full of holiday crafts, recipes, decorating ideas and entertaining advice, just for trying the magazine. If they decided they didn’t want to keep the subscription they could cancel it and keep the free book.

The campaign was a spectacular success. We continued to repeat that success every year. Our circulation doubled in two years. It was a long shot when we tried it. Had my company been afraid to invest in my off-the-wall idea, we would have missed this highly profitable growth in our magazine.

So don’t worry about the 50-50-90 rule, which is, “If you give something a 50-50 chance, there’s a 90% chance you’ll get it wrong.” That 10% chance of getting it right is worth trying. It’s not taking a chance at all that will keep you from getting what you want. And there’s nothing to fear about that.

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