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So much of today's culture is focused on hustling / winning / displaying your accomplishments, that many of the failures, mishaps, trials of attempt and the struggle get swept under the rug.
I've always been fascinated and more curious about the wrong paths taken, the trials and tribulations that have NOT succeeded. The investments made that turned out to be a dud. Many of today's success stories are platitudes, with not a lot of actionable advice, much less anything you can deeply learn from.
I'm creating this thread to share, inform and spread your trials and tribulations in your business journey. The investment in Time, Money, Relationships and Education that did NOT pan out like you hoped. The investments that have clearly not turned into anything bigger, or just in some (or many ways) did not yield the results or expectations you were after.
It doesn't have to be big! The point here is to share your experience, and let others know that there are challenges along the way, and not every investment will pan out to be a winner (like the advertisements, social and mainstream media) portray it to be.
I'll go first.
One of the personal care products we used to carry, got mentioned by the hosts of a radio talk show. Shortly after that - they reached out to us, letting us know that one of the hosts loved our product, and think it would be an amazing fit for their audience. They showed us their demographic, and the audience count - which both seemed to be highly impressive. They proposed a package to broadcast and make small 'personal' commercials of our product at multiple times of the day. They originally wanted $35K for a month long promotion. That would include several facebook placements on their site. After a bit of negotiations, and bringing down the count of how often they would advertise us - we agreed on a sum of $20K to give this a trial run. We thought we had a sure fire hitter, with the reach on their platform.
Low and behold - the campaign started - and ... 'CRICKETS!'. Over the course of the month, and the follow up I believe we got a total of 4 referral sales from this campaign. This was our only radio outreach we have tried - and quickly did not pursue our relationship further. Maybe keeping it going for few additional months would of ramped up performance, or maybe not. With such few direct sales from that ad, we decided to call it quits and moved on to trying other facets of advertising.
This was a big investment for us at the time, and one made without much prior experience or knowledge about the radio industry, or what it takes to succeed in that space. We did not leverage their campaign to our advantage (which we could have), as we moved onto other projects and wrote this off completely. It would of been wise also to consult with experts in this field or area to get their perspective and input on moving forward with this large of an investment.
We have countless other examples of product launches failures, money invested and relationships that went nowhere, but for now I will leave this here and let others chime in on what are your failures and some of your key takeaways on how you would do something different ? Or not do at all ? Lessons learned? Curious to hear it all!
I've always been fascinated and more curious about the wrong paths taken, the trials and tribulations that have NOT succeeded. The investments made that turned out to be a dud. Many of today's success stories are platitudes, with not a lot of actionable advice, much less anything you can deeply learn from.
I'm creating this thread to share, inform and spread your trials and tribulations in your business journey. The investment in Time, Money, Relationships and Education that did NOT pan out like you hoped. The investments that have clearly not turned into anything bigger, or just in some (or many ways) did not yield the results or expectations you were after.
It doesn't have to be big! The point here is to share your experience, and let others know that there are challenges along the way, and not every investment will pan out to be a winner (like the advertisements, social and mainstream media) portray it to be.
I'll go first.
One of the personal care products we used to carry, got mentioned by the hosts of a radio talk show. Shortly after that - they reached out to us, letting us know that one of the hosts loved our product, and think it would be an amazing fit for their audience. They showed us their demographic, and the audience count - which both seemed to be highly impressive. They proposed a package to broadcast and make small 'personal' commercials of our product at multiple times of the day. They originally wanted $35K for a month long promotion. That would include several facebook placements on their site. After a bit of negotiations, and bringing down the count of how often they would advertise us - we agreed on a sum of $20K to give this a trial run. We thought we had a sure fire hitter, with the reach on their platform.
Low and behold - the campaign started - and ... 'CRICKETS!'. Over the course of the month, and the follow up I believe we got a total of 4 referral sales from this campaign. This was our only radio outreach we have tried - and quickly did not pursue our relationship further. Maybe keeping it going for few additional months would of ramped up performance, or maybe not. With such few direct sales from that ad, we decided to call it quits and moved on to trying other facets of advertising.
This was a big investment for us at the time, and one made without much prior experience or knowledge about the radio industry, or what it takes to succeed in that space. We did not leverage their campaign to our advantage (which we could have), as we moved onto other projects and wrote this off completely. It would of been wise also to consult with experts in this field or area to get their perspective and input on moving forward with this large of an investment.
We have countless other examples of product launches failures, money invested and relationships that went nowhere, but for now I will leave this here and let others chime in on what are your failures and some of your key takeaways on how you would do something different ? Or not do at all ? Lessons learned? Curious to hear it all!
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