“How do you sleep at night?” Yes, this is what a (now former) client recently wrote to me. Well, to be transparent, it is what he wrote about me. While I’d love to report that every single client we serve is a smashing success, that’s not reality.
Sometimes we fail. Thankfully, things go well far more times than not (that is how we’ve been around for 29 years). But sometimes, things don’t go as planned. And sometimes, they go very wrong. This was one of those times. I’m sharing the story because I think we (and you) can learn more when things don’t go well than when they do. Here’s the backstory… This company was the first client for our Sales Funnel Automation service, which we launched a little over a year ago. Like with any new product or service, there were some initial bumps in service delivery, but nothing major. However, four months in, and the strategy we were implementing was failing. Literally no results. At that point, we decided to adjust our implementation strategy. We refocused the target audience. We tweaked the content. We changed the calls to action. And nothing had much of an impact. Two months later, our initial contract was expiring. At that point, we could have said “sorry, we did our best,” and simply parted ways. But that’s not what we chose to do. Instead, we offered to start over, at no charge…to provide the entire service again based on what we had learned about our service delivery and their company. We provided honest feedback to our client:
- Their current website didn’t match the message they wanted to convey. It needed to be updated.
- Their messaging in the marketing campaign was not resonating and needed to be completely re-imagined.
- Their implementation process was solely focused on cold email and needed to expand to incorporate multiple forms of outreach…including calls.
- We needed to add lead tracking to the website to monitor responses, so the we could identify more prospects.
So, we pivoted hard. We redesigned the strategy. We rewrote the messaging. We even selected new software for the automations. Basically, we re-did everything. And we prepared to relaunch. Beyond the campaign, we also provided our client with recommendations for a new website (along with a proposal). Unfortunately, they elected to go with a low-cost provider who ignored most of our advice. We developed a new implementation process to get around some of the limitations of the software we had been using. And the client provided some great suggestions on new offers we could make. And last, but not least, we (strongly) recommend they incorporate sales calls into their marketing, include more educational (and less promotional) content, and add in that lead tracking piece. Our biggest mistake? We re-launched without getting agreement on the most critical items. While the client had a new website, it lacked the right content and structure to drive response. In the marketing campaign, the only approved content was promotional. And most importantly, the client declined to integrate sales calls or lead tracking into the marketing process. Despite our attempts to rectify the situation, and all the positive changes that were made, the campaign failed...again.
Now, it was not a complete failure.
- We reached more than 800 people
- Our open rates for emails improved from 10% to 40%
- We developed new strategies to increase email deliverability
- We generated qualified sales leads (just not at the level we wanted)
So, what can we learn from this ugly outcome? When you are trying something new, set appropriate expectations. Things will almost certainly not go as planned. Plan for the unexpected…and let your client know to expect those bumps in the road!
Also plan time (and cost) into your own service delivery to allow for adjustments to be made as you refine any new product or service. Iterate faster. When you are implementing a new service or first working with a new client, gather as much data as you can early in the process. Use this feedback to make quick adjustments in service delivery. Control what you can control. In hindsight, we could have done more to control several of the variables in this campaign. Had we taken more control early on, we might have improved results, we certainly could have pivoted faster, and we would have had a happier client. Test where you can. Any marketing campaign is a mix of art and science. To improve results, you need to test key elements such as copy, design, and most importantly, the offer. This testing should be baked into the implementation process. Don’t start unless everyone agrees to the rules of engagement. Over the past 29 years, we’ve consistently seen that the #1 cause of marketing failure is when we don’t integrate marketing and sales. When we could not make this happen, we should have stopped the process. The Silver Lining The process of launching our Sales Funnel Automation service taught us a lot about what works (and what does not) in automated cold outreach. Even some of the best practices that worked flawlessly a few years ago, don’t work the same way today. Likewise, some of the “old school” best practices (that no one seems to want to do) need to be incorporated into modern marketing funnels to make them succeed in an industry as competitive as staffing. Thankfully, we learned our lessons…and we are using them to make positive changes to our products and service delivery. If you’d like to know more about the specific things we’ve done (and are continuing to do) to revamp our approaches to outbound lead gen, please reach out! |
