Back in 2006, one of the first online marketing campaigns that I worked on was for an up-start healthcare company. This new company was bringing to market a new healthcare product, Fem-V (a test for bacterial vaginitis). The company engaged us to handle the website design and paid search campaigns (who better to be a part of this than a twenty-something year old male). Author’s Note – this was also around the time that I began dating my wife and nothing keeps a woman’s interest more than working at a job that requires long hours and when you do see her, discussions include marketing campaigns involving feminine products (access to free samples – not a plus).
They also hired a public relations firm for writing and distributing press releases, print advertising, and online banner advertising. From a product research and development perspective, the healthcare company did everything correctly as they identified a target market (millions of America women that misdiagnose vaginal infections every year) and were able to manufacture a product that would retail for only $7.99 which helped them gain distribution in Rite Aid stores across the country. From a website and paid search perspective everything was optimized and the campaign was achieving its goal of $2 cost per coupon download.
Where were the problems you ask? First, the public relations firm (eager to add online marketing to their mix of services) convinced the client that since they were creating print ads and negotiating the ad rates that they should also handle the online banner ad campaign. Despite us advising against running a banner ad campaign due to the likelihood of it failing to offer a positive return on investment, the company moved forward with the public relations firm’s plan. The plan involved purchasing roughly $100,000 worth of banner ads on health websites such as WebMD and Yahoo Health at an average cost per thousand ad impressions (CPM) of $15, which gave them over 6.5 million ad impressions. The goal of a $2 cost per coupon download was an insurmountable goal as a typical 728×90 skyscraper banner ad has a .35% click through rate (CTR). This would yield roughly 23,000 visitors to the campaign landing page. Assuming a 10% conversion rate (which is aggressive) the cost per coupon download would be in the $40 dollar range in a best case scenario. It does not take a financial expert to determine that a $40 cost per coupon download (let alone a $100 cost per coupon download) for a product that costs only $7.99 is a recipe for disaster. The actual result from the public relations firm’s campaign was about a $100 cost per coupon download.
The second issue was a failed attempt by the public relations firm to create awareness through a series of outdoor promotions. During the summer, they hired a team of female models to walk around the beach wearing t-shirts that read “Got Itch?” and pass out coupons to women on the beach. I realize that “Got Milk?” was a successful campaign during this timeframe that spurred several knockoffs but the “Got Itch?” campaign was in poor taste and did nothing to help increase sales.
The final issue helped seal not only the product’s fate but also that of the startup company. It began with something completely out of their control, as drugstores stopped accepting all online coupons due to episodes of counterfeits. This was devastating as the paid search campaign had already generated thousands of coupon downloads that could no longer be redeemed. In response, the company paused the paid search campaign for a week as they added e-commerce to the website so that they could sell their product online. The problem with this solution was that through this distribution channel it would take 7-10 days for the customer to receive their order. With the nature of this product, this was unacceptable as any woman with a health concern would not wait nearly two weeks when they could get a doctor’s appointment in a shorter time period. After spending nearly $200,000 to launch their marketing campaigns and little sales to show for it, the company was unable to continue operations.
Despite the product launch ultimately failing, below are the lessons that can be taken away from this experience.
- It is important to set realistic campaign goals that are measurable.
- As a marketer it is important to not only understand your campaign objectives but your products, industry, competitors and target audience. The reason why the paid search campaign achieved its goals was that we spent the time to understand all of these elements before creating our strategy and building out the campaign keywords and ad copy.
What a great resource!