A client of mine recently engaged a marketing company to develop a campaign for a new product launch, the eventual outcome of the campaign was not quite what my client had bargained for.

In order to protect the innocent, I can’t name my unsuspecting client, nor will I name the marketing company who duped them into spending a large sum of money on an ineffective marketing campaign.

Here’s how the story played out…
My client approached several marketing companies to craft a campaign for a new product launch.
The marketing company that eventually won the job provided a mail campaign to 10,000 leads which were sourced from a rented list.
The marketing company GUARANTEED 25% conversion rate back to the website. (Bells start ringing at this point for me)

So off they went, arm in arm, skipping down the yellow brick road, singing songs about a wizard, life was grande, sales were going to skyrocket…

Over the course of the next week, the client in fact measured in excess of 3000 clicks back to the website.. An astounding 30% conversion rate from a DL card.
They made 2 sales..

Upon querying the marketing company they were met with all sorts of excuses…
“Obviously, there’s something wrong with the website”
“The colours you used on the landing page were not conducive to selling”
“Copy is bad”
Blah, blah, blah…

Enter Max..
We took a look at the web server logs and noticed some very interesting anomalies, in excess of 95% of the clicks originated from IP Addresses outside of Australia. Surely the marketing company couldn’t have been that stupid, i mean heck.. I can buy clicks which emanate from within Australia, why would these morons buy clicks from Baltic states?
Summary:
Client blew $20K on a marketing campaign that was ill conceived, ill managed, poorly executed and included metrics that were questionable at best.

My advice to anyone who’s thinking of engaging a marketing company that guarantees any sort of conversion rates back to your website is to do your due diligence, speak with clients of the company and see what sort of hard conversion rates they got. Were the clicks legitimate clicks or were they purchased from one of the many suppliers who offer that ’service’..