How to Recover from a Marketing Campaign Fail

Launching a new marketing campaign is always a gamble. There will be times when a marketing team will want to bring out bottles of champagne and toast to their hard work because it looks like the idea is a complete success. And there will be times when a team is too busy dealing with customer backlash to throw themselves a celebration.

It begs the question: how does a company recover from marketing campaign flop?

Listen to the Criticism

Your audience is upset for a reason. For instance, Estee Lauder received backlash for advertising their many shades of Double Wear Nude Water Fresh Makeup SPF25. Consumers were upset that the online ads blatantly revealed how limited their options were for customers with darker skin tones.

Take in what your customers are criticizing about the marketing methods, the brand or the products themselves. There is a big chance that they’re right. Now that you know what’s wrong, you have an opportunity to fix it.

Put out an Apology

Letting the backlash build is not a wise idea. You need to address the problem right away.

In extreme scenarios, you may have to do some more damage control. You may need to pull your product off the shelves. Taking the loss could be financially savvier than trying to weather the storm. Budweiser had to pull their beer from circulation because their #UpForWhatever campaign included labels that said “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.”

Remind Your Audience of the Bigger Picture

As a way to spin the negative situation, you can remind consumers that your company works to promote positivity and growth.One marketing campaign flop doesn’t do away from all the other good you’re doing.

Think of what the corporate heavyweight Dove did after having some of their ads lambasted for being offensive. They apologized for the marketing mistakes and took the opportunity to remind customers of their on-going Dove Self Esteem Project and their progressive stances on representation.

It’s a simple case of losing the battle but winning the war.

Track Your Campaigns from Now On

Don’t let yourself get blindsided by a campaign failure. You can use a lightweight Enterprise software to track your marketing data and notify you of anomalies, whether they’re good or bad. You can have real-time alerts through Slack whenever something unique appears.

You can visit Morphio to learn more about their anomaly feature and how it can come in handy when you launch a brand-new campaign. It will keep you at the head of any backlash, so your team doesn’t have to fumble their way through recovery. You will be completely aware of the data and prepared to tackle the problem.

Finally, the last thing you can do to recover from a marketing campaign flop is move forward. You can’t dwell on the mistake. The team will have to come up with a new campaign idea, taking the previous criticism into consideration. Soon enough, consumers will forget about the failure.