Online Marketing Ads That Went Wrong
By: Seattle Web Design
Tags: Online Marketing Services, Marketing Strategies, Online Marketing Stories, Marketing Disasters, Bad Marketing

What you should know, and how to avoid online marketing disaster’s

As the number of people who use the internet increases, more businesses see this as an opportunity to bring in more customers. There are different ways that this can be achieved. The main way that this can be done is by creating websites and marketing themselves across different platforms. As people become more tech-savvy, new innovative ways to advertise appear.

Although, sometimes, this doesn’t always go as smoothly as they hope. Marketing online can end up having the opposite effect, making the reputation of the business plummet if not done correctly. Written here will be a collection of online marketing horror stories. Businesses will be able to learn about what not to do when doing online marketing.

Online Marketing Strategies

There are many different ways a business can go about online marketing. Each of these different strategies has varying degrees of success. There are a variety of ways to advertise: on social media, pay per click advertising, affiliate marketing, sending emails, and more. These all have the ultimate goal of drawing in the viewer of the ad to get them interested in their business.

Types of Marketing

One of the main ways of marketing would be content marketing. This is where a company uses the media of their choice to present their information. This could include images, videos, or websites. Often companies will use a combination of these things in order to present their product.

Another effective marketing would be social media. As more people are using social media, it is a good way to get people’s attention to promote a company. It also can help promote any items, as it may catch the attention of the user. It is also easier to get announcements out to the people following the business on social media

Social media advertising can be good for building relationships. The customer and the business can interact more easily, making the customer feel closer to that company. They will most likely continue to be a customer when they build the bond. The business can also hear what the customers have to say so they can improve themselves. It is a mutually beneficial solution.

Similarly, affiliate marketing is useful for advertising. Affiliate marketing is when a person partners up with another business. They earn money for how many people they get to visit the other business.

Some may benefit a company more depending on what kind of business they do. For example, gaming companies do video ads, but others such as Grammarly would focus more on Search Engine Optimization. They go for the platform that will reach out to their target audience. Knowing how they should be placing their ads is crucial to bringing in their potential customers.

Some may benefit a company more depending on what kind of business they do. For example, gaming companies do video ads, but others such as Grammarly would focus more on Search Engine Optimization. They go for the platform that will reach out to their target audience. Knowing how they should be placing their ads is crucial to bringing in their potential customers.

Online Marketing Horror Stories

As many benefit from such online marketing strategies, they can also just as easily do the opposite. When something goes wrong, that information can spread like wildfire.

There are many places where they can go wrong and it is important to keep a note of these mishaps in order to prevent them in the future. These instances are crucial and can assist in avoiding them. The effects can vary from being light to detrimental.

Ads Gone Wrong

Doing special things to promote your business can do good for a business. An example of this is how Sprite cans have sip & scan icons. Users can scan these in order to “access experiences, rewarding perks, sweepstakes, and more,” as noted on their FAQs.

These smaller promotions motivate people into buying a product. They can also convince people to go to the website and learn more about the business. Although sometimes this way of an advertisement doesn’t work out how they are planned.

Heinz, the tomato ketchup company had created a label design campaign that lasted from 2012 to 2014. It was made so that when the QR code was scanned, it would redirect them to their website. This would be where the customer could design their own label for their Heinz ketchup. It had been a successful promotion for their ketchup.

After 2014, the campaign was over so the company decided not to renew their domain name, but people still had the QR code. Provided that now the domain was open for anyone to take, a man who owned a porn site had snatched the website. The result was when anyone who had scanned the code was greeted with an unexpected surprise.

Heinz label design campaign

This had been a failed case of web marketing.

They Missed Their Chance

Opportunities are important and difficult to get sometimes. One would need luck in order to get a great chance for solid ad placement. They need to strike the iron when it’s hot, because who knows when it’ll happen again. When it’s missed, it is gone.

This is a case where they didn’t take advantage of the golden opportunity they were given. In Beyoncé’s song, Formation, they had the lyrics “When he f*** me good, I take his a** to Red Lobster. This had led their weekend sales to spike.

While their sales had gone up due to the shoutout, they didn’t do as well as they could have. They hadn’t responded to this callout on Twitter until hours later. People who followed them were disappointed by their lackluster response to the callout. They also were upset with how long it took for them to come up with that response. They should’ve responded faster to the callout.

There are many people who would like the same opportunity that Red Lobster had gotten. Getting the spotlight from a major figure does a lot of good for one’s company. It needs to be used to its fullest when the chance comes.

It had the Wrong Effect

There are several times where the effect that you were hoping for takes too long. For example, companies have ended up doing this as they were so focused on trying to sell their product and not the story. They didn’t realize how bad it would seem from their target audience’s perspective. This company in particular took content marketing in the wrong direction with the video they created. It had ended up pushing away customers rather than bringing them in.

One of the more recent ads with this problem was the Peloton Exercise Bike ad. People had started to mark this as sexist and has now been taken down from Youtube. The ad is about a woman who had received a peloton bike from her husband for Christmas.

It had been suggested that he had gifted her the bike as he wanted her to lose weight. She records her workouts over the year and presents the vlog to him as thanks for the bike.

This ad was not perceived well, as many people had started to focus on the other messages that were implied in the video. People on Twitter started sending hate tweets and many people ended up covering this ad in their articles and the problems that came with it. In total it had brought down the company’s shares the Tuesday the ad had come out.

This would be a content advertisement as it didn’t get across the message that they had wanted to. It had instead upset many people. It didn’t highlight their product as well as it should’ve. In the end, they had to scrap this content and work on a re-do.

Horror Marketing Strategies

With online marketing still being a relatively new way to advertise, there are many things that can go wrong.

Companies need to maintain their website, or else someone else may take it and mislead people. They could ruin a reputation without the company even realizing it. A company can even make a big mistake by not seizing an opportunity when it arises. An ad that goes wrong can result in monetary loss.

The last one is the one that is most often seen throughout the media world, where businesses will try to convey one message, where they would promote their product, but it would end up giving people the wrong idea. A result of unwanted attention.

There are more generic cases on what businesses tried to do to market but ended up not working as well as they expected. Some companies may make the mistake of accidentally putting ads where it may not benefit.

For example, putting ads on a popular mobile game, and while the mobile game can be popular in itself, that doesn’t mean that the ad will do that well. The targets are too different. It will end up as a waste of online marketing.

What to Do Instead

There are many things that could go wrong while trying to do online marketing so it is important to take the necessary precautions to avoid it. In order to make sure that online marketing goes well, make sure that the type of marketing reaches its target audience. It should attract those who want to view the ad. Focus materials on the methods that work better.

Moreover, people who are marketing also need to make sure that their content promotes what they are aiming for. They need to make sure that it will be received well by the viewer. The results are that people are more inclined to further explore rather than jeopardize the product, service, or brand.

The business needs to make sure that it still has the proper information that they need to convey. Keeping it fresh and relevant captures the attention of the audience easier.