You find a coupon online for a free muffin and coffee at a small bakery you’ve never thought to try. That Monday, you break your normal routine to wait in line at the bakery only to learn that the coffee and muffins have run out. You’re late for work, hungry and uncaffeinated. The baker apologizes and offers you another coupon you have no intention of ever using.
Marketing efforts can be too good. We’ve discussed plans for dealing with downtime. In this section of SilverTech’s ‘Avoiding Disaster from Downtime’ series we take a look at the curious pitfalls of a campaign that is ‘too successful’ and the importance of strategic marketing and infrastructure partnerships.
A ‘so good, it kills’ campaign generates an overwhelming increase in consumer action, leading to reduced quality of service and cognitive dissonance. The common, detrimental and avoidable mistakes often made during a campaign result in traffic spikes capable of overloading the company’s infrastructure and ruining the brand to both new and loyal customers, thus rendering it ‘so good, it kills.’
Read how your bakery distaste was the result of a disasterously good campaign and a disconnect between marketing and infrastructure.
Maple Muffin Monday Bakery Blues
That little bakery off Main Street has a small, but loyal following. Tom, the owner, makes the absolute best maple blueberry muffins this side of being awake. Still, business is slow to grow and barely getting by Tom opts for an amazing online coupon offer and puts some flyers up on Main St. (just in case the online thing doesn’t work out.)
The event, dubbed ‘Maple Muffin Monday,’ was a roaring success. The line of eager new patrons was backed up to Main Street; however, the ‘regulars’ couldn’t get through the door. The entire 1,200 muffin inventory sold out, and the coffee ran dry.
The new business Tom attracted had wasted a morning trying to get in the door and the normal customers had been alienated. Even those who had gotten the maple muffin goodness were left with a day-old taste in their mouth from the long wait and rushed service.
Tom’s bakery broke sales records, but his infrastructure was overloaded. The campaign was too successful for the other cogs in his business. As such, each person attracted by the campaign had experienced varying degree of cognitive dissonance. This mismatch in expectation and reality, despite the bakery’s intent, had a dramatic negative impact on the brand. Ever say “I tried them once, it was awful” and know you’ll never try again?
Avoiding Digital Downtime
The same premise that downed Tom’s bakery can down a digital presence for your brand. Just as Tom’s coupons, flyers and expectations should have been shared with his staff so that they could be better prepared for the spike, your marketing strategy should explicitly call for your infrastructure to adjust accordingly.
Event websites can crash with traffic loads at kick-off. Retail websites can slow under heavy load, leading to increased in cart abandonment. Your website is more prone to buckle when your audience needs you most.
Ensure your server can handle more than the expected traffic spike from any given campaign. Adjust accordingly, but don’t waste resources by buying into the ‘top’ plan to account for occasional spikes. Ensure that your social media strategy is prepared to track success and handle backlash in the event of a failure.
The unfortunate truth is that if your marketing agency, digital strategists and hosting/infrastructure groups are scattered throughout your company and across multiple firms; it’s up to you to manage the effects of a campaign on your infrastructure. In the unfortunate case of an outage, your host will blame the spike, “you hadn’t paid for this level of traffic,” and the agency behind the campaign will revel in the ‘success.’
Tom was in the right mindset to use creative new and traditional tactics to increase his bakery’s business. You should always be looking for ways to do the same, but learn from Tom and ensure the infrastructure is capable of handing the traffic and keep up with the offer.
Ideally, your marketing team should be as closely tied to your infrastructure teams as possible. If they happen to be the same team, such as the case with SilverTech (shameless plug) who offer both digital strategy and hosting, among other great services, then you’re job and actual success is that much easier..
Now will somebody please fetch me a maple muffin?
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Tags: Avoiding disaster form downtime, customer service, infrastructure, Marc Frechette, promotion
