I'm the sort of type that just can't get away from the computer the first day after launching a "big" campaign, checking at least once per hour what kind of effect we're generating.

It's the same today now that we launched the special contest for our Enlightened Salesperson marketing partners, offering them a 70% commission (instead of the standard 50%) and an opportunity to win a cash prize and other perks.

I'm watching results, but nothing much is happening. According to our statistics there hasn't been any increase in web site traffic at all, which means that none of our marketing partners (over 150) has started with any kind of promotional activities.

OK, it's far too early to tell anything, but let's take a look at some of the campaign elements (out of many) that could have gone wrong ...

a) Is there something wrong with the offer? Probably not, since we've been achieving good results at the 50% commission and a lower price before.

b) Was there something wrong with the way we communicated this contest? It is possible, although the offer was understandable. One possibility is that we didn't give our partners sufficient time to prepare for the campaign (the announcement went out just about 5 days before launch, so definetly not enough time).

c) Is there a problem with the marketing tools and advice we provided? Again, it is possible, but not very likely, since we really covered most of the short-term sales tools. Hopefuly, there aren't any problems with the sales material quality --- but there shouldn't be, since we've been using this same material with great success ourselves.

d) Are the timing and other circumstances wrong? Too early to tell. I know there's a problem with timing. This question could easily be answered if we took the time to research our target audience before hand, but there simply wasn't enough time (not because we couldn't hold the competition, but because there won't be time for such activities for another two months at least).

e) Are the marketing partners not comftorable promoting the product? This surely can't be it, since a recent survey we did showed that 95% of our readers are more than happy with the product and they also stated that it already helped them.

f) Is it the structure of our marketing partners?

There are a number of other possibilities as well. One of them is that it's just too early to tell:)

It's of course also possible that this whole program is a miss, but I'll test that on another product shortly with a similar audience and similar marketing partnership structure and naturally report the findings to you.

But the one thing I can be sure of is the fact that more research should have gone in to this project prior to it's release. Of course, as always, there wasn't enough time, but that's really no excuse, right?