Sales are near zero and you're scraping the bottom of the money barrel. It's not working! You had this great idea, begged and borrowed from friends and relatives, mortgaged everything you had, and started your business off with a bang, but it's not working!

The advertising campaign suggested by your ad agency bombed big! They produced some great commercials, the print ads won an award, and the direct mail campaign looked terrific; but the response has been so poor that you might as well had not advertised at all. What went wrong, and is there still time to fix the problems?

It may not be too late. Chances are, your entire advertising campaign was based on what you, your partners, and your advertising agency thought was good advertising copy; not on what your prospective customers wanted or needed. Your ads were based on features you and the ad agency felt were important and ignored the benefits your customer could gain from using your product.

Don't give up just yet, there is still a possibility to pull this campaign out of the dumpster. An immediate and major change in your marketing strategy could bring in enough in sales to weather the short-term losses, and a major re-marketing campaign could address the future. Here are the tasks that need immediate attention.

TESTING THE CONCEPT
You need some user input. What you think and feel about your product is not important! You are biased. You need input from the people who are going to spend their money on your products. Gather a panel of 10 to 12 potential users around a table and ask them what they think of your product. Since you want impartial answers, I suggest you hire an outside agent for this task. The best agents will be listed under 'Focus Group Facilitators' in the phone book. Tape record (video if available) everything that's said at your meeting, then analyze the tape. You will want to listen for words, expressions, feelings, and every other bit of information available. The information you gather could cause you to change your product's size, color, shape, price, or most anything else. Pay attention to the answers --- this is your customer talking!

TESTING THE COMPETITION
This test is similar to the concept test except that you don't test YOUR products, you test every competitive product or product substitute you can find. Be sure your group facilitator asks the same questions that were asked of your product.

TESTING THE SOLUTION
It will take you a while, but eventually you will be able to define exactly what your prospective customer wants, and what they are willing to pay for. Build a prototype, and go through the testing procedure once more, only this time include your top competitor's product. Again, listen carefully, and see if you bettered your competition. If not, it's back to the drawing board! To succeed, you must be competitive, so get busy!

TESTING THE MARKETING MATERIALS
Make what I call a 'copy test'. This consists of a minimum of three different approaches to advertising your product. The aim is to determine which approach brings in the most money. Have your advertising agency perform the test in a minimum of three market segments with the aim of determining how best to capitalize on the benefits you discovered in the concept and competition tests. Cuteness doesn't count unless it contributes to the bottom line, so be wary of getting off the feature-benefit bandwagon.

TESTING THE SALES PROGRAM
The final step is testing a sales package. Put together a test package which includes something you know your customer would like to have. A great idea is one of those mini-gift albums where the recipient can order one of a dozen or more items. The cost to you could be as low as $15 for each test, which is a very inexpensive way to gather information!

Make the offer of the catalog contingent on filling out a demographic and psychographic analysis form along with a product review. Keep it simple, but gather enough facts to determine who is purchasing your product, what they're doing with it, and what they'd like to change.

MAKE THE CHANGES
Change! Change your product, your advertising, or whatever else is necessary in order to satisfy your customers wants and needs. Will it work? Of course it will!