Some of the Worst Marketing..

..ever done has probably been done by me at some point.

When I was still a teenager, I decided to try marketing myself as a "mobile DJ."
These are the folks who spin the tunes for weddings, graduations, and the like.
Luckily, there are no copies of that letter around anymore as far as I know. I don't remember what the letter said in its contents.

What I remember is that it looked..well..atrocious. Hand-typed on an ancient typewriter that punched holes all the way through the paper on the "o's" and had an "e" key that didn't work at all. So, every word with the letter e in it had to have the e's written in by hand. I mailed this lovely piece in some hideous orange envelopes scraped up from somewhere.

I don't believe that effort ever resulted in a response of any sort! I certainly understand why it didn't, now. Of course, that didn't deter me from becoming a radio DJ and on to local radio station management areas.

That said, there is still a lot of testing to be done in today's marketing. It really is a constant test. I've worked on direct mail pieces that have pulled everywhere from zero to a 10% response rate. I've done zero response pieces; this past January, a targeted letter for the MUSIC OF NEW LIFE Radio station got a 10%
response rate and resulted in total funding for the station's launch this past February.

So, keep testing.

You win some. You lose some. You just want to win more than you lose!