The novice marketing mistake that kills new perfumes

    Running out of money. It's a very common novice mistake. The novice is inclined to look at it as "bad luck" but really it is bad planning, bad execution, or both.

    This is not to say that, given a fixed amount of money for your project, success is guaranteed if you stick carefully to your plan. What it does mean is that a project that goes belly up prematurely -- money all gone while execution is incomplete -- is the result of bad planning and/or bad execution.

    You have limited money for your project. We all do. So your planning must take this into consideration. Your planning must set goals that are reachable with the resources at your command. Since your resources are (always!) limited, your goals must also be limited.

    Be aware that when a major fragrance marketer launches a new fragrance, they limit both production and distribution. I remember one Christmas in Texas trying to buy a bottle of the newly launched Sean John "Unforgivable" (which made use of Pomarose, new aroma molecule by Philip Kraft for Givaudan) but"Unforgivable" was out of stock.

    Estee Lauder, the marketer, was testing. Estee Lauder had, likewise, tested "Donald Trump The Fragrance." Neither fragrance was a hit but, because Estee Lauder was testing with, limited budgets for each project, neither produced much impact on Estee Lauder's bottom line.

    On a personal note, a company I was involved with had the thought that we could market a men's cologne successfully but we wanted to test first on a small scale. We bought a small quantity of a men's fragrance from a wholesaler and advertised it on a small scale using an approach that was our own.

    The bottles we used for out test cost us five times more per bottle than the bottles we created AFTER the test proved a success. But the bottles for the test only cost us a few hundred dollars so although we made less profit when selling them, our risk -- on the product end -- was negligible.

    The point of testing is to see what MIGHT happen. Then you can project, from your "numbers," what is LIKELY to happen if you scale up your promotion.

    When you set up your test you must KNOW, from the beginning, that you have the money you'll need to produce your fragrance, in a test quantity, and promote your fragrance, to a clearly defined, limited, market.

    Right now (Summer/Fall 2014) I'm running a contest for the "Marketer Most Likely To Sell The Most Perfume." The prize for winners is a starter supply of one of my own fragrances, but with their chosen name on it.

    From the point of view of the contestant, if he or she is a winner, they have a chance to DISCOVER whether they really can sell perfume. If someone is a winner they can execute their marketing plan -- using the bottles of fragrance I will have given them -- and then, if they can make sales, they can either continue with what they are getting from me OR they can create a fragrance of their of their own and sell it using the same marketing plan.

    This, for them, would be almost identical to the test strategy I used, with the exception -- and improvement -- that their fragrance will have their name on it whereas my test bottles carried the branding of some company long forgotten.

    So here's the lesson. Plan your perfume promotion around your financial capabilities. Before you spend a penny, make sure that you will have enough money to produce your perfume ON A LIMITED SCALE and market it with a LIMITED GOAL.

    If it flys, you'll get your money back with a small profit. You can then bootstrap that success by doing it on a slightly larger scale -- or, with "numbers" that prove your success, you might attract an investor and roll out your perfume on a larger scale.