We are all thrown headlong into this bizarre world of self promotion and marketing, be it digital, offline or as it is simply known these days - marketing.
Unless you are fortunate enough to start out with a marketing person at your side, or you have experience in marketing, then like most of us, your initial foray into marketing will leave you bruised and battle scarred.
So why not learn from others mistakes and see if we can all save a few quid, as well as tease out a few confessions of marketing blunders 
So I'll start the ball rolling...
Back in 2006 we had the genius idea of livering up a taxi into for a bit of mobile promotion. We had a good marketing budget, but not a shred of marketing expertise between us 
So we agreed on a colour scheme and launched our taxi on the peoples of Warwick and Leamington.
Now I think it looked the part and after much back slapping someone asked us how successful it was, as they were thinking of doing the same.
It was at this point we realised we had no idea! There was no plan in place to measure performance such as a dedicated phone number, or web URL.
Then things got worse. At the time we were operating from my house while we looked around for an office. Then the phone calls started: "can I have a taxi to the airport" "can I have a taxi back from town "
Maybe putting the number on the side wasn't the best plan
Then soon after we found an office, not far away but a different local area code so we couldn't keep the same number...
Marketing fail 
On the plus side, after 12 months we were asked to renew our cab for some daft sum of money which we said no thanks. 3 years later, albeit starting to look faded and worse for wear, our yellow taxi was still trundling around Warwickshire 
Lessons learned?
- If you use liveried taxis/buses etc, make sure you can track any enquires so you can gauge the effectiveness.
- Be careful of any number you do use, do you intend to move in the near future, and will the number be mistaken for a taxi company?
- If a marketing company gives you the pressure sell into renewing your taxi and tells you the livery will be removed within days, don't believe them
So can anyone beat that?
