Looking for a way to reach out to your
market and reenergize your marketing?
Try a contest. People love
contests, especially when there’s a great prize at stake.
The kind of contest should you have
depends on your goal. You’re going to
invest time, effort, and money into your contest, so clearly define what it is
you hope to get out of it. Knowing what
your target is will help you determine what type of contest you have, how long
you run it, how you promote it, etc.
So, what’s your goal? Do you want to acquire more email addresses,
increase your blog readership, gather user-generated content, collect photos or
videos for your website or other marketing efforts, increase brand
awareness? Once you decide what you want
to accomplish, you can…
Choose a contest. Photo contests, writing contests, video
contests, random drawings: you dream it, you can compete it. Whether you hold a
trivia contest, offer a makeover, invite participants to tell a first-person
story, ask people to nominate a “best” (you choose the category), or hold an
“ugliest” contest and have participants send in pictures of their ugly
kitchens, lawns, offices--anything that your organization can sweep in and fix
or replace--engage your market and challenge it. The more creative and fun your contest is,
the more likely people will be to participate.
Keep in mind how much you’re asking of
participants and make sure your deadline reflects the time involved. For example, a contest requiring a video or
essay versus a photo or short anecdote should have a longer deadline so that
contestants have enough time to finish the task.
If you want your contest to be
successful, don’t forget to promote it!
Announce it in your blog, in your newsletter, in an email, on your
website, and in a press release. Talk about
it on your social media sites. Invite
industry or community leaders to judge your contest and ask them to share news
of your contest through their outlets.
Give your market plenty of notice, and then have fun.
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