Recently I was interviewed on two online business radio shows; Wayne Hurlbert’s Blog Business Success and PR Radio 101. I talk about the hobby from a sponsor’s and marketer’s perspective and how businesses can use sweepstakes and contests to increase profits.
Listen to me with Wayne here. Read Wayne’s book review here.
Listen to me with Erica Taylor. Segment 1 Segment 2
ENJOY!
I came across this article in Brandweek (a marketing and advertising industry publication) about “the future of contesting”, It’s Easy To Win.
The Coles Notes of the article is: sweepstaking will shift to online streaming live games shows in which they can participate in promotions, games and sweepstakes winning instantly.
I do see this as a new method of entry. (It actually looks like a lot of fun!) However, I do not see “old-fashioned” sweepstakes, contests or lotteries ever fading out or going away. Each entry method has its merits and place within a company’s marketing mix. The product or service and the target demographic will determine which entry methods, or blend of methods, a company will select to use when designing their sweepstakes promotion. An online live streaming game show will just be a new method to choose. Just like blogging and Facebook are also fairly new online entry method choices.
Check out the It’s Easy To Win site yourself and let me know what you think.
Usually contests that request some form of CGM (Consumer Generated Media) such as a picture, video or essay, garner a far fewer entries than a contest that asks the entrant to submit a simple form.
We Canadians are passionate about our hockey. The Canada’s Hockey Anthem Challenge received more than 14,000 entries! They had to have over 100 judges from Canada’s music industry narrow the selection down to five semi-finalists.
Each night, starting September 29th, The Hour will feature one of the semi-finalists. Then on October 4th we get to vote on our favourite. That will narrow the selection down to two finalists. On October 9th we get to vote for the winner.
After reviewing the rules there is no prize for voting (unless new rules are uploaded October 4th) but knowing how passionate we are about hockey, we Canadians will happily vote anyway.
(I am really interested to see how this one turns out, considering the original fiasco that required the CBC to obtain a new anthem in the first place.)
We are back at home safe and sound getting Nicole ready for her first day of school. We were so busy and had so much fun in Texas, I was not able to blog as often as I would have liked. I will continue to document our adventures at the 19th ANSC even though, like most of you, we are now back to our “regular” routine.
Saturday started with a surprise guest; Santa! Did you know he spends his summer vacations in Texas? I would too if I lived at the North Pole! (Notice his belt buckle even says SANTA.)
His elves passed out candy canes and a present for each table which one person won.
He also administered the Grand Prize Draws, Santa-style. All the prizes were wrapped and under the tree. If your name was called, you got to go up and select any gift you wished. Very exciting.
After all the gifts were passed out we had a fantastic Tex-Mex buffet lunch.
Followed by a Q&A session with Jeffrey Feinman. What I found the most interesting was that almost all the questions asked were the exact same ones I had sweepstakes marketing companies and promotional lawyers answered in my book.
We left when the raffles drawings began to spend extra time with Nicole at the pool as we did not participate in any of the raffles. Why not? They are only applicable to Americans as the prizes are stamps, envelopes, etc.
Back to the Riverwalk for dinner. We managed to talk Nicole into eating Italian for one night followed by a big scoop of Blue Bell ice cream.
What a convention! I think I know 1/2 the people here. I have been so busy I didn’t even get a chance to blog yesterday.
You may remember Rick Adams from the 1st Annual National Contestor Convention. He and his wife Chris joined us here in San Antiono and came with us on Thursday morning for breakfast. We headed to the Guenther House in the King William area for their famous sweet cream waffles. YUMMY!
We came back to the hotel for a dip in the pool followed by another Tex-Mex meal. Nicole can’t seem to get enough of queso and chips!
After registering, we headed to San Antonio’s most famous landmark, The Alamo. WOW!
At 7:00pm the convention officially kicked off with a welcome from Robert & Gwen Beauchamp followed by a casual mix and mingle. I could have stayed up all night catching up with friends.
I had an interesting conversation the other day with Johnny Lucas, the Editor-in-Chief of Driven Magazine. (Driven is a life-style publication targeted to affluent urban men. It is distributed to some Globe & Mail subscribers and in Air Canada airport lounges.)
They have chosen to run a contest on their website giving away ten pairs of Maui Jim sunglasses valued at $200 per pair. Entrants must answer a survey to gain an entry into the contest. Even though they would love to limit the entrants to their magazines target market, they follow Canadian promotional law and open the contest to all.
This is the marketer’s dilemma. How does a company ensure they reach their target market, while at the same time complying with proper marketing practices and regulations?
There are four solutions to this dilemma:
I am interested to see which choice for future promotions Driven Magazine makes after their current contest is over.
In 1999 we went on a crazy road trip.
My husband Craig had been working on a large technology project that would take him to Philadelphia on a Thursday, a different U.S. city on a Friday and return him to me Monday night. So that year, his weekends were Tuesday and Wednesday. Every Thursday morning, on his way into work, on of his local Philly co-workers would stop in at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and buy several dozen for the morning meeting. Craig would eat six! After every trip he would rave about these amazing doughnuts.
At that time the closest Krispy Kreme Doughnut location to us was in Scranton PA. He wanted me to try one of their doughnuts so we packed up the car and headed south east. He had never had one of their doughnuts hot and I thought the seven hour drive was worth it!
Fast forward to 2001. At that time, I had over 15 years marketing experience all in the technology industry. I found myself caught in the dot.com crash and unemployed for the longest period of my life. While seeking out new career opportunities I discovered Krisy Kreme as planning to open stores in Canada. I wrote the Canadian franchisee describing my passion for their product and our road trip. I was hired to write the Canadian FUNdraising marketing plan. It was during that project I had an opportunity to speak with the Vice President of Marketing in their U.S. head office. I suggested they sell their famous Krispy Kreme flavor shot syrup. At time was told that the idea was not viable.
Fast forward to 2008. On our recent road trip, we took a break at a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. When we walked in a noticed they had bottles of their flavor shot syrup on the counter. Hey! That was my idea! I was told they had been selling the syrup for a few years.
That shows how long it’s been since I have been in a Krispy Kreme Doughnut shop. Sadly, the Canadian franchise expanded to quickly and there are only six stores left in Canada, one in Ontario. If you ever get a chance to visit a store when the “Hot” light is on, go in. There is nothing like a hot doughnut melting in your mouth.
Make sure you check out the production line through the glass wall and watch the icing waterfall.
Yesterday, for the first time in eight years, I hired a cleaning service; The Maids. When we first got married, our solution to stop arguing over housework was to hire a home cleaning service. They were great, everything sparkled and the arguing stopped. When we bought our first home, we hired the local branch of the same cleaning service. They were terrible. There was no consistency between franchise owners. (Consistency is key to a good franchise. Just ask McDonald’s.) So, we tried about half a dozen other cleaning services. None would clean thoroughly. I even offered to pay more for a better job, but to no avail.
Last year The Maids had an online sweepstakes and part of the promotion was, you had to watch a demo of how thoroughly they cleaned. After entering everyday for two weeks, I thought, “Maybe I have finally found a service that will clean my home the same way I do.” I checked their website and, sadly, there was no franchise owner in my area. Last weekend I went to a local home show (to enter all the sweepstakes of course) and The Maids had a booth. YEAH! Someone decided to buy a franchise in my area. I took them up on their home show special offer. A team of four people showed up and now my home sparkles.
Sweepstakes are a very effective marketing tool. It made a first time customer out of me. To convert first time customers to long-term customers a company must deliver what promises. Since they have lived up to their claims, they now have a permanent customer out of me.
What product or service have you switched to because of a sweepstakes?
If you have not entered already, The Maids is running their promotion again and it’s open to Canada and the U.S. Ends May 31st.
Gyutae, the Winning the Web blogger, commented on my last posting. I emailed him back instead of posting a reply and I thought my answer was appropriate enough to post for everyone.
“The audience I write for are sweepstakers and they like to enter anything and everything. I am trying to get them to look at the promotion before they enter and unless they could really use the prize, enter elsewhere. This saves you from getting people subscribing that just delete your emails and they don’t get an inbox of useless information (to them) nor do they win a prize they can’t use allowing you to give it to someone who can.”
The reason I wrote the first posting is there has been an explosion of blog-based contests and I think this is the forum to discuss it. Also, in the U.S. all winners must pay income tax on their prizes, so it is very important to only enter contests and sweepstakes where you really want the prize, and are willing to pay the tax on it.
Check my Blogroll on the right to find links to blogs that list and/or host contests. You will find two types: 1) blogs that list contests with prizes of value to the general public, and 2) blogs that list contests with prizes of value to businesses, specifically those with an Internet focus. Sign-up for the RSS feed of those you find interesting and the contests will come to you.
I have set up my RSS reader to collect new postings from contest blogs (see my Blogroll on the right side of blog home page) and marketing blogs. I have noticed there is a glut of blogs running blog contests offering virtual prizes to enhance your blog, Internet business, website, etc. The prizes, although virtual, have dollar values attached to them, but are they worth it and would they really benefit you?
Take, for example, the Craziest Marketing Contest You’ve Ever Seen. They are giving away $13, 647 in prizes. Everything from a year of web-hosting, to online advertising to books and t-shirts. One way to gain entries into the contest is to subscribe to the blog’s emailing list and RSS feed. That’s a great way to get people to sign-up to your blog, but what’s the point of having people sign-up if they don’t care what you have to say and won’t read what you have written?
I think this is the virtual version of the paper customer list. When I started my career in sales and marketing 20 years ago as a junior sales rep., I remember being handed a database list of all their clients and told to call each and every one. Guess what? The 80/20 rule was alive and well. 80% of the companies listed were people that only bought from us once, had since left their position, didn’t remember who we were, etc. and the other 20% were our good customers.
I think these types contests are creating hundreds of virtual 80/20 customer lists. The websites and blogs can boast, “We have X number of people signed up.” Giving the false impression to their advertisers that all those connected to them are real customers. The real measure of success in any business, virtual or otherwise, is the profit margin, plain and simple.
So if you have a blog, website, or Internet business and you feel you could use some of the prizes listed, enter. If not, stick to entering good “old-fashioned” online sweepstakes.
(To learn more about RSS feeds and readers, checkout the Tips & Tricks section of The Winning EDGE Vol. 4 Issue 2.)
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