In my past life as a starving university student, I was a contest entering pro.
Truly, I entered muchos contests.
Then, I found myself on the other side of the table creating contests partnerships for GeckoGo. Suddenly, I was offering a lot of contests. And very envious of our winners!
So what did I learn, having been on both sides?
1. Figure out your contest objective
Obvious, but critical. Are you trying to raise awareness of your brand? Build engagement? Identify super users? Reward your consumers?
In our case, we wanted to identify super users who would stay on and form our uber traveller community. So we chose a prize that would appeal to intrepid travellers, and built the contest entry terms around actually using our site. But if you’re going for reach, you might increase the chances of winning based on sharing. So decide what you want.
2. Make ’em work for it
If you make your contest too easy to enter, you’ll attract a large group of people outside of your intended audience. The second contest we did, all you needed to do was enter your name and email. Not only was the winner completely uncommitted to our site, she didn’t complete the requirements post contest (to blog) and never came back after the contest. Learning from that, every contest after, we included either a daily or weekly component, or rewarded our members for more frequent engagement with our site during the contest period. You weed out old-me this way. 🙂 Also, contests are a good way to build new routines and habits (like visiting your site regularly, or commenting and engaging with the community.)
What you saw on your GeckoGo profile during our contest.
3. But you need a sufficiently compelling prize
It’s great to make your consumers work, but they better be striving for something compelling. This doesn’t necessarily mean expensive. Our travel writing contest was low value, but a lot of people participated for the recognition of getting published with our partners. But on the flip side, in another case, we gave away a dream trip to Africa. Speaking of prizes, consider the possibility of partnering with other companies for your prize. There’s no reason you should need to foot the whole bill for a contest, and better yet, there are cross promotional opportunities when you partner up!
4. One big prize or several smaller prizes?
Good question. On this I’ve found that the big prize has to be sufficiently compelling, but I also like to have a handful of smaller low value prizes that increase the perceived odds. I received as many heartfelt notes of thanks when I informed winners that they were getting a travel guide as I did when I called up about winning the grand prize.
6. It’s not over when the contest is over
There’s no reason the interaction needs to end once the prize has been awarded. Is the prize an experience, like at trip? Backstage passes? Include in the prize a requirement that the winner blogs or posts about his or her experience with this contest. It’s great content to share on your social media page, and also gives other consumers a taste of what they might win when you offer your next contest.
While we are talking about awesome prizes, I’ll let it be known that I’m happy to offer trial-run services on any trip prizes to make sure they are sufficiently compelling for users. Or if you are so lucky to win a sweet trip, I also make a great travelling sidekick! Anyone else sponsoring a $12K dream trip to the Galapagos? :p
