Marketing 101: Contests Are Great Bang for Your Buck

One of the greatest challenges that a new (or existing) business can face is building some buzz, regardless of what kind of product or service you offer. Realistically, Google doesn’t really do anything all that different from Ask Jeeves or Infoseek, but it doesn’t take a genius to see how much more successful Google has been. Most of us don’t have a budget quite as big as Google, so how can you best spend your marketing money to maximize the benefit?

Recently, a client of mine — 1234Pens.com — teamed up with John Chow dot Com to give away a Nintendo Wii. There were several aspects to this that led to its resounding success for the promotional pens company.

• A Prize That People Want: The Nintendo Wii has been much more sought after than the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, largely because it appeals to everyone, whether they’re a traditional gamer or not. Mario fans want one, and even grandpa can play some bowling in Wii Sports. Massive appeal for the masses.
• A Large, Targeted Audience: If 1234 Pens only advertised this contest on their own website, it would basically defeat the purpose. The whole point was to drive search engine traffic to their site, so why tell people who are already there that you exist. This is where the partnership with a huge blog like John Chow’s comes into play. With thousands of unique visitors a day, John Chow dot Com has a pretty far-reaching audience.
• The Power of Anchor Text: Driving search engine traffic to a website is key to its success, whether it’s the website itself that makes money or the service/product behind it. What would be the key word that you’d want associated with your business that people would actually search for? 1234 Pens went with “promotional pens” and it worked like a charm. Before the contest started, their site was buried on the 3rd or 4th page of Google search engine results for that term. Today, they’re listed within the top three, depending on the data center.
• Viral Marketing Builds Buzz: An integral part of entering the contest was telling other people about the contest. To enter, you had to link to the official contest blog post on John Chow dot Com. This opened up the give-away a whole new set of readers each time a new person entered.

In the end, it cost 1234 Pens a touch over $300 (after taxes and shipping) to the run the contest. Given that they are now on the first page of Google search engine results for the term “promotional pens”, it’s pretty safe to say that they have already made back their investment and then some. Not every contest will be as successful as this one, but it gives you a great indication of what is possible.

Posted in Marketing Tips | 1,278 views

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