Have You Ever Sponsored A Contest?

I posted the question “Have you ever sponsored a contest or drawing?” on Linkedin after the fact that Bizarre Promotions Sponsored A Contest.  I wanted to see what others thought about this marketing practice.

Here is what others had to say:

I think anytime you sponsor an event, contest or promotion that is cost effective it is a good use of resources. What makes it cost effective depends on:
1. Your monthly marketing budget
2. The number of impressions the event drove for your company
3. What did you actually receive in exchange as a sponsor e.g. did you receive contact info of all other businesses involved and contact info for all individuals that attended or participated in the contest
4. Was the contest a proper target audience for your business… in other words if you sell baby clothes, was this event for expectant mothers or mothers with 1 child?

So in closing a contest sponsorship can be wise, we just completed a contest that gained national awareness on the Conan show so it was worth it.
 
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I’ve sponsored a few contests, but there were more giveaways. The local chamber has a weekly “off the cuff” type newsletter. Each month they give away a prize. You enter and if chosen you get the prize. The prizes are the typical gift cards, tickets to events and other impersonal items.

Most people know us for web development, but we also have a few ancillary services to offer. I was looking for inexpensive ways to marketing these services to the Fort Worth business community. I didn’t think the usual junk would get any attention. So I made it personal and at my expense. Those that know me got a chuckle out of it and those that didn’t would remember it.

I decided to give away a guitar.

1) A guitar had never been given away
2) A guitar has a high perceived value
3) It is personal to me
4) Who hasn’t wanted to learn to play guitar

I purchased a new Gibson Epiphone (low end) acoustic at Guitar Center for $129 and entered it in the contest. The writer, Bruce Raben created a great message for me and worked in ties to the company. I was told that at that time, it received the most entries than any prize since the newsletter began years prior. The winner ended up being not needing our service, but she gave it to her son for Christmas. Although the winner didn’t buy from us, I received quite a few phone calls and emails. Everyone call an email referenced the guitar. Once of those calls resulted in a qualified lead and generated a $30k sale ($29,871 after the cost of the guitar). The $30k was directly attributed to the contest. I had not heard of nor target this client until the contest.

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Contests are great if you make them memorable and they are focused at your target audience. Be creative! Don’t just give away your product or service. Give away something that has nothing to do with your business, but has ties to you personally.
 
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I sponsor contests regularly and I’ll be doing a drawing this summer at an event.

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It’s a fun way to draw a little extra interest that can translate into good buzz about your company. Especially if the contest is fun and has some post-contest repercussions, like a mascot contest for a website.
 
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The most important aspect of sponsoring a contest or drawing lies in the advertising and marketing of the event. I have sponsored a raffle for a free iPod and from my experience it definitely created positive publicity. While it was obvious that many of our customers came with their “eyes on the prize,” it afforded us a valuable opportunity to sell our service to customers that we would not have otherwise have been exposed to. My raffle experience involved a service in the early stages of its launch but compared to other publicity stunts a raffle is so relatively inexpensive that I can’t see you going wrong with it.
 
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I ran a contest on one of my websites helpwithyouressay.com a few months ago. It was very helpful in building our mailing list, around 150 people took part in the contest and almost all of them joined our list. This was within a very short period of time.
So do contests help? The answer is yes, Its just a matter of missile marketing to the right crowd.
 
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You can run them to launch a new product, get rid of excess stock, grow your database, refer friends, make incremental sales or provide valuable input for even more valuable press articles/editorial coverage.  Just choose your reason - and market - carefully. One product may go gangbusters on a competition while another to the same target audience may go down like a lead balloon.

So far I am pretty happy with the results I have gotten by sponsoring the MichiganBusinessHub.com Online Contest.

Tim Somers
Bizarre Promotions, Inc.