The following excerpt is from Wendy Keller’s book Ultimate Guide to Platform Building. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes
There are two good reasons to consider giving things away via contests, raffles and giveaways. First, these attract a lot of attention for your business because people love the idea of getting something for nothing. Second, they create fanfare that you can use to get media.
The main reason businesses do “contests” (which is the word I’ll use for the whole shebang in this article) is because it attracts a flood of new customers. The more people who know about your contest, the more people who know about your business. A percentage of those who find out about your business in this way will be interested in finding out more, even if they didn’t win a prize.
The net effect of these kinds of big, splashy things is that it makes you more memorable, as someone who does interesting, refreshing things in your industry. The process itself is easily replicated and modified once learned, and it’ll give you a quick marketing strategy you can keep in your back pocket when you need to refresh public awareness that you and your business exist.
Contest to-do list
Here’s a checklist for putting a contest together easily. Make sure you give yourself plenty of promotion time — at least two months — since promotion is the true purpose here.
- Choose what kind of a contest, raffle or giveaway you want to run.
- Decide if you’ll pursue sponsors to donate prizes, help spread the word or help in other ways.
- Decide what you want to give away (more than one prize means more media and promotional opportunities).
- Check to see if there are any legal issues where you live.
- Decide how long you want to give people to “earn” it.
- Decide how entrants could win.
- Decide how you’ll promote the heck out of it.
- Decide how the prize(s) will be awarded (Hint: Fanfare is a great way to get even more attention from prospects, maybe media and current customers).
- Get graphics designed.
- Choose your launch date.
- Promote!
Potential prize ideas
Here are some potential prize ideas:
- Money
- Gift cards for your product or service
- A makeover (for them, their house or their car)
- A car or other expensive object related to your business (For instance, a plumber might give away a new washer/dryer set)
- A trip (Do you know someone who has or do you have a timeshare sitting unused somewhere interesting?)
- Services (free dry cleaning for a year, a website CEO review)
- A certificate or plaque
- Scholarships
- Tickets to something related (sports, opera, a flight, etc.)
- A trophy (the bigger, the better)
- Representation (legal, artistic, modeling, etc.). Warning: You’ll have to choose a winner, even if none of…