21:15
Faizan
If you use internet marketing (that is you have a website or a blog) or if you are involved in social media (like Twitter or Facebook), then you will realise that trying to get people to buy from you by using these methods of marketing and promotion, are probably not going to work.
However, free online competitions can work. What they do is enable you to grow a targeted list that you can then market and promote to in the future. You know that they are interested in what you produce and they are more likely to trust you as they build a relationship with you by entering the competition you are running.
Try relating your competition to a well known event. One of the successful competitions I ran for a few years was an 'Australia Day Competition'. I have an association of micro and home based businesses and I asked members to supply a free gift for the prizes. In return, they would get the list of interested viewers who would have to complete an Opt in Box and leave their contact details so that they could get the free gift.
Those who donated a gift also had to promote the competition to their list of contacts, thus increasing the number of people who were going to hear about this competition and hopefully take part in it.
One year I ended up with over $20,000 worth of prizes. The competition consisted of players answering three questions which required them to visit three separate pages on the website. This not only got the website a large number of visitors (and therefore increasing the Google ranking) it also gave me a large list of potential clients that I could market to.
It is important to give your competition a definite time line (some only give one or two days, but I give one week, as I know how busy people get) and to send an email warning them just before the deadline is to cease. On one occasion, I had more people take part after the warning than I did beforehand!
The smallest number of players I had was 200 and the largest number was 2,000. These were all names that I could then target with a newsletter, further offers, specials, quality information (to grow my credibility with them) and sales. Never simply send a 'sales' notice. If you want to promote something for sale, put a link at the end of the content you are providing that is offering some really valuable and powerful information. This way, the sales offer is simply providing a solution for the problem you have just been discussing in the body of the article.
However, free online competitions can work. What they do is enable you to grow a targeted list that you can then market and promote to in the future. You know that they are interested in what you produce and they are more likely to trust you as they build a relationship with you by entering the competition you are running.
Try relating your competition to a well known event. One of the successful competitions I ran for a few years was an 'Australia Day Competition'. I have an association of micro and home based businesses and I asked members to supply a free gift for the prizes. In return, they would get the list of interested viewers who would have to complete an Opt in Box and leave their contact details so that they could get the free gift.
Those who donated a gift also had to promote the competition to their list of contacts, thus increasing the number of people who were going to hear about this competition and hopefully take part in it.
One year I ended up with over $20,000 worth of prizes. The competition consisted of players answering three questions which required them to visit three separate pages on the website. This not only got the website a large number of visitors (and therefore increasing the Google ranking) it also gave me a large list of potential clients that I could market to.
It is important to give your competition a definite time line (some only give one or two days, but I give one week, as I know how busy people get) and to send an email warning them just before the deadline is to cease. On one occasion, I had more people take part after the warning than I did beforehand!
The smallest number of players I had was 200 and the largest number was 2,000. These were all names that I could then target with a newsletter, further offers, specials, quality information (to grow my credibility with them) and sales. Never simply send a 'sales' notice. If you want to promote something for sale, put a link at the end of the content you are providing that is offering some really valuable and powerful information. This way, the sales offer is simply providing a solution for the problem you have just been discussing in the body of the article.
Posted in: business
