Leveraging Contests For Leads & Influence

(And Looking Like a Pro Doing It)

Why Contests?

• Incredibly powerful way to get likes & leads

•Turns users into brand ambassadors

•Fun way to reward users and find new ones

•Greatly increases campaign efficiency

•High user engagement tolerances

Why Travis Ketchum?

Founder at Contest DominationLives in Seattle, WAPreviously ran User Acquisition & JV Programs

Answering the “who”

•Business-to-Consumer Companies

•All sizes, from “mom & pop” to fortune 500

•Businesses who benefit from detailed leads

•Nuts & Bolts: Succinct lead & referral program

•Offline businesses have the largest opportunity

Answering the “why”

• It’s not just cliche, “the money is in the list”

•A great incentive to offer-up real information

•Extremely high engagement tolerances

•People actually love entering contests

•Users sell for you, borrowed credibility

Answering the “when”

•Contests are “active”, require some oversight

•Small businesses might do them quarterly

•Larger teams could run concurrent campaigns

•Attractive all year (not just seasonally)

•Great way to generate buzz before a launch

How it works

•You offer a great prize people can win

•They enter their name & email

•Provide an easy share link to earn more entries

•Only award entries when traffic = opt-ins

•Run your campaign, rinse & repeat

Picking the right prize

•Critical for attracting qualified leads

•Alignment with products & services

•Don’t devalue your time (intangibles rock!)

•Perceived Value > Actual Cost

•Prime your funnel for a real purchase

Being FB Compliant

•Protect yourself & clients

•Use a FB App for contests

•Don’t use comments as entry

• “Likes” shouldn’t boost entries

•Give FB a legal release

To “Gate” or Not

•Ask, “What’s our goal?”

•Social Proof vs Engagement

•Like Gates add friction

•Friction can lower conversion

•Know what you/client want

Case Study: Mixergy

•Popular Interview Blog

•Sells premium memberships

•Wanted more subscribers

•Hoped to sell more subscriptions

•Marketing-phobic audience Andrew Warner

Mixergy Plan

•Give away 3 lifetime subscriptions to premium

• 1 point for entry, 10 points for referrals

•Post on social & mail existing leads

•Survey why people entered the contest

•Bonus: Private Q&A with at least 1 referral

Mixergy Results

•5,527 Total Contest Entries

•3,714 Non-referral entries

• 1,813 Social referral entries

• 1,147 New Twitter Followers

•678 New Facebook Likes

•80-90 Percent of Social was Referral

Case Study: Local Deals

•Started from absolute zero

•Wanted a local audience only

•Focused on FB traffic to leads

•Town of 56k not for Groupon

•Still big enough to corner Anthony Veltri

Local Deals Plan

•Decided to run contests for local gift cards

•Curated existing local coupons & deals

•Planned to purchase Facebook Ads for exposure

•Targeted ads just for Corvallis, OR

•Borrowed local business credibility (checkable)

Local Deals Results

•Generated over 2,300 new Facebook Likes

•Curated an email list of 2,100 and growing

•Average open rates of 40-45 percent

•Average click rates of 18-25 percent

•Local businesses immediately wanted ad space

Case Study: Event Promo

•Live music event promoter

•Wanted location centric lists

•Started with ~ 800 people

•Aimed for 2k+ new leads

•A bootstrap budget Christian Alva

Event Promo Plan

•Used Facebook Ads to target likes and location

•Follow up with leads for relevant shows

•Use one primary lead list in a single area

•Ask local bands to sponsor prizes

•Local show tickets & merchandise for prizes

Event Promo Results

•Started using contests in April 2012

•Took 7 months to capture ~2k unique leads

•Month 8 had a special sold out event in Vegas

•Did a big push, captured 2,100 leads in one day

•Over 11k FB Likes, ~7k “talking about” etc

Case Study: Webinars

•YouTube Video Marketer

•Uses webinars to monetize

•Averaged 450 registrations

•Averaged 150 live attendees

•Tight, loyal customer base James Wedmore

Webinar Booster Plan

•Setup a contest page for webinar registration

•Award a blend of training + product access

•Require attendance to win prizes

•Give out prizes throughout webinar, not at once

•Mail existing audience, no ad budget at all

Webinar Booster Results

•Total registrations blew past 1,150

•Roughly 600 live attendee’s engaged

•Consistent sales conversion ~ 20 percent

•Hundreds of fresh, interested leads

•Activated more previous leads than before

Selling to Clients

•Understanding what they think they want

•Translating into actionable business objectives

•Delivering a balance of vanity & performance

•Mutual understanding of priorities

•There can only be a single, #1 objective

Contest Takeaways

•Contests are great for leads & social proof

•You can repeat and scale campaigns

•Users love them & have a high tolerance

• It’s a marketing campaign that also gives back

•Turns users into brand champions

Questions?

Travis KetchumFounder, Contest Domination

travis@contestdomination.com

@TravisKetchumfb.com/TravisKetchumin/travisketchum