10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 1
Getting Started 4 1: Defining What You Do & Sell 5 2: Picking The Right Prize 5 3: Deciding Contest Length 6 4: Leveraging Sponsors 6 5: Focusing On Conversion 7 6: Getting The Double Opt-In 7 7: Debunking Facebook 8 8: Creating Scarcity 10 9: Mastering The Follow-Up 10 10: The Rhythm Method 11 Next Steps 12 Thank You 12 Contest Domination 12 AWeber 12 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 2
10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 3
Getting Started One of the quickest ways to build a community (or grow an existing one), is to run a well oiled contest to generate more qualified leads for what you do and sell. Before diving into the mechanics of why contests work, how to set them up correctly and how to maximize the benefits - a few things need to be understood. Goal Oriented Thinking When you set out to run any campaign, you have to be very clear about the goal you re looking to accomplish. This goal can be different from one business to the next, but being clear about the intent is key to measuring success. For most businesses, the goal is clear. Generate more leads & sales for their business. Maximizing ROI Not all things are created equal, but this is actually good for you. There is a benefit to having influence across multiple channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc), however - focusing on the one that generates the largest return on investment (ROI) will help you crush it. In our experience, which is backed up by millions of unique visitors, a focus on generating the biggest email list possible of qualified leads has proven to produce a drastically higher ROI than any other effort. The social media channels involved absolutely have their merit, and given that most prospects need to see your message three times to even know they saw it gives credence to a strong social media strategy. However, a quality lead focused campaign run through our tested contest funnel is going to organically grow your social media presence with your most engaged and interested prospects. This will be the best of both worlds. The Right Tools To get the most out of a contest, you re going to need a few modest tools to help you keep track of entries, capture & manage leads, and effectively follow-up with your new leads to generate sales for your business. This guide is geared for people who are using Contest Domination and AWeber. You can still apply this information to other platforms, but you ll be able to quickly and easily generate and maintain more qualified leads using both platforms together. You can get started with Contest Domination and AWeber here, risk free. 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 4
1: Defining What You Do & Sell We started making contest software for one purpose only. To generate more revenue for our business, by curating a larger list of qualified prospects; however, before you can do the same for your business you have to be very clear about what you do and sell. Often times, it s beneficial to start by asking yourself, Who is my ideal customer? What is something that would be uniquely interesting to my target audience?. You may be a service oriented business who wants to get more requests for quotes. But you may also be a product based company who wants to sell more widgets. 2: Picking The Right Prize Without question, this is the single most influential part of running a successful contest online. Your prize is going to set the level of interest that prospects will have in even entering, and the type of prize is going to act as your primary filter for only getting qualified leads instead of a huge list of uninterested people. What s Qualified? People who want what you do and sell are considered qualified leads. They are at least interested, which is the first important factor when moving towards an actual sale. There are actually multiple layers to this process, the next steps would be along the lines of Can they afford to purchase?, or Is now the right time?. If you attract the wrong people to start with to enter your contest, the rest of the process that leads to revenue generating activities are a waste of time, effort, and resources. Prize Types The most common mistake we see people make is quickly deciding to give away an ipad or something similar. Unless you re an electronics retailer such as Best Buy or Newegg, the fact that somebody is interested in an ipad does not prequalify them to want what you do and sell. Service Example We love service based businesses, because they typically have a high perceived value. This means your prospects will actually value the prize higher than the retail price. Example: James Wedmore, whose business is primarily selling training and information products ran a contest where he took his virtual training to a whole new level. He gave one lucky winner the ultimate video experience, by flying them out to his studio in La Jolla, California to shoot video in his studio and have his team edit the footage. The result? 3,407 people entered his contest who were all interested in being trained on how to make more effective video s for their business. Thousands of ideal customers who effectively raised their hand to let him know they are interested. 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 5
Product Example Businesses run successful product based contests every day, however it takes a little more creativity to make sure it pre-qualifies those who enter for what you do and sell. Example: Julep, a popular nail parlor who caters to women at both physical locations as well as through a box service where they ship an assortment of nail polishes and other goods every month, wanted to generate more interest in their box service. To generate interest, Julep did give away an ipad (to anchor the total prize value) but they also included their complete nail polish collection for one lucky winner. The result? 31,142 people entered the contest, with 7,420 of them being totally brand new to the Julep email list. On top of adding thousands of likes to their Facebook page, and doubling their Twitter presence, this proved to be an excellent opportunity to market their box service to 31,142 freshly engaged and qualified prospects. Bonus Video See our Picking The Right Prize training video here. 3: Deciding Contest Length After picking a prize, deciding how long to run a contest is the next most commonly asked question. The simple answer? As long as you can keep sending traffic to it. While Contest Domination is incredibly powerful at generating viral leads and traffic (on average between 20%-60% of all leads are referral), there is a natural rise and fall of engagement from your own campaigns and then the referral traffic. For most businesses, 2-4 weeks seems to be the sweet spot for their contest because it gives them enough time to remind their audience about the contest. The biggest surge in entries tend to happen right as a contest starts and right before it ends. As you announce the contest, understand that any method you have of driving traffic will significantly taper off after the first day, so it s important to find ways to drive fresh traffic to your contest to keep the momentum going. Note: When contestants earn additional points for referring their friends, Contest Domination automatically lets them know and reminds them to keep sharing 4: Leveraging Sponsors Sponsors are a great way to reduce the overall cost of running a contest, gaining more exposure, or often times both at the same time. Even when you ve dialed in a prize that s compelling to your ideal customer, you can often times find a sponsor who can compliment your offering and together you can both more total traffic. 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 6
This is a strategy that has boosted the success of thousands of contests, and really is a win-in situation. Sponsors get social traction on the final share page, alongside the business who is putting it all together. However, it s worth noting that only one person may connect their AWeber account. So it may be worth considering running multiple contests, where you get the leads one time, and your sponsors each get a turn in the contest rotation to generate email leads. We suggest that you ask each sponsor to post on their social accounts, email their existing audience and write special blog posts announcing each contest for maximum exposure and results for everyone involved. 5: Focusing On Conversion With all your details about who you re targeting, what you re giving away, how long the contest will run and who can sponsor the contest - it s time to start generating results. The first metric of results is getting as many people who see your contest to enter it. With software like Contest Domination we actually give you the overall conversion rates for direct and referral traffic so you can get an temperature on how effective your contest is, and how well it s resonating with prospects. Without diluting the specifics of your prizes, the goal here is to get as many people entering your contest as possible. Keep in mind though, that you re better off having 200 super qualified leads than you are having 2,000 unqualified leads. Our network average conversion rate on Contest Domination typically rests between 40% and 60% conversion rates for direct traffic. This means if your conversion rate is below 40% you ll want to start experimenting with things that can boost the conversions. Factors such as the wording you use for the contest description, the video or image, and call to action all make a material difference on convincing someone to enter your contest. You ll also want to pay close attention to where your traffic is coming from. Social media sources almost always convert lower than say, an email announcement about your contest, and if you re buying ads to generate traffic, the targeting of the ads will have a huge impact on the relevance of the contest to those prospects. 6: Getting The Double Opt-In It s an industry best practice to get what s known as a double opt-in for your email marketing. What this means is just that someone not only enters their information, but they then go to their inbox and click a special link to confirm they want to receive information. We ve created a clever way of closing the loop so that this process is not only easy, but extremely effective in getting you the highest number of double opt-ins possible. 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 7
Since you ll likely be using AWeber for your email marketing, they will automatically send a confirmation request to each and every person who enters your contest. This is a good thing It means you ll have less spam complaints and lower unsubscribes - all good things when it comes to reaching the inboxes of your prospects. Contest Domination gives you a special link that looks something like https://contest.io/ typ/sdfd756 after you finish setting up your contest. You ll simply copy this URL from your dashboard and paste it into the Custom confirmation URL in your AWeber list settings. Select I ll configure my AWeber account to confirm the entry and click save. When you do this, everyone who enters your contest will get an AWeber double opt-in confirmation email. When they click the link in the email, AWeber will automatically send them back to your contest and the lead will then change to confirmed. All leads must be confirmed in order for our winner selection tool to even consider the lead in the drawing. After all, our goal is to generate marketable leads right? Pro Tip: Change the confirmation subject line to Confirm your entry to drastically increase open rates of your confirmation email. 7: Debunking Facebook With over 1 Billion active users on Facebook, it s constantly ranking as one of the top destinations on the web. Because of that it gets a ton of press and attention as being one of the holy grails for generating traffic, leads, and sales. And while Facebook is a massive asset for business owners, it should be treated as the community outlet and lead source that is instead of the final destination for where your communication with prospects and customers ends. Lead Source vs Walled Garden Facebook has a vested interest to keep people on their domain as long as possible. It keeps their audience engaged, and gives them more chances to show advertising. However, that intense drive means that business owners are at the mercy of Facebook policy changes that can adversely impact your ability to communicate. Once we can agree that Facebook is a vibrant community that s great for first contact engagement, but not the end of the conversation we can move towards the goal of getting as much of your community as possible onto your email list via contests and other opt-in offers. Your email list is one of the only true digital assets your company can possess because it allows you to reach a majority of your audience with a few clicks and carries with you over time. No reputable email provider will suddenly play games for you to reach the subscribers you ve already worked so hard for (and paid to get) beyond your normal subscription fees. 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 8
Being Compliant Facebook has terms of service that are written in a way that protects Facebook, and while they ve been relaxed about enforcing them - it s not unheard of to see a fan page get nuked after disobeying the rules. This is something you don t want to risk for yourself or for any clients you may be working with. Here s what Facebook cares about when it comes to contests: 1. You can use an app or a Like / Comment based entry 2. Requiring people to share to be entered is NOT allowed NOTE: This was updated in January 2014 to reflect recent policy updates. Facebook used to prohibit Like and comment based forms of contest entries but they have since relaxed their stance. But, you must realize that doing a status only based contest does not help you build your email list. We ve had great success posting an image, asking people to Like the status and then Step 2: Enter your Name & Email here {{ URL }}. Using Contest Domination you ll be prepared to build up engagement as well as collect the valuable lead. Mobile Responsive Facebook has an absolutely massive audience using mobile devices. In fact, in the past year it has grown 78% from 13.41% Q1 2012 to 23.86% Q1 2013 (source). This means that hundreds of millions of people view Facebook content on their phones. But surprisingly, apps don t work on Facebook mobile by default. According to some reps at Facebook this will eventually change, but for now you need to rely on established apps to give you a solution that does work on mobile. With Contest Domination, after you install into a Facebook tab you ll notice that there is a link with /fb/ in the URL. This is the link you want to promote in your status updates etc because it will automatically send desktop traffic to the tab but show a slimmed down, responsive page for mobile devices. Considering that the trend of mobile dominance is expected to continue, and in some countries like India the mobile traffic is already over 50%, it s important that whatever solution you choose provides a smooth experience for mobile users. Definition: Responsive just means that the layout of the web page adjusts to different screen sizes so that it looks natural on a variety of devices, such as an Android device, iphone or ipad without any extra work from you 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 9
8: Creating Scarcity One of the biggest lessons we learned early on was that it s incredibly hard to change human behavior and be successful. Instead, it was much easier to adjust the approach and follow-up techniques that play into human psychology to generate results. Hands down, scarcity is one of the most powerful forms of motivation for getting someone to take action. This is true both for the initial offer (contest prize) as well as the follow-up approach to turn those leads into sales. A contest by its very nature has a fair amount of scarcity because there is a defined start and end date/time for when it s even available. However it s even more powerful when you can couple an experience scarcity with the time scarcity. Experience Scarcity So what exactly is experience scarcity? Put simply, it s an opportunity to offer something special for your fan base or prospects to have the ultimate experience with your brand. But it s important that it s something rare, that you have either never done before, won t do again or is unique in some way. Regardless of what your business does, there s a human element to it that your current customers and your future prospects actually crave to be a part of. When you couple that desire with true scarcity and uniqueness it s a winning combination. Yes, this will take some creativity but it makes a monumental impact on helping your achieve your goal of more qualified leads. When you couple experience scarcity with something of relevant value, people will start to put an irrational amount of effort into promoting your contest because they have an emotional reason to do so. 9: Mastering The Follow-Up Getting hundreds or thousands of qualified leads on your email list is great, but it s worth nearly zero if you can t master the follow-up to turn those prospects into buying customers. Don t let your efforts go to waste, here s what works for us. Positioning As soon as your contest is over, people are naturally curious to see who won. This is a great opportunity to accomplish several things at once. First, you ll be thanking everyone for their participation and let them know how much it means to you. Secondly, you ll actually announce the name of the winner. BUT, make sure you offer a consolation prize for everyone who entered. Often times, offering something very similar (but not the same, as the main prize needs to remain unique) and offer a special one time discount for everyone entered. 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 10
Similar to the experience scarcity for the prize, you ll want time scarcity for how long the offer is valid. Something like 48 hours is good because it will encourage people to take action and move on the deal, instantly turning those prospects into customers. This is a great way to sell more products, services, etc without being pushy. Everyone who entered has raised their hand saying I m interested in what you do and sell, and while it s inevitable that people will feel a slight letdown as they see that they didn t win the grand prize it s a great way to say thank you anyway. 10: The Rhythm Method Frequency is something that can be hard to gauge when you haven t run a contest before for your business. Smaller teams are naturally going to want to run less frequent contests because they have limited resources, where as bigger organizations may want to run a variety of concurrent contests across different brands, websites or for different events (such as radio station for example). Content Calendars If you talk to successful bloggers and online marketers, you ll find that many have a content calendar for all of their content. Blog posts, social media updates, videos and more. But this also applies to their campaigns and promotions. Deciding where to run your contest based on a content calendar will help keep you focused and on track for launching campaigns to create a snowball effect of boosting your reach, engagement and sales consistently. Average Scenario If you don t have a content calendar yet, this is a great time to start one. Picking a plan and sticking to it is the easiest way to actually get started and see results. As an example, here is how an average business might approach contests quarterly. Quarterly Schedule Month 1: Plan contest prize, schedule blog posts, shoot videos etc Month 2: Run a 30 day contest with announcements, reminders and ads Month 3: Follow-up with fresh prospects, nurture with content and cool off This simple outline assumes a 30-day long contest (one of the most popular from customers of Contest Domination), and should be something attainable by even the most nimble and constrained teams. It s worth noting that while the tolerance for contests is way higher than nearly every other marketing activity, it s still important to not abuse the impact that contests can have. This schedule walks that line for small to medium businesses looking to expand their reach without wearing out their welcome. 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 11
Next Steps So now that you ve gone through the 10 Steps to Contest Success, it s time to put your axe to the grindstone and starting taking action to generate more leads. We haven t always been the contest guys, we started as marketers and developers who solved problems and generated traffic, leads, & sales for brands and personalities you d recognize. But we saw a huge opportunity for contests to be re-imagined. Contest Domination was created to solve that very specific problem that nearly every business has, which is how to quickly and effectively generate more qualified leads. Step 1 Before anything else, you need to commit to yourself that you want to take action towards generating more qualified leads online. This is something even bigger than just running a contest, this is an approach to being successful online in general. Step 2 You re going to need the right tools to capture, manage and follow up with your brand new leads. You can get started with Contest Domination and AWeber here, risk free. Both platforms have a no gimmicks satisfaction policy and work seamlessly together to make things as easy as possible. We ve been in close collaboration about how to make the integration as strong as possible, and we expect that to continue. Thank You We hope you ve enjoyed this ebook, which was brought to you by both Contest Domination and AWeber to help small and medium business succeed with their online marketing. If you have any questions, we d be pleased to help you. You can reach either of us at the information below: Contest Domination http://contestdomination.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/contestdomination Twitter: https://twitter.com/contestdom AWeber http://aweber.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aweber Twitter: https://twitter.com/aweber 10 Steps to Contest Success by Contest Domination & AWeber 12