Introduction Welcome to the Contest Funnel Formula, where we ll show our formula and process for running a high converting, revenue generating contest funnel. In this easy to follow document, you ll find a mind map that will help visualize the components of a viral contest, with clearly marked opportunities to present an offer to your audience in order to generate additional online sales. To get the non-fun, legal stuff out of the way this document is not a promise or guarantee that you ll generate income or have similar results. Instead, we ve outlined the components of successful customers that have found continuous success. The case studies included were selected from over 20,000 businesses who have used ContestDomination because they are great examples of two different approaches that both leveraged the Contest Funnel Formula for great results. We sincerely hope that you find this ebook helpful in your quest for generating more qualified leads and sales online for yourself or your clients. Below you ll find the mind-map of the contest funnel formula, as well as two case studies of customers who have implemented this strategy to great success. If you like what you see and want a blueprint for applying this formula and process to your specific business, we encourage you to consider our Contest Execution Plan. Contest Execution Plan A time saving, fill-in-the blank worksheet to use for your own business or with your agency clients. We ll walk you through each component of this formula in detail so you can confidently create a high converting viral contest. Get instant access now for just $10 The customers in the case studies below were both using ContestDomination, our popular contest funnel software that was modeled after this exact same proven formula. Hope you have at least a few aha! moments, enjoy!
Sue Monhait Founder Case Study #1 The Ribbon Print Company How one small business generated $5,910 in brandnew sales from just 310 leads and $240 in Facebook Ad spend on their very first viral online contest. The Company The Ribbon Print Company has a pretty specific goal, to help small businesses and entrepreneurs print their own ribbons (for events etc) in a cost effective way. Their solution is a combination of both the hardware printer as well as the software suite that goes with it. An average initial sale is around $1,000 and is popular amongst event planners for it s compact size and ease of use. Contest Details Sue s goal was to sell more ribbon printing systems. So she set out with her contest by deciding to give away a ribbon printing system as her prize, since her product is so niche only people who are genuinely interested in her product/services would enter. She decided to run her contest for roughly a month, which would be enough time for her to promote the contest but not so long that people forgot about entering the contest. Goal: Sell more ribbon printing systems. Prize: 1 ribbon printing system (hardware + software) MSRP: $1,000 USD Contest Duration: Approximately 4 weeks
Promotion Strategy Sue knew her customer persona based on who had already been historically purchasing her ribbon printing systems in the past. She knew that event planners, and those who are avid arts & crafts fans made for great prospects. She also had a limited budget of roughly $250 that she was willing to put into advertising (on top of the cost of her marketing software and prize expense.) For Sue, the flexibility of Facebook Ads made it an attractive place to start. Her primary targeting started with Women in the United States who were either event planners, or liked one or more arts & crafts Platform: Facebook Ads Budget: $250 ad spend Follow-up Offer After Sue ran her contest for roughly a month, she had collected a 310 qualified prospects on an ad spend of $240 (just $10 shy of her budgeted amount). This mean that after selecting one person as her winner of the ribbon printing system prize, she now had 309 prospects who had just entered their name/email and essentially said I d like to have a Ribbon Printing System in my home or business.
You can imagine how powerful that list would be, and to capitalize on the evaluation cycle of her customers she offered the 309 non-winners an exclusive discount on her unique system, and made the offer good for 7 days. This offer was only available to the contestants who had entered but did not win the grand prize. This discount was positioned as a thank you for taking the time and effort of entering the contest and sharing it with their friends. Contest Results Sue wasn t entirely sure what to expect, as she had run an unsophisticated contest before by simply asking those who walked by her booth at trade shows to write down their name on a piece of paper. But Sue had never run a contest online, she had never used Facebook ads to promote an online contest, and she had never run a contest where there was a funnel encouraging the original contestants to share with their friends. Even with all of that, Sue had heard about our Contest Funnel Formula and knew that the best time to convert these prospects into buyers was at the exact moment they find out that they didn t win the grand prize. The result? Sue generated $5,910 in brad new sales from the list of 309 non-winners during the 7 week promotion alone. This means that The Ribbon Print company generated an immediate revenue value of over $19 per non-winning contest entry, and has since gone on to generate additional sales from the list as she is now positioned as the authority provider in her space. Conclusion The Ribbon Print Company ran a successful contest because they followed the Contest Funnel Formula s key principles and stuck with it all the way through the process. 1. The prize was directly related to what they do/sell. 2. There was a clear path for promoting the contest to new, targeted prospects. 3. A follow-up offer was made that was related to the original prize. 4. That follow-up offer had exclusivity (contestants only) and scarcity (7 days). Since that initial contest, Sue has been able to run contests at a steady interval to generate a nice influx of new sales for her business. She has now generated over 1,300 leads for her business and Sue tell s us that on top of the special offer revenue she s been able to sell a lot more ribbon printing systems
and accessories to those contest specific leads. To date, the gross sales from these contest leads has exceeded $30,000 USD according to her records. We re proud of Sue s ability to execute her contest for her unique niche and are excited to watch it become a staple of her marketing plan. You might be thinking 310 hyper targeted leads are great, but can contests scale up for campaigns for our bigger business? For the entrepreneurs and small businesses out there, we encourage them to start with a similar approach to Sue at The Ribbon Print Company. It s easy to understand and has a very quick path to success, especially when you re just starting out. However, if you re running a bigger business you need to produce bigger results for the campaign to have a material impact on your bottom line. You simply need to generate a larger volume of qualified, targeted leads - and this is exactly what we cover next. In our 2nd case study, you re going to see how one business generated over 180,000 new hyper targeted leads for their business without spending much on advertising. Instead, they have one clever strategy that they were able to replicate many times over and has now accumulatively brought them over 500,000 qualified leads. So if you run a larger business and over half a million new qualified leads into your sales process would move the needle for you, you re going to love this one. Continue reading for Case Study #2 >
Reid Warner Founder Case Study #2 SnapKnot How a creative promotion strategy helped an online marketplace profitably run their first contest for 180,000+ targeted leads without breaking the bank. The Company Reid Warner runs a great company called SnapKnot, who helps brides/grooms connect with photographers in their local area for engagement and wedding photos. This business has a specific supply/demand problem to solve. The demand side of their business is making sure that engaged couples are actively seeking photographers in their local area. But that marketing attempt is futile unless they have a great supply of professional photographers to fulfill those inquiries. A huge problem with them was.. How are we going to get the attention of 10 s of thousands of professional photographers to introduce them to our service? Contest Details Since SnapKnot was on-board with the Contest Funnel Formula, they knew that their prize needed to be attract pro-level photographers. In this case though, they wanted to still cast a wider net to capture a larger portion of the pro-photographer community vs ONLY wedding photographers. The thought process here was, that while getting more professional wedding photographers on their prospect list was goal #1, having a large community of
photography enthusiast would be useful in leveraging larger promotional deals down the road with brands that operated in their space. Goal: Get as many premium photographers as possible. Prize: High End DSLR Camera (Nikon or Cannon, winners choice) MSRP: $3,000 USD Contest Duration: Approximately 3 months Promotion Strategy This is where Reid and his team really set themselves up for huge success in their campaign. While they planned to kick-start their contest with a small amount of advertising via Facebook, they had a clever way of getting their ideal audience to see their contest and be encouraged to actually enter without paying a penny. SnapKnot was able to partner up with some highly targeted (but non-competitive) heavyweights in the photography community in a Sponsorship role. If you refer to our graphical funnel you ll see that Sponsors is considered a pillar of it s own. A successful sponsorship promotion channel usually consists of the core brand (SnapKnot) reaching out to existing brands who have a similar audience profile but aren t direct competitors for their services. For this particular contest that included BorrowLenses, SmugMug and MillersLab. SnapKnot asked sponsors to promote their contest via their available email and social channels. This gave SnapKnot direct exposure to a huge, built-in audience of professional photographers who were going to see their offer. In exchange for the promotion, SnapKnot was responsible for the cost of the prize, would include the sponsor logos in all materials, suggest that contestants follow the sponsors on social media and would drive traffic to special offers for each sponsor. Think of this as a sort of cross pollination approach where the audience of each sponsor is targeted, but since they all offer a different type of product or service every single sponsor walks away with an increased audience and new customers. Plus, as a result SnapKnot ends up with a huge email list of some highly targeted prospects who were referred as a warm lead source into their contest. This is the huge power of a sponsor driven approach, and while it requires more legwork and finesse the end results can be absolutely astounding.
Notice the drop down asking about the type of photographer they are? This was a huge segmentation tool for knowing who to specifically pitch SnapKnot services to. Follow-up Offer Applying the Contest Funnel Formula, SnapKnot realized they had 2 opportunities to generate value from the massive influx of new leads they had coming into the contest. As you can see from the image above, SnapKnot was able to generate over 180,000 contestant entries in their very first contest using ContestDomination. What s even more impressive, is that they actually had more entries from referral than they did from the direct traffic. This resulted in more total leads than the sponsors and modest Facebook Ads were able to send directly.
This puts an exclamation point on the fact that a contest can and should be a true funnel and not a simple one-page solution, as there is such a massive amount of value to be gained by a well executed sequence of referral steps. These huge numbers also allowed SnapKnot to deliver massive value for their sponsors through the form of exposure to their special offers and growing their social following. Contest Results So just how much is massive value? That s a fair question. SnapKnot recorded that they had over 150,000 contestants land on their Thank You Offer Page as we ve pointed out in the funnel graphic. Plus they were able to get over 90,000 contestants to click through to their winner announcement landing page. Not to mention that all 180,000+ contestants were linked to the sponsors special offers on both landing pages, but they also had their special offers directly linked in several of the follow-up marketing emails. This drove a ton of traffic and new customers for each of the sponsors which made their promotion more than worthwhile. On top of that, since SnapKnot specifically asked asked contestants why kind of photographer they were, they were able to increase their marketing message for SnapKnot services to those who indicated they were professional wedding photographers. This made for a more on-point marketing message as well as a lower unsubscribe rate among their new found audience. SnapKnot s original goal was to generate several 10 s of thousands of professional wedding photographers, but with their well executed sponsor promotion strategy they far surpassed even their loftiest contest goals. Conclusion SnapKnot ran a successful contest because they followed the Contest Funnel Formula s key principles and stuck with it all the way through the process. 1. The prize was mainly attractive for their ideal customer persona. 2. There was a clear path for promoting the contest to new, targeted prospects. 3. They provided massive value to sponsors who helped promote the contest. 4. A follow-up offer was made that was related to the original prize. 5. That follow-up offer had exclusivity (contestants only) and scarcity (24 hours). Since that initial contest, SnapKnot has made running contests a key component of growing their photography community based business. They ve now generated well over 600,000 targeted email subscribers.
This has resulted $10,000+ in profit per contest in immediate revenues, and has a huge upside for them controlling their own destiny as they ve now built up a massive audience filled with professional photographers. We re proud of SnapKnot s ability to execute their contest strategy for their community and are excited to watch it continue to fuel their extraordinary growth.