Online Contest Advice

This month in the "Making the Most of Digital" feature, DMNews promised that they'd tell us how to Navigate the Online Contest Trend. Trend? Sweepstakes and contests online have been around for a years. Granted, they've generally become more truly interactive with time, but 'trend' is a stretch. Okay, okay, the trade mags need to pump up the article...

The article was interesting enough, but didn't really provide much help with 'how to', so I'll provide some guidelines based on implementing six or eight over the past four years.

Things you should know:

1. Contests take much much more time and resources than you would imagine. You'll need a program manager, creative staff, site builders, legal advisors, an online 'prize' agency, and maybe a fulfillment house. Oh, and prizes too. You'll need to start 4 - 6 months before launch, and then you'll be fulfilling for months afterward.

2. You need a specialty agency because they have built fool-proof algorithms to ensure that the prizes are being awarded correctly according to the rules. And they also have researched the rules to make sure they're fully legit in all states. They'll also indemnify your organization against any issues, which your legal staff will appreciate. All of this does not come cheap.

3. Make sure to involve your counsel / legal department the very first week you begin discussing a sweepstakes or contest. There are an incredible number of legalities to these things, and this being a litigious society... well let's just say that if you don't get them in really early it could be very unpleasant.

4. Generally a 'sweepstakes' is much easier to get through legal as they're based on random luck and chance, while a 'contest' implies that you are somehow selecting the 'best' something. That selection process can be the subject of litigation.

5. When you total up all the costs and explain that to the CMO and she explains it to the CFO, you'll want to have a very firm determination of the expected return. Realistically, you can see a good number of new emails for your house file, your current customers will probably 'tell a friend', and you may be able to get more visibility for a new product or offering. (CPG manufacturers always sell more product at retail when the packaging mentions a sweepstakes. I do not know why.) That said, I've had clients spend up to $15 per new-to-file address, which seemed steep. Keep in mind that there are numerous sites online that will pass your program around and there are people who participate in endless sweepstakes, so many of your new addresses aren't all that valuable.

6. Unless there is an amazing brand linkage to complicated or expensive grand prizes, you'll probably get just as much action from free product or gift cards. And your ROI becomes much more viable.

Hope this helps. Please tell me if you have more tips, or radically disagree!

Connecting Socially 2.0

Social Media: practices and technologies that allow people to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives. A conversation that can be held in many different formats -- including public venues such as Facebook or Twitter, or company-controlled blogs or video channels.

Conversations are not new. But social media has taken the everyday interaction to a whole new scale. Geography is not a barrier, time becomes less important, and a lone voice can direct the opinions of a potentially unlimited audience.

Similar to the Internet itself, Social Media is clearly a part of the marketing mix that is here to stay. Specific tactics, sites, and activities may or may not catch on and become permanent, but the basic reality of American consumers wanting to interact directly with each other and with brands and companies is a permanent fixture…. yet still in its infancy.

In fact, the desire to connect and communicate has been a part of the Internet since the very beginning. One of the very first huge viral success stories was hotmail, when we could only ‘join’ if someone shared a link with us first. Remember email chains? Interesting cartoons made of keyboard characters? The requests for business cards by a dying boy in England? And the strange rumors still persist. It wasn’t long before marketers figured out email, and now it’s the highest ROI online tactic.

But Social Media packs a much bigger ROI potential than email because as ‘media’, it’s free. No cost to communicate. Yet, to coin a phrase, there is no free lunch here. Planning and experience design are paramount, and social channels can do more harm than good without regular care and maintenance.

This time last year everyone was ‘experimenting’ and ‘building and trying’. Now it seems that most marketers have learned initial lessons about resource limitations and their target consumer behaviors, and are thinking it’s time to par back to what really works. That’s great for tactics tried, but what about the new ones? The next big one?

Proven Process

I’ve developed a three step process to success:

Step 1: Every successful marketing effort begins with a well crafted Plan. A well crafted and demonstrably positive effort balances your business and communication goals against the needs and desires of your target customers. So what type of interactions do you want to encourage? Where – on a public forum or through a company channel? And what are the priorities?

Step 2: Implementation seems straight forward, research how to get it right and launch! But to keep a social platform going, it has to have constant and ongoing interaction and updating. This makes these programs significantly different from other marketing efforts, rather than being a ‘campaign’ or ‘season’ it’s forever.

Step 3: Evaluation is vital. With the constantly changing social environment, it’s important to determine if programs are having the desired result. I often find that some tactics will take off and become more time consuming than anticipated, while others just don’t quite work out. Keeping up an experience that isn’t quite producing without trying to fix it is a sure interaction killer, and potentially damaging to your brand.

Email me at karlgseyfert@gmail.com if you'd like more detail around the three steps to success!

Coordinating Marketing across Channels

I just finished reading a rather interesting article in this week's DM News, discussing a variety of interesting cross-platform programs that have recently launched.

They suggested some tips for coordinating cross-channel programs... which I didn't much care for. Here are mine:

• Begin every marketing effort by profiling how your target customer will be reached. What are their natural touch points with you? Is this something that they are logically seeking... so may pull information, such as doing research on our website, or searching on Google? When can we legitimately push communication at them, like sending an email, or placing TV ads?
• If your agency can't come up with Big Ideas that have natural 'legs' cross-channel, they should be fired. In the 21st century people are engaged in multiple types of media on a nearly constant basis. Your message simply must be communicated in numerous ways to gain resonance.
• Understand that many strong marketing strategies can be implemented without force-creating tactics for every possible medium. In fact, investing in a few tactics in a strong manner is probably better than spreading resources too thin. The desire to build a microsite to house little more than TV commercials is a classic misuse of the online medium and a waste of money as very few people TV commercials online in their spare time. (see point one...)
• Successful cross-channel programs are the result of quality planning and preparation. You simply must start months before launch as so many tactics have long lead times. So many expenses could be amortized across mediums.. if only it was planned.