Running a competition sometimes seems like a no-brainer to get your brand, product or service noticed right? Yes and no. There are so many variable factors to consider when you’re factoring in a successful online competition as part of a marketing content plan or to help with an advertising campaign or launch something new. I’ve run dozens and dozens of competitions during my career both in broadcast media and as a content manager working in marketing. Here’s my top tips to consider before you announce to the world that you have a giveaway up for grabs.
WHO ARE YOU TARGETING?
While I was a project manager at TVNZ working with key clients, I undertook some not so scientific research around all the competitions I had worked on both at the state broadcaster and at Mediaworks in TV3.
Firstly, it’s good to point out that in most New Zealand competitions - 75% of those entering are women* and most of those will be aged 35 years or older. So if an older female is your target, then great - you’re in the sweet spot. We ran a lot of successful giveaways at Sleepyhead where females tend to be the one influencing a bed purchase. Even if your product or service might seem a litte more ‘blokey’ i.e. a power drill, you will still find women will more than likely dominate the entries over males.
TVNZ’s Hyundai Country Calendar is an interesting television show. Many commercial clients, especially those in the agricultural sector, chomp at the bit to associate their brand with the show. However, what’s interesting about the programme, which has been on air since 1966 as New Zealand’s longest running television show, is that a large portion of the audience is made up of urban professionals. They dream of ditching their nine to five job in the city and start a pig farm in Pokeno. This plays nicely into the marketing strategy of current show sponsor Hyundai - who has been associated with the show for more than 10 years.
I worked closely with the car manufacturer as content lead. Its marketing team saw they could tap into the brand love Kiwis had for the rural lifestyle show in the hope of ultimately selling more vehicles. Each week, just before the ad breaks in the 30 minute show, Hyundai would run a competition - giving away a product that may have featured in that week’s programme. It might be a cheese pack that came directly from the farm featured in-show or a wool shawl that was produced and sourced from an Otago sheep station. The prize value was small but the leads were great. In one week* these leads spiked hugely around a simple scarf prize and overall the competition helped grow Hyundai's engaged database.
But when reach is purely your goal - take a Vodafone Samsung phone giveaway on TVNZ Breakfast. It had more than 80,000 entries across one week of basic in-show mentions. There were no opt-ins to receive an EDM or complicated mechanics to enter - it was just a dozen or so new model phones being given away to promote the device coming into market. It’s selling point was that it was waterproof - so one of the presenters popped it in a bowl of water on air to see if it worked. It did BTW.
WHAT IS YOUR COMPETITION TRYING TO ACHIEVE?
So looking at the examples of Hyundai and Vodafone above, it’s an easy question that sometimes gets lost in competition planning - what is it trying to achieve?
Are you trying to achieve reach, build your database or is this giveaway a way to attract potential customers? What you want to achieve with a competition is fundamental to how you run it, where you run it, how you promote it and even what you offer up as a prize.
When commercial clients look to get into programming - as opposed to simply putting their spend into spot advertising in commercial breaks, a giveaway is inevitably on the cards. It is often seen as a way to ‘soften’ any hard sell.
I worked with the TVNZ Breakfast team and, if it was done right, this was mutually beneficial to both the editorial team to engage with their audience and to the client to get their branding out to prime time viewers.
Samsung home appliances had a pop up kitchen in Auckland’s viaduct one year and as part of paid integration used a Breakfast presenter to interact with their products across the morning's show.
But then Jetstar celebrated their fifth birthday in New Zealand in 2014 and its major marketing goal was to help answer some key messaging around its brand including the number of routes it operated across the country. They did this by ensuring the Breakfast presenter was at those key locations each morning while dozens of free flights were given away on the show.
Sometimes, it might not be so public facing. At The Comfort Group, we sometimes ran a giveaway, that was really a survey with a prize to get some research on sleeping habits or products that would help in design and innovation.
New Zealand is a small place when you are targeting a specific group or demographic - and often you’ll be hitting the same people on social media or your database. So competitions can work really well when you partner up with a brand which has a similar, like-minded demographic who could engage with your product or service. At Sleepyhead our content marketing plan around selling Tencel bed sheets included a blog and collaboration with Fisher & Paykel. Both companies offered prizes to the other to use in EDMs or social media promotions and came together in a great piece of video content to showcase washing sheets.
WHAT PRIZES WORK IN A COMPETITION?
It will come as no surprise that prizes I researched over my time at TV3 and TVNZ which achieved the highest reach with audiences were cash, travel or cars. This can be expensive for your brand or be hard to align with your own product, service and marketing.
And not ALL prizes work in a competition.
As part of the research I spoke with an Auckland University psychology specialist who had some interesting points. Sometimes, when we consider entering a competition, we think of our chances of winning and then we briefly consider the consequences of winning and that can influence the likelihood of entering.
As part of a lifestyle programme on TVNZ One, a utility company that was a key sponsor offered up a year’s worth of free broadband as a prize. The competition bombed. Think about it, there’s the hassle of having to cancel your current broadband subscription - inevitable delays on getting the ‘free broadband’ installed and then by the end of the year - you’d likely just continue on with the new service to avoid more hassle.
Great for the utility company offering up the prize, but it could wind up being a grudge purchase after the year end. All of this thinking might go through our subconscious when we see the prize being offered and it becomes a barrier to entry.
Other prizes, while small, can invite a targeted and engaged audience. Tui garden products had a giveaway of citrus fertiliser with very little value on a DIY television show at TVNZ. But they knew that those applying for the prize would likely be gardeners as opposed to serial competition entrants and despite the small number of entries - they were probably quality leads.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL
Where does your competition live? Are you holding it purely on social media - which might help with reach but probably won’t deliver quality leads or build your database.
Most of the larger marketing teams I have worked in and with, want the competition staged via the website using social media, EDMs, commercial partners and advertising to drive traffic. This gives you more control and ownership over the competition.
It also nicely ties in brand messaging as well as showcasing any collaborating partners and any relevant content marketing material. Plus, it’s going to be an easy place for those entering to find the terms and conditions of the giveaway.
Terms and conditions are important - just ask Pepsi. If you haven’t watched it, check out Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? on Netflix. As a copy writer and content manager - it was often my job to write these or tweak them from previous competitions. Watch out for dates, monetary values and refreshing old information. While most of the time they are rarely needed and the competition runs smoothly, I have had one occasion where a winner wasn’t happy with their prize or how to cash it in until I had to refer them to the Ts&Cs as my defence.
But sometimes, a competition absolutely exceeds expectations. At Ryman Healthcare, we gave away a couple of fancy pillows as part of a sleep-focused lifestyle EDM featuring relevant blog content and the giveaway. The winner, it turned out, had been considering retirement living, and when the company representative dropped off their prize it helped facilitate that initial chat which ultimately turned into a sale. The pillows had a combined value of less than $500.
*Research from TVNZ content solutions 2016
Comments