Using Contests and Sweepstakes as a marketing tool

                Running a contest or a sweepstakes has shown to increase response rate from 30-50%. The larger the prize, usually the larger the response rate. However, be aware that the quality of your leads that you generate from you sweepstakes/contest are generally not as high quality as other mean of lead generation. What this means is the type of customer that you bring in from a sweepstakes will usually have a lower acceptance and payment. The general quality of that lead over the lifetime of the customer is lower down the line, i.e. renewal rates and sales conversion. However, if you want to put all or many of your eggs into the sweepstakes/contest basket, your going to have to run those promotions over and over. I will discuss one way that I used a contest to bring in more leads to our business.

                Owning and operating a small business gives you opportunity to be as creative as you want when it comes to your marketing strategy. One of the ways we boosted our response rate on an event that we held, which was sponsored by the small business (5k fundraising run presented by my athletic club).  Was to offer prizes to the winners of the race. The top finishers were awarded cash prizes, while the sub divisions that were created were awarded gift baskets and gift cards from the local businesses. The athletic club sponsored that 5k that we created from a few more years, that year was the only year the prizes were awarded, consequently, that year had the most response. Why we didn’t continue to offer those large prizes for the run was because the gym had grown and we just didn’t have enough time and effort to put into that charity event like we did the first year. Looking back, we should’ve brought some people in to help us. However, the idea here, is that I actually ran a promotion and the business did get a pop from the event. Also, the quality of the clientele was lower, however, they did end up being clientele.

                 No matter how large or small your business is, you should put some real thought into creating a contest/sweepstakes for your business. Weigh the pros and cons and see if it would be right for you. Please reach out to me if you need help creating an event specifically for you business to increase your response rate.

Thank you,

Jason St Clair

Jason@atheoz.com

Atheoz.com