One of the market trends we have realized is that contests are not just for big brands and companies. They are very effective local lead generation tools. Companies that are looking to increase the response rate and build local email lists have a lot of success with using our platform.
Here is a scenario for home remodeling companies.
Why it works!
A homeowner is reading the local paper. They see an ad for a sale on some area of home improvement, but maybe they aren’t in the market at the moment. They have no reason to call a business, or keep their information so they ignore the ad. Now imagine they see the same ad promoting a “Best Kitchen or Best Backyard” photo contest or a theme related to a business, to win a free grill. By submitting a photo, the homeowner has a chance to win. They are now motivated to visit a company’s website and enter a photo to win. The contest captures their email so a company can send them future promotions. Now when they’re ready to make an improvement they call. As the theme of the contest changes each month, hundreds of people enter, quickly building an email list for future marketing.
How it works!
• Artistic Hub provides and out-of-the-box software to automate photo contests directly on a businesses site
• We provide everything from technology, setup, creative design, hosting, rules/terms/conditions, and implementation
• A new winner is announced monthly, so homeowners keep coming back to participate in new contests
• The customer tells their friends to vote on their photo, exposing a company to more potential customers
• The contest captures the email for each participant to build a large email marketing database very quickly
Benefits to a business!
• Quickly build a large email marketing list of target
customers who have opted in
• Increase site traffic, site time, and return visitors
• Measurable return on print advertising (better call to action)
• Better margins through email marketing
Benefits to Coop Advertisers!
• Better return/results from print advertising
• Email marketing database for long term advertising
• More sales = more revenue for co-op partner
• Differentiators in local market
The new year is off to a great start and I wanted to share my thoughts on a simple but very important topic – Naming.
I know there are tons of topics out there on naming a new product, service, or company. Even so, I wanted to share how we do it. So far its worked well and made it easy to start creating value in our brands from day one.
Once you have a list of names that pass the 6 steps above, pick the name you see the ability to build a brand around
If you find a name and the URL is available and its not trademarked, the last question to ask yourself should be “Is the name limiting?”. We made the mistake of naming our apparel line “Collar Free”. It was great for the t-shirts we started with, but no one could see us as being more in the future.
As we evolved as a company, we named our contest software platform “Artistic Hub” and it has been a good fit. We help people engage with companies they love through the use of design, photography, and media.
Its not overly complicated, but we find having a simple checklist when picking a name is very important. It helps us pick a name quickly and move on to the branding and idea execution stage faster. I believe a name is important, but nothing is more important than a good revenue model.
On another note, we launched a new version of Artistic Hub on Friday. It more accurately shows off what we do and the clients that benefit from our contest platform. Let us know what you think.
Lately I’ve had mixed feelings about the Foursquare phenomenon. At first I didn’t see value in the application. Then once I started using it and talking to friends about it and I was on the fence. I had some friends who were female who were worried about their safety. On the other hand, I had friends competing to be the “Mayor” of a local wine bar Counter Point in San Diego. Other friends were micro-targeting each others desk to be the “Mayor” of each others domain as an office prank. This made me realize that part of the fun was the game and this is the ingredient to their success. The game aspect if leveraged by venues, especially restaurants, can be excellent marketing.
If restaurants embrace Foursquare, I believe they can leverage social media to get massive marketing exposure. I came to this realization after spending time with part of my family who owns a restaurant group and discussing their social media questions.
They realized they need to leverage social media, but they are so busy with operational stuff their biggest concern was time. I made a few suggestions, but my #1 recommendation was leverage Foursquare.
The great thing about Foursquare is that it automatically updates Facebook and Twitter when someone checks-in via their mobile phone and the power is in the numbers.
The average Facebook user has 130 friends. If 10 people a day check-in on Foursquare, it will notify at least 1,300 people on Facebook. Customers who use Foursquare and mobile updates are more active users and probably have 2-300 friends reaching 2-3000 people per day. What other form of marketing can restaurants and venues use for free that can reach thousands of people a day?
So here are my restaurant recommendations:
Put up a badge on the restaurant website stating either “Find us on Foursquare” or “Be our Mayor on Foursquare” or make a custom widget here http://www.placewidget.com/
If the restaurant has table top promotions, add similar messaging to the promo cards or table tents
Have a Foursquare happy hour once a week. Every customer who shows their server a Foursquare check-in gets their first drink or appetizer half-off
Create a window sticker “Be our Mayor on Foursquare”
Every Monday we have a sales meeting to discuss sales, strategy, and new ideas. Most of the time is proprietary, but today we had one part that is simple yet very crucial for people to become top sales people.
Mastering referrals is like the good to great for sales people. Here are my tips and I would love to see more in the comments.
The Art of Referrals
1. Develop a relationship 2. Be connected on LinkedIn 3. Try to work with the client first 4. Be specific about who you want an intro to 5. Send an intro email and ideas for the person you want to know 6. Ask people who they would like to know – Pay it Back 7. Send Thanks 8. Send good ideas, articles, and links to people with no expectation of return 9. For clients who like it but it’s not a right fit, ask for referrals 10. Follow-up on introductions, if you don’t receive an immediate response
I have been to two great events this past week that I highly recommend to entrepreneurs in San Diego. I usually try to keep a balance by working, exercising, and relaxing so I typically don’t make it to a lot of groups, but these two were worth the time.
The first is the Social Media Breakfast held monthly. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. The group meets monthly at Milano’s coffee in Mission Valley. The structure consisted of a meet and greet, opening discussions about social media news, then a local business spoke about their use of social media, and then to close out the group opened up so people could share challenges they had with social media.
The speaker today was the founders of Carbonita Detailing. The two guys who founded this green car detailing company launched two months ago gave a great speech about their use of Twitter. They have gone from door knocking landing 3 jobs to using Twitter to land 100 jobs so far in the month of January. Great work by two guys who had never used Twitter before. They also have a great story and are passionate about what they are doing.
A couple cool things I liked about Carbonita is they only use one pint of water per detailing and they drive around in a smart car. So they are doing a great job and being ec0-friendly. Carbonita is already planning on franchising the company and I expect great things from the founders.
The second group/meet-up I attended this week was Web Leaders Collective. This is a group that has been going for about a year now and is comprised of founders and executives in technology or that run start-ups in San Diego. The group was founded by Chuck Longanecker from Digital Telepathy and is now being led by Lisa Tran.
The first meeting of the year was a poker game with about 16 local entrepreneurs and executives and hosted by Steven Cox at the Takelessons office. It was a a lot of fun and nice to relax with some entrepreneurs, but don’t be fooled the side conversations were top notch with some very smart people. There were discussions of start-ups doing well, new start-up concepts, investment intros, technology debates, life science topics, and overall a balance of fun and intellect.
If you are running a start-up and looking for a great environment to brain storm with peers I highly recommend attending.
Over the past year sports has been hands down one of our biggest markets. Its easy to understand. Clients have great traffic and sports teams and organizations have some of the most fanatical fans. These two factors drive some of the best campaigns.
We have run successful campaigns for the Oakland Raiders, Ihoops.com, Eteamz.com, and Sports Illustrated Kids. The Raiders best fan photo contest was a great success with 1.2 million votes and 1600 submissions in 8 weeks.
As we look at the new year and how the sports market can benefit from our services, I believe one of the biggest overlooked opportunity is for pro athletes to leverage contests to communicate with their fans.
This morning I was watching Chad Johnson now Ocho Cinco live stream talking to his fans and I thought it was awesome. Reggie Bush I also think has a great site and I know has a social media consultant helping him communicate with his fans more effectively. Social Media is allowing athletes to communicate with their fans on their own time so they don’t feel overwhelmed when they are focused on playing.
I think the next step that some of the more proactive athletes could take would be running interactive contests with their fans. Athletes are like brands and they have loving fans. Why not embrace this?
Here are some ideas we have and we are open to any other ideas from agents or sports consultants:
Fan Poster or Apparel Design Contest : Fans would love to design a cool shirt or poster for an athlete and the athlete benefits by getting some rocking fan inspired art.
Fan Voted Photo Contest for a new sports card: A player could upload a bunch of action photos and let fans decide which picture will be on their next sports card. The athlete or card company could run this.
Fan Logo Design Contest: Reggie Bush has a cool logo with his initials. How cool would it be to have tons of fans designing logos for Reggie and have one win. I love Roger Federer’s logo. It would be awesome if a fan had designed it.
Fan Art Contest: We have been running contests with SIKids.com for the last year and some of the art from these kids is amazing. It would be awesome to pick an athlete each month and let fans submit their best drawing. Kids would love it and it is such great PR for an athlete.
The cool thing is prizes don’t have to be big cash prizes like brands use. Prizes could be a personal note and some personalized signed gear. Those are the things fans live for and will mount on their wall and pass to their kids.
Here are some examples of amazing art we have received in the last year work with Sports Illustrated Kids. Athletes with great fan relationships are the ones that are remembered forever.
The photo contest we’re hosting for the Oakland Raiders has taught me a great deal about art of the photo contest. I say ‘art’ because in my estimation, wining a photo contest for this brand requires part mathematical precession and part artistic finesse.
The Raiders are well known for having the most fanatic fans in the country. I grew up as a cheesehead in Wisconsin I will never forget my first experience with the ‘back hole’, apparently not all fans replicate a piece of cheese as headwear.
Those of us in the photo contest business know that there are three things that win contests: Babies, Pets and Girls (in no particular order). The Raider Fans sure know how to execute on the big three. Here are a couple of my favorites:
Last week we (Artistic Hub) launched a Fan Photo Contest for the OAKLAND RAIDERS. We know the Raiders have fanatical fans and we were excited to allow them to post their own photos and vote on their favorites. They have truly shown their support for the team because the traffic and submissions have been through the roof! GO RAIDER FANS!
Do you know someone that’s a part of the Raider Nation? Tell them about the contest.
HOW IT WORKS:
1. Submit a photo of you in all of your Raider glory.
2. Vote! The winner is based on public votes, so tweet, post and promote.
3. WIN – new winners announced every Wednesday so get started…
The team offers great prizes including a game football signed by Shane Lechler, tickets to the games and RAIDERS Gear. New Prizes every week. Check it out!
WHY IT WORKS:
The first 24 hours: 180 Photos Submitted / 100,000 votes
Today – Day 11: 915 Photos Submitted / 555,000 Votes
Our business develops white label contest applications for sports teams and online sports communities, so we talk to a lot to people who are frustrated by their results with running online contests for fans. There are a few common reasons why online contests don’t work.
Here’s a brief education on the types of online contest management methods and their pitfalls.
The email method: When an organization asks fans to “submit all photos to someone@something.com by Some Date, 2010”, here’s what fans think is going to happen:
Nobody is going to look at my photo.
They might not receive my photo.
If they get my photo they might lose it.
It’s probably not going to be fair. They are just going to choose a photo submitted by a friend.
The ranking method: When most organizations develop a ranked contest, where fans rank submission on a scale (ie: 1 to 10), here’s what goes wrong:
Numbers are relative to the voter. When looking at a person, place or thing and asked to rank it on a 10 point scale, a 6 to you is often not a 6 to the person next to you. As such, on a large scale, number ranked contests eventually always center around a mean, where the majority of all submissions end up close to the average. We learned this after talking to threadless.com when developing our contest application for collarfree.com, our crowdsourced t-shirt line.
The “votes for” method: When the host develops a contest that asks fans to “vote for” a submission (ie: yes or no, thumbs up/down), here’s what goes wrong:
When the winner is determined by the # of votes for a submission, the campaign has built-in bias towards early submissions. Submissions entered early have an unfair advantage because the duration of their time in the contest is longer than later submissions.
There is bias in promoting. Not always a bad thing, as people should be rewarded for their effort, but when winners are determined strictly by the number of positive votes, people with resources (time, lots of followers, etc.) have an unfair advantage in skewing the voting pool when the contest’s submissions can be linked to directly and a non-relative vote can be cast for said submission. Here’s a link to my image, simply take a second to click on the thumbs up and leave.
The message is not targeted. Organizations need to consider what interests their fans and customers. Here are a list of questions to ask yourself:
What are your fan’s key interests? Pets, babies, winning moments, hobbies, girls (Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, let’s be honest)…
If you are running a fan submitted photo contest, what type of photos do your fans have quick and easy access to?
If you’ve run contests before, what type of submissions did you receive? Did you learn anything from your audience? We run contests for a consumer food products brand called Tapatio Hot Sauce. We noticed that for the first 2 months we kept getting submissions from military folks in places like Kosovo and Kuwait – Tapatio sitting on a tank, or on the table in a barracks. How would we know that Tapatio was such a hit in the military, maybe military food needs a little extra kick? Anyway, we switched things up in December and are running a “Best Military Family Photo contest” – a great goodwill piece for a loyal fan base.
The prize is not valuable or relevant. Make sure to consider these questions when choosing a prize for your campaign.
Create prize packages that your customers want. Think of something they want, and may never buy for themselves.
Justify the effort involved with a equivalent prize package. If it’s a photo contest, submitting is easy, offer something small. If it’s a video/audio/design contest, fans have to spend time on creating it, editing it, uploading it. Make the prize justify the time it takes to participate.
Target prizes that have a high value to cost ratio. If you are a football team, give away a used game football and call it a “Commemorative Game Used Football”. No cost to you, huge value to the fans.
Now, here’s what we have found.
What makes Artistic Hub’s contest software work for the fans:
It’s interactive. This is not a sweepstakes. We can capture email too, but we can also keep your fans there, and keep them coming back.
It’s addictive and simple. Here’s happy face and sad face, which do you like? Here’s panda and chimpanzee, which do you like? How fast can you click? How long is your break between meetings? We’ve helped take Active.com’s eteamz property site time to over 8 minutes with interactive photo contests. A substantial increase for them. The reason: we make decisions simple with an “A vs. B” method, and super fast loading between votes. No time wasted in scrolling down the page, or clicking from page to page, then clicking that little “…more” button, only to lose the page you were on before.
It’s Fair! Submissions are displayed at random, from a database of all submissions that fans submit, and the client approves.
It’s transparent. Fans vote and can see the rankings change. We include auto e-mails and a search bar so participants can be easily notified when their submission goes into voting, and can go search for it when they return.
It’s easy to promote/share. Our Direct links and the ShareThis feature allow fans to promote the contests their friends and family, and get voting support for the contest.
Our Results. Here are the first week’s results of our newest client, The Oakland Raiders
Jimmy Hendricks
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