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Originally Posted by riverbirch
As a marketing strategy I'm considering sponsoring an essay contest to engage my current visitors and attract new ones. I'm also considering allowing my visitors to submit garden tips which could then be chosen at random for a prize. Has anyone tried or had success with contests?
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Competitions are an incredibly successful marketing method - potentially one of the best. For almost the whole of the 20th Century, they were the main promotional tool used by newspapers to build circulation. They were so powerful that if a newspaper could not match its competitors' competitions, it went out of business (as happened to the Sydney Sun in the 1980's).
There are three key rules for creating a successful competition: it must be easy to enter; offer an imaginative prize; and be very well promoted.
The first is easy: make sure that the entry form is clear and easy to understand, and works well, preferably involving a minimum of fancy technology. (For instance, don't do as some webmasters do, and design webpages that work only for people with unlimited bandwidth, high speed computers, and all of the most esoteric software.)
Next, make sure that the prize is something that your target audience would love. That doesn't necessarily mean expensive. I recall one competition run by the Australian Opera Company which offered a long list of mostly expensive prizes, with, way down the list near the bottom, a chance to be a spear-carrying extra in one of their operas. That turned out to be the prize everyone wanted, with opera-lovers clawing each other's eyes out (figuratively) to win that humble prize. In your case, I'd aim for something off-beat, that garden lovers would love to have - such as a rare edition of some well-known gardening book that
everyone would love to have on their coffee table, or a special set of gardening tools. (If it can have your website's name on it, so much the better.)
Finally, promote your competition. If you put genuine effort into creating your competition, put 10 or 20 times more into promoting it. A good imaginative competition can work gang-busters ... but only if people know about it!
I would sit down and write out a "rules of contest" fact sheet for your users to view. If you are really concerned about the legal issues you can get your draft looked over by an attorney in your area, it isn't that expensive.
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