The 5 Marketing Benefits of Sponsoring a Contest

Sponsoring a Contest is an Investment with Huge ROI Potential -- and It's Up to You to Help Your Advertisers Understand That 

What do advertisers want? They want to see action. They want hot leads, foot traffic, more sales, a bigger email database, and more fans. They spend their marketing budget to achieve these goals, and they want ROI.

You can help them reach all of these goals with a contest!

Contests are the activation layer of any marketing plan. 

When you are selling contests, remember that what you are really offering is not only sponsorships -- it's the ability to activate potential customers. Contests provide an incentive for customers to engage with a brand on a deeper level in ways that traditional advertising alone often can’t duplicate -- AND most importantly, they are the best vehicle for capturing customer data.

So how do you explain the benefits of sponsoring a contest to a potential advertiser? 

While it all comes back to activation, here are 5 talking points to get you started:

1. Contests increase brand awareness and engagement. Advertising can take two forms. The first is branding, or setting customers' expectations for a product or service and differentiating it from others. The second is activation, which motivates customers to take a specific action, such as enter a contest, Like a Page on Facebook, purchase a deal, or print out a coupon. Traditional advertising is great for awareness, while promotions like contests and ballots supercharge your advertising, making it more effective by getting people involved in your site and encourage social sharing.

2. Contests grow social, email, and mobile databases. Whether your advertiser is hoping to grow their social media following, or even their mobile database, a contest can help. This is one of the absolute best ways to reach the marketing holy grail -- capturing data on customers! Add an email or mobile opt-in (or both!) to the registration page, or put the contest behind a Like-gate on Facebook.

3. Contests drive foot traffic. By including a coupon or offer on the contest thank-you page, advertisers have the power to direct foot traffic to their physical location (or website). You can also generate even more foot traffic by incorporating the online contest with an on-site event at the advertiser's location.

4. Contests reach the audience you want. Whether your advertiser wants to reach as many people as possible or only a highly targeted niche, there's a contest for that. Sweepstakes are easy to enter and appealing to everyone, while something like an "Ugliest Yard Makeover" photo submission contest attracts a more targeted (and equally valuable) audience. The key is to understand what your advertiser's objectives are and to then select the right contest type to achieve their goals. Here's a quick overview of the strengths of some of the most popular contest types:

• Sweepstakes: Low barrier to entry, drive entries, generates email opt-ins, drives Facebook Likes
• UGS (Photo, Video, MP3): High barrier to entry, drives engagement, drives website traffic, drives social shares

5. Contests generate qualified leads. If you add survey questions to a contest registration page, you have the power to deliver hot, qualified leads to your advertiser after the contest. For example, when a Ford dealer asked on a contest registration page if people were considering a new vehicle purchase, 12% of contest entrants indicated they were planning to buy a new car in the next 6 months!