A Quick Guide to Improve Contest Results: Part 2
READ PART 1
This is the 2nd installation in our improve contest results series. We hope you learn how to create successful contests that yield amazing results and that are tied to your overall objectives. In the first article, we went over how to increase entries during your next contest. In this follow-up post, we will go over how to run a successful contest in a live environment in order to grow your marketing database.
As marketers, we know contests are an extremely valuable part of a live marketing experience. Contests provide the “give” that incentivizes consumers to input their valuable information and insights. Contests also provide the opportunity for brands and agencies to showcase the strength of their own products or offerings. Contests yield a great deal of value and appeal for consumers to visit a live experience, and positively interact with a brand. Here are our next set of tips to improve contest results:
1. Build, Test, and Optimize
There is a huge amount of content, across the internet, on the subject of conversion optimization for digital marketing. The truth is experiential marketing websites and forms need to convert in the same way as those in the digital marketing space. Making changes to your creative, copy and forms on both landing pages and mobile applications can greatly improve contest results. Furthermore, brands and agencies that created multiple versions of a contest and A/B tested it with live consumer engagement, were able to decrease form bounces by 72% throughout the course of their activation. These organizations took a data-driven approach by improving what worked and building on offers, content, and questions that drove high conversions. A great starting point for building high conversion entry forms is understanding the average number of fields included on each form type:
2. Localized Content is Crucial
The look and feel of how a contest is presented and communicated are important for consumers. The most successful contests have targeted creative that is unique to the area, location and demographic the activation is happening around. Our database shows that contests which utilize creative specific to their activations, on average, showed an 87% increase in entries over those that did not. This process involves using images from local attractions, scenic spots, sports teams or personalities. Furthermore, using language and content that is native to the area of the activation also increases engagement, conversions and ultimately increases contest entries. Altering creative, across nationwide campaigns, to match local activations has proven to be the meaningful change to ensure creative resonates with consumers.
3. Strive For Multiple Entry Options
Many live experiences only incorporate a single entry option, either through brand ambassadors or a standalone kiosk. However, every additional entry point that is included reduces barriers to entry for consumers and increases the ease of consumer engagement and increases contest entries. Entry points can include mobile applications with brand ambassadors, kiosks, or consumer mobile devices, all of which work well in a mobile environment. Our underlying indicators showed that local contest activations, with multiple entry points, demonstrated an 83% increase in entries over activations with a single entry point within the same contesting campaign.
Every contest that had a high number of entries in a standard timeframe—whether per hour or per day—utilized multiple entry options, which allowed consumers to choose their preferred entry point. For example, if there were long lineups at a kiosk, they could enter the contest on their own mobile device. Regardless of entry point, data was sent to one central database so it was easy for the brand or agency to manage.
4. Offer multiple languages
Finally, having a contest available in multiple languages at every entry point has proven to improve contest results to the database by 13% compared to contests that did not include multiple languages. These results were far more prominent in urban and suburban markets along either coast but was true for all live activations captured in the metadata.
Conclusion
Contesting is a fantastic way to increase engagements and build your marketing database with valuable offers for existing customers as well as general consumers. Based on the indicators from a host of Fortune 500 companies we have found that to increase contest entries you need to test creative and copy, offer multiple entry options and localized content.
For many of these key insights live marketing automation can give marketers the tools to easily improve contest results with many of the above features baked into the software. At a time when engaging consumers is becoming more important the ability to stay ahead of the curve is ever more crucial.