4 Steps to Running a Contest and Making People Love You

Recently, we hooked you up with a list of stuff you need to have to run a successful contest. Ain’t that the truth! But just having the pieces in place doesn’t necessarily mean you are poised for success. We aren’t ashamed to say that we’ve run a bunch of contests. In fact, we’ve kicked, screamed, cried, laughed, and cheered over them – learning the true process along the way. Yes, we’ve learned a lot. So forgive us as we try to share it with you without making this blog post 12 pages long.

1. Planning

It goes without saying that planning is the most important part of running a successful contest. The best thing you can do for yourself is be prepared for all circumstances possible. At this stage, you should focus on:

• Creating a sick concept and good prize – Ask yourself: What is going to get my target audience psyched? Of course, boring or lame will never fly.
• Setting goals – What do you want to get out of the contest: followers, content, buzz? What will you measure your success by?
• Timeline – When will you do all of this? Schedule things out – by the day, week, or month – to keep everything on track. This will be your best friend and will help keep you sane.
• Creative Ideas – Will you build a contest microsite? House the contest on Facebook? Use a third party app or company?
• Outreach Plan – Who will you get the word out about the contest? Blogger Outreach, FFPO, Social Networks, Press Releases? Find what audience you need to target, and create a database or plan to actually get in touch with them.

2. Ramping Up

This will most likely be the longest portion of your contest-launching process. Just like any project, you need to take the time to collaborate and fine-tune while you put all the pieces into place. Get comfortable with the nuts and bolts so you are ready for anything and everything.

• Get those “must haves” – There are five, and you can find them here.
• Creative Work – Remember those creative ideas? It’s time to build whatever you need to build to run this contest.
• Outreach – Send out those emails! Make those calls! But be prepared for questions and concerns. This is where messaging comes in.
• Carefully Crafted Messaging – Take the time to think about all the questions that participants might have. Create responses for those. Also, think about all of the problems that could potentially go wrong. Craft crisis messaging, too. Believe me, you’ll need it, especially if things really take off.
• Social Network Push – Got a Facebook page? Twitter followers? Let them know about your contest. They are pre-qualified to be interested in what you’ve got to say, making it more likely for them to participate.

3. It’s Go Time!

You’ve planned. You’ve ramped up. Now, it’s time to hit the ground running. This is where the contest comes to life, and your hard work (hopefully) pays off. But don’t pat yourself on the back just yet…

• Launch the contest – self-explanatory!
• Answer questions or concerns – Be ready for it; this WILL happen. It’s fine as long as you’ve got your messaging ready!
• Handle influx or lack thereof – Maybe a million people will be interested in your contest. But what if you see nothing? Have a Plan B so you don’t have egg on your face.
• Keep buzz going – Don’t be afraid to reach out to your database again. Utilize social networking sites to get excitement going.
• Prepare for the end – Know what you are going to do once the contest ends. How will you leverage the content you’ve received? Will you make a big splash about announcing the winner?
• Track your progress – Watch site traffic or entry numbers. Don’t wait until after the contest ends to see if you’ve reached your goal. Be proactive, and don’t be afraid to tweak things along the way to ensure your end goal is reached.

4. After Effects

So you’ve run a contest. You’ve got entrants, votes, the whole nine yards. Congrats! But don’t just stop there. You’ve got a little bit more work left.

• Yay, winners! – Announce the winners and share it with your social networks, database of people you reached out to, and other interested parties.
• Leverage content – Use that stuff til it hurts! Whatever your objectives may be, share the good stuff with the world.
• Review – Did you meet all of your goals? What worked? What didn’t? Make notes so that you can be sure to make your next contest even better.

Well, that might be a lot, but it’s enough to set you off on a good path. And the “making people love you” part? Well, I can’t promise that. But I can say that if you use these four steps, and make sure you’ve got all the necessities for running an online contest, you’ll not only get participation, but admiration.

5 Must-Haves for Running a Successful Contest

So your company has adopted social media marketing techniques. You’ve been on social networks and built relationships with your consumers, but want to take your engagement to the next level. You’ve heard that online contests can help your business get there, but you aren’t really sure what separates a great contest from the gimmicks. Don’t worry – we’ve figured that out for you.

1. Rules and Guidelines

The first step to having a successful contest is creating a list of rules and guidelines not just for entrants to follow, but also for you to live by. The goal is to create an airtight document that gives you ultimate control in case the contest somehow comes crumbling down around you.

Even with a small crisis, it is still good to be able to refer to a separate, impartial source when answering questions from entrants. Say it with me – “I’m so sorry, but it’s in the rules.” Have your lawyer look at it – we aren’t kidding. Having a foolproof rule book is the way to go.

2. A Great Concept

This one might seem pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised how pointless some contests can be. Too often, companies focus on how contests can drive traffic to their Web site, and stop there. But the point of a contest is to engage your audience and bring new consumers into your brand community. Just having participants enter their email addresses doesn’t really achieve that.

Creating a concept that will mobilize your target audience doesn’t have to get complicated – just look at the simplicity of the concept behind the contest we’re running for the National Chicken Council: the I Love Chicken contest. Your concept shouldn’t be so narrow that only a small niche of people want to participate, but it should still hone in on what your audience cares about. The true balance is making the contest easy to enter, but also specific enough that you get great user-generated content to use long after the contest ends.

3. A Huge A$$ Prize

Listen – people aren’t going to enter your contest for a chance to take a picture with the mayor of your town. Okay, a few might, but let’s face it – creative people aren’t going to pass over content they worked hard on – the kind of content that could be really valuable to your brand – for a photo-op.

You’ve got to give people a reason to enter. Money is always a great prize, or something worth a lot of money (think tropical vacation getaway). Personal promotion is also a good incentive (think about all the bands that vied to be the next FreeCreditScore.com guys). Whatever it may be, it has to motivate people to not only enter, but to get their friends and family to vote for them too.

4. Sharing Options

Give participants the option to share their entry with everyone they know on their social networks. It will be easier for them to pass the contest to their buds and relatives, ultimately driving traffic to your site. But it doesn’t just do that – it greatly widens that audience that can now connect with and participate in your contest and your brand. When you make it easy for contestants to spread the word and get votes for their entry, you hand them some power in the outcome of the contest, making them even more excited to be ambassadors for your business.

5. Crisis Communication Plan

Regardless of how well you plan the contest, set up your voting system, and monitor entries, there will be some sort of problem or question. And if you’ve got a great concept that is married to a huge prize, people will do pretty much anything to win, meaning that they will also find anything to call into question or complain about. That is where a crisis communication plan comes in.

Prepare for these often headache-inducing inquires by drafting messaging with the proper responses, tone, references to the rules, etc. While it won’t eliminate issues, it will help you maintain sanity as you launch your contest, making it much easier to respond to contestants in a consistent and professional manner.

Thinking about running a contest? Seems you’ve got a lot to think about. Not sure where to begin? It just so happens that we’ve got plenty of experience. We’d be happy to hook you up.

New Disney Campaign Wins Us Over

Lately, we are loving the new Disney campaign, “Let the Memories Begin.” The commercials expose real life experiences through a series of home videos displaying real moments between vacationing families.

For me personally, these commercials take me back to when I was young. There was nothing like waking up at the crack of dawn to catch a flight to some fantasy land you’ve never been to. These commercials tug at your heartstrings, making you long for days of yore.

What we here at The Cyphers Agency admire most about this campaign is that it is comprised entirely of user generated content: real people going to the park, real excitement, real memories. Control is being handed to the consumer. These real experiences bring back real memories for the audience, creating that emotional connection that is often difficult for advertisers to obtain.

Take a look at the campaign below and read more about how Disney is turning to guests to promote their park. What do you think about Disney’s new ads?

Facebook Fan Page Outreach: Power of Cross Promotion

We’ve covered a ton of ways that we reach out and build relationships on our Push-n-Pull blog – everything from Facebook ads to crisis communication plans to blogger outreach. While we’ve shared our tried and true strategies with you, we’re also tweaking our methods to find new ways to create connections even more effectively.

Most recently, we’ve been leveraging what we like to call Facebook Fan Page Outreach (FFPO). FFPO is a great compliment to other forms of outreach like building blogger relationships. While FFPO isn’t a big trend in social media strategy yet, its been proving to be effective for building beneficial relationships on Facebook.

Part of the strategy behind Facebook outreach is leveraging already targeted audiences. For example, if you’ve got a Facebook fan page for hats, you can find other pages that are similar in nature, like pages dedicated to hat hair, baseball hats, or cowboy hats. These audiences are already pre-qualified for your message, you simply have to get your message there.

Don’t mistake this for simply posting your message on another Facebook page. Part of the process is building relationships with the owners of these pages, working together to create the best mix of value for the audience. The most ideal situation is having the page post on your behalf, spreading your message themselves. The audience is more prone to absorbing the message if it is coming from a page or company they have opted to like.

On the other hand, it is important to be willing to go the distance for the other pages. Relationships should be mutual, and asking others to do something that will benefit you but not them won’t get you very far. Be willing to work together and share information that is valuable to your audience.

Have more questions? We’d be happy to oblige.

Interactive YouTube Videos are Bringin’ It

Recently we’ve seen some amazing things done with YouTube. It seems that companies are leveraging the video platform to take their brand to an entirely new level (think Isaiah Mustafa and the Old Spice viral campaign). We recently came across an amazingly awesome interactive video, courtesy of Tipp-Ex correction fluid out of the UK.

At first, you come across your average YouTube video. Andy the Hunter is shown preparing to shoot a ferocious bear encroaching on his camp site. His cameraman is yelling at him in the background, begging him to shoot that dang bear! But Andy the Hunter freaks out and doesn’t want to shoot, so he enlists the help of Tipp-Ex and the viewer to help him rewrite the story. Check it out over at YouTube or follow the series of pictures below.

We played around, typed in some actions, and did exactly what Tipp-Ex wanted: for us to play around with their campaign.

The potential for this kind of engagement is limitless. It gives the consumer direct access to the product, brand, and messaging without smacking them across the face with it. This goes to show that if you provide fun or unique opportunities for your audience, interaction is almost a given. Humor doesn’t hurt either.

I can almost guarantee that more of these will start popping up online. While YouTube may not be the best avenue for every brand, it does encourage “think-outside-the-box” syndrome for brands who might ordinarily use traditional means of advertising. Thinking of new ways to approach the consumer while maintaining the same message can present challenges. In this case, Tipp-Ex took a classic product and made it digitally relevant. And for that, we applaud them.

Seen any like this recently? Leave a comment below – we’d love to learn about it.

Effectively Leveraging Facebook Advertising (part 2)

This is the second part of a two part series on Facebook Advertising. See part one of Effectively Leveraging Facebook Advertising here. Here are some recent graphs from a client’s Facebook advertising campaign.

In our last post, we talked about what we measure, how each metric is affected, and what they all mean. But you can’t just go sign up for a Facebook ad and automatically get these results. How do we get such great results from our Facebook ads? Read on…

Compelling Creative

We wouldn’t be in business if everyone could come up with a creative way to convey a client’s message to target audiences. Our creative team has been doing this for over 20 years, and Facebook ads are simply a new way to convey that message. When our creative team spends time working on our Facebook ads, they consistently achieve significantly higher results. We’ve tested!

Strategic Targeting

We don’t ever just blast out an ad to “everyone.” In this business, there is no “everyone.” There is always a specific target audience, usually many, that will be more interested than others in a clients message. If we are paying to send clients’ message to the wrong people, it’s a total waste of money. What we like about Facebook Advertising is that we can target users several different ways. We can target people based on their: location, likes/dislikes, relationship status, age, school, workplace, and more. With all of those options, we can usually pare down the audience to exactly the type of people that we want to target. That way, each time money gets spent to show the ad, it isn’t wasted on people that don’t care.

Tweaking and Maintenance

No, Tweaking and Maintenance aren’t our nicknames for the office interns. Rather, the terms describe the art of a successful Facebook Ad; the continual maintenance and tweaking of things like the ad copy (words in the ad), graphics, title, demographic targeting, keyword targeting, and bidding. We don’t have time to explain all the terms here, but the idea is to hit your different audiences sequentially, instead of all at the same time, so that you aren’t spending tens of thousands of dollars in a month. Instead, you target one audience after another. We monitor the real-time statistics to help determine when an ad has saturated a certain audience. When our results decrease to the point where our clients’ money is less effective and less efficient, we tweak (or completely redesign) the ad to target new audiences, or target the same audience a different way. This might be through different keywords, different creative strategy, or any one of the myriad adjustments that we can make.

Research and Planning

We didn’t just come up with a cute ad for our client out of nowhere. We started working with this client months and months ago, as every good campaign starts, with a marketing plan and a creative strategy. That way, every time we want to create a new campaign or a new ad, we have all the information we need at our fingertips, and we are better equipped to clearly articulate our clients’ value proposition to their different audiences. Without the appropriate research and planning, we wouldn’t know who target audiences are, where they interact online, or what the client’s message should be.

So there you have it – more than you ever wanted to know about Facebook Advertising. Any questions?

Effectively Leveraging Facebook Advertising (Part 1)

This is part one of a two-part series on Facebook ads. There was just so much to say about Facebook advertising that we couldn’t fit it all into one post!

We just started another Facebook advertising campaign for one of our clients, and we wanted to share some of the results of the first 10 days:

What do those graphs mean? The first graph shows the number of people that clicked on our ad. The second picture is a spreadsheet of some of the numbers behind the results. At The Cyphers Agency, we are always measuring our results so (1) our clients know that their money is being used effectively and so (2) we can measure our success against benchmarks, and adjust strategy as needed.

If the graph above is somewhat confusing, no worries. Here is an explanation of each term and how it plays into the bigger picture:

Impressions

This simply shows how many times your ad was displayed to the audience you are targeting. In this example, we are targeting a very specific group of people, with only a modest budget, so the impressions are relatively low. Some of our Facebook advertising campaigns see tens of millions of impressions.

Clicks

This shows how many people clicked on your Facebook ad. As you can see in the graph, with under $32 in media costs, we garnered almost 300 clicks to our client’s website! (Debbie Downer Disclaimer: the costs described here are misleading as they don’t reflect all the planning and strategy that came before this ad’s execution)

Click Rate

This shows the percentage of people that saw your ad (impressions) divided by the number of people that clicked on the ad (clicks). This gives you a benchmark to compare to other ads and other campaigns. Although each industry and audience produce different average click rates, we tend to see an average of %0.02 – %0.04 click rate. This might seem low, but when you see how cheap it can be to reach 1,000,000 people in your target audience, those 200-400 clicks can be a huge boon for business. Combine that with several different ads, or with the rest of your campaign, and you’ve got some serious traction. Of course we’d like to take this opportunity to point out our stellar .22% average click rate!

Actions

“Actions” explains how many people interacted with your Facebook ad and decided to “like” whatever you are advertising. These are powerful numbers, because they (1) show affinity for your product/service/brand, and more importantly (2) are people whom with you now have direct communication. Similar to an email list, people that “like” your Facebook page will see your regular status updates. Often “actions” can be just as important as clicks; although sending people to the website (clicks) often drives immediate revenue, “actions” drive customer lifetime value, and help stimulate word of mouth marketing. What would you rather have, 10,000 people to your website or 10,000 people that will each tell 5 people that you are having a sale? Good thing you don’t have to choose, because we can deliver both. With under $32 spent, we’ve garnered over 180 subscribers to our client’s Facebook page! (not to mention the 294 visitors sent to the website!)

Cost Per Click (CPC)

This is a way to bid on the delivery of your Facebook ad. If you choose this option, you pay every time that someone clicks on your ad. When is this method best? When you (1) can’t target your audience or (2) your audience isn’t succinctly defined. This way, you can show your ad to 1,000,000 people, but if only one person clicks on your ad, you only pay for that one click. With Cost Per Thousand (CPM), you would need to pay for each 1,000 people to show your ad to all of those 1,000,000, just to get that one click. We did not use CPC bidding for the campaign in the graphs above, but Facebook still shows us our average CPC, based on what we are paying and how many clicks we have.

Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)

Another way to get your ad in front of an audience is to bid a certain amount to show it to 1,000 people in your target audience. If you’ve narrowed down your audience to those that you know might be interested in your product/service, this can be a great way to leverage your budget. For example, if your audience size is 1,000,000 people, it will be expensive to show your ad to all of them, just to get to the 10,000 people that might be interested in your product/service. However if you use the targeting options (see “strategic targeting” and “tweaking and maintenance” below) you can start out just showing your ad to those 10,000 people. That way, you make sure that they see it, and can even show them multiple ads multiple times. We used CPM bidding in the example above, and it delivered a very good return on investment. When we created the campaign we could have paid for each click (see “CPC” above), which would have cost approximately 50-80 cents per click. But because we chose CPM, our cost per click is approximately 12 cents. This leverages our client’s budget so that we can get maximum exposure and results.

Spent

Simply put, this is the money spent for each day of results. As you can see, we earned this client an average of over 8 clicks for every dollar spent. That’s 8 people sent to the client’s page for every dollar spent, 8 people that interact with the brand, 8 people that are saying “I want to know more.” This is a strong example of how much your budget can work for you if you know how.

Old Spice Guy Wins the Hearts of Many, Including Ours

Do you remember the off-the-wall Superbowl ad featuring a suave, manly man describing the manliness of Old Spice? (If you don’t, the ad is embedded below.) At that point the advertising campaign was good – witty, memorable, and on-brand. But this week, the campaign evolved into one of the best advertising campaigns we’ve seen in a while.

The now-famous “Old Spice Guy” begun answering questions and comments from users that were submitted via Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks. The videos were hilarious, personal, and on-brand. See an example below. Most importantly, it wasn’t just one or two videos – over the course of two days, the team created over 100 video responses, which ended up generating well over 4 million views (and they are continuing to rise!).

Here are a few facts about the campaign:

According to Google, there have been over 7,000 blog posts written in the past week that contain the words “Old Spice Guy.”

The Old Spice Channel is now the #2 most-viewed sponsor channel on YouTube, with over 61 Million views.

The online campaign strategically responded to influencers online. The Old Spice Guy responded to celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Alyssa Milano, and Kevin Rose. But he didn’t forget about the little people either, and made sure to answer plenty of comments from average joes. This made sure that the messaging was authentic and engaging, but also sure to reach millions of people.

Here are some impressions from our team about the campaign:

“The pure volume of videos (183 in two days!) is astounding!” – Lucas

“The consistency of hilarity in the videos is amazing.” – Jocelyn

“The frequency of videos, at times, was mind-boggling – as fast as a video every 5 minutes. When you think about the fact that each video required finding an appropriate comment to respond to, thinking of a response, filming a take (probably several), some quick edits, and uploading the video, this is a very impressive statistic. And they kept it up hour after hour, for two days straight.” – Bailey

“I know it’s subjective, but I honestly want to go buy Old Spice body wash now. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I feel like I owe the brand for all the laughs they gave me over the past few days. Maybe it’s because I want to be like  that guy Isaiah Mustafa. Maybe it’s because I’ve always liked Old Spice, and this will just push me over the edge. Either way, this is great advertising – not because it is entertaining or well-produced, but because at the end of the day, it makes me want the product being sold.” – Andrew

“Blatant Old Spice promotion. The videos are anything but subtle, and the blatant promotion fits with the personality of the campaign. As a viewer, I was content with the promotion because it was a small price to pay for such hilarity.” – Anna

If you are interested in exactly how this was orchestrated, here is a blog (from ReadWriteWeb) post that explains how Wieden and Kennedy (Old Spice’s Agency) created such a phenomenon: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_old_spice_won_the_internet.php

The Brand is Hero No More

Every person, journalist, blogger is talking about the evolution of media. Traditional means of communication have been turned upside down and shaken up. Social media is now becoming the norm, changing the way that we view information distribution. As advertisers, this change has a huge affect on what we do. We are constantly learning how to incorporate this change into our clients’ brands.

Brand Voice

Years ago (or maybe even just one year ago), branding and messaging were entirely in control of the advertiser. The message was displayed how, when and with whatever messaging the advertiser deemed necessary. The ad men formed meaning behind a brand, telling consumers what to think. Consumers were a passive audience that were receptors to those messages. Unfortunately for traditionalists, social media killed the brand hero.

Social Voice

With the increasing use of social networking sites and online communities, communication has changed. That changed created a need for advertisers to adapt, learning to really listen to the voice of their consumers to help mold a brand. These consumers are no longer strictly targets of advertising messages; they now play an active role in the brands they associate with.

This social voice also allows for trust to be generated between consumers and the brand. For years, people have either hated or distrusted advertisers and the messages they present; they think that advertisers lie. Embracing consumers’ interaction and engagement with a brand can help get to the truth, or clear the air, if you will, about what something really is. And while advertisers can still create strong strategy and messaging for a brand, this interaction creates a unique equation. Given the opportunity to complain, give feedback, or praise a product or company, consumers are given an environment to be heard. This interaction with the brand gives such meaning to the brand itself that the two cannot be separated.

Take Zappos.com for example. The site has become so much more than just an online place to buy shoes. Their use of social networking sites like Twitter has helped mold their brand image. Their shoes, social media policies, and internal culture go hand in hand; they have become inseperable.

Social Brand

Bringing the social voice into a brand can be a scary thing. But with the input of a consumer community, brands can adapt and become further defined, taking on new or deeper meanings that are linked directly to the consumer. The brand, once completely controlled by the advertiser, is now a social brand that results from advertisers and consumers meeting somewhere in the middle.  And ultimately, isn’t that what we should have been going for the entire time?

Cut the Crap – No More Lofty Social Media Terms

So we’ve been just as guilty as the next for using those lofty and abstract social media terms that drive everyone mad: transparency, engagement, content generation, conversation monitoring, blah blah blah. I think it is time we all shut up.

I don’t mean that we stop talking about social media or social influence marketing. I just think we need to re-evaluate the way we speak about it. We (as marketing professionals) need to move from the general to the specific and actionable. We need to move from “motivational speaker” to “business coach.”

Step back for a moment.

While we’ve got more and more people jumping at social media, we’ve also got some seriously bad lingo that follows. Let’s look away from jargon and look to stimulating specific, strategic social media dialogue. Saying that each client is different doesn’t cut it anymore. Let’s take these lofty ideas and break them down.

There are countless more ways to impact your audience: Need a flashmob? Don’t know how to pitch bloggers? Want to see how geo-location features can help your business? Need some social media resources? We try to give you resources to see how social media really works, and if you can’t do it yourself, well, that is what we are here for.

Setting Proper Expectations & Follow Your Plan

As an agency, its important to take a look at what is on our plate and strategize. Who is the client? What do they need? Are we working with a Business to Business (B2B) client? We can use social media tactics to locate key influencers in that company. Working with a Business to Consumer (B2C) client? We can locate their audience online by doing an in depth online audience scan and find their consumers, whether it be on blogs, forums, or Facebook, and leverage that community.

So can we please stop talking about lofty, abstract social media terms? Let’s cut to the chase and get working.