The world of contests has come a long way and paper entry forms and entry boxes may be on their last days. Thanks to the internet, consumers can enter to win prizes from the comfort of their own home, by uploading their proof of purchase and fulfilling other requirements of the contest, which gives them a chance to win.
Here, we will look at the old way and the new.
Traditional Contests
With traditional contests, you typically need to fill out an entry form and drop it in an entry box. These boxes are usually located in supermarkets, pharmacies, bars, shopping malls or retail outlets. While conveniently located at the point of purchase for consumer goods, the action of stopping after paying for your items, to complete a form, can be a bother. Sometimes when persons take it home to do it later, it never gets done. On the brand side, drawing from thousands of physical entries, to select winners can be a difficult exercise. In addition, entering the data from each entry into a database, can be a monumental and time-consuming task, which from our experience, often never gets done – so all of that valuable consumer data is lost.
Online Contests
Online contests are just like they sound – people can enter to win prizes online, in the comfort of their home, office, or wherever they have access to the internet. Trinidad and Tobago’s internet penetration rate stood at 77.3 percent of the total population at the start of 2022. Because they’re so easy to enter, easy to tally entrants, and easy to choose winners – the online contest is a sweet spot to connecting with customers with ease. This makes it possible for more people to enter and have a chance at winning. And brand managers will not have a mountain of boxes of entrants’ data to sift through afterwards.
Proof of Purchase
It’s easy to upload a proof of purchase to enter a contest online, using the easy steps provided, which usually entails taking a photo of your receipt and uploading it to a website. Sending photos digitally is an exercise that people do already, so there is no training to be done and no learning curve.
Benefits of online contests
Organizing an online contest is an exciting way to bring news and interest to your brand. It can be a fun way to engage your customers and get them involved in your brand. Here are some of the benefits of online contests:
- They are consumer magnets. You can use a contest to generate interest in your brand and get people talking about your product or service
- Contests can be a fresh and effortless way to engage your customers, building connection and deepening their loyalty
- They’re a great way to generate leads for a permission-based re-marketing program. You can use contests to collect information from participants, such as their email address or contact information, asking them if they wanted to receive communications from your brand in future
Online contests can be a lot of fun by using different platforms and formats including using gamification. It’s a great way to connect with your customers who spend a lot of time online and get them engaged or introduced to your brand.
Here are some stats from outgrow.co; while not directly applicable to our T&T market, these stats can be used as a guide of the potential impact of online contests on your brand and business:
- An average of over 34% of new customers are acquired through online contests
- Brands gained hundreds and sometimes thousands of new fans through organizing these campaigns on their fan page
- Instagram accounts that hold contests grow their followers faster on average than accounts that don’t
- Instagram contests get 3.5 times as many likes and 64 times more comments on average than regular posts
- Active promotions get more clicks on average
- Contest emails have an average open rate of 8.8%. That is 5.5% more than the general average of commonly used email marketing campaigns
- Contests have a 3.7% higher conversion rate as compared to other call to action’s (CTA’s)
Need more proof? Check out this cool and informative infographic below from KontestApp.
Summary
We must be consumer centric. Consumers want convenience. Close to 80% of T&T’s population is online. An even higher percentage of your target is likely online. It’s time to ditch the physical entry box and give your tribe the convenience they crave through online contests. Enter to win, made easy.
Let us help you shake up your category with an online contest of your own.
Book a FREE consultation to get going!
