Want to Stay Ahead of Your Competitors? Try a Promotional Competition as Part of Your Marketing Strategy!

Trying to think of new cost effective marketing campaigns to drive customers to your business? Well ever thought of running a promotional competition.

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), (2014) define sales promotion as ‘providing an incentive for the consumer to buy by using a range of added direct or indirect benefits, usually on a temporary basis, to make the product or service more attractive. A non-exhaustive list of sales promotions includes: “two for the price of one” offers, money-off offers, text-to-wins, instant-wins, competitions and prize draws.’

Ken Peattie et al, (1997) conducted two studies on sales promotions and competitions and concluded that competitions are a ‘versatile, creative, cost effective marketing tool.’ This is supported by Marketing Week, (2014) who say ‘businesses running competitions are staying in front of competitors due to the benefits of data collection and consumer engagement.’ Marketing Week go onto say ‘competitions are now part of long term marketing strategy for many companies.’

Marketing Week also indicate that running promotional competitions can provide many benefits for your business including;

v  Low Cost

v  Improved Data Collection

v  Creation of Long Term Customer Relationships

v  Improved Consumer Engagement

v  Create Positive Online Word of Mouth

Competitions that are designed well can be inexpensive, running your competition through a channel like social media or email is free. Competitions usually ask the entrant to trade some personal information in return for entering the competition; consumer information like, email addresses, names, home addresses and phone numbers can all be acquired by using competitions and are a valuable asset for your future marketing activities.

Through gaining this personal information your company can strive to build long term customer relationships. This consumer data enables your business to contact these competition entrants with product offers and brand promotion. This in turn may drive them to purchase more regularly over a longer period of time.

A competition is a great way of engaging your audience; audiences are immediately engaged by the drive to compete and the prospect of winning a prize. If the competition is designed well it can simultaneously engage the customer with the company’s products, services and brand name whilst communicating about the competition.

Some competitions have the ability to create an online ‘buzz’ this is where your competition is being talked about by many people online. This will increase the reach of the campaign exponentially and potentially drive people which have never experienced your brand before to enter the competition; this will give you the chance to obtain their data and market to them.

Resources

For more support click here to read Peattie (1999), ‘The Uses of Sales Promotion Competitions in Social Marketing’ - http://smq.sagepub.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/content/5/1/22.full.pdf

For a guide to designing a powerful promotional marketing competition click here - http://sbinformation.about.com/cs/advertising/a/promos.html

References

CAP.org, (2014), ‘Sales Promotion’, [Online] > http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Non-broadcast-HTML/Section-8-Sales-Promotions.aspx < [Accessed 23/04/2014]

Ken Peattie, Sue Peattie & E. B. Emafo (1997) Promotional competitions as a strategic marketing weapon, Journal of Marketing Management

Marketing Week, (2014), Brand Stay Ahead of the Competition, [Online] > http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/trends/brands-stay-ahead-of-the-competition/4002435.article < [Accessed 02/04/2014]