Make it a Game, Make Me Care

As illustrated by my Foursquare Tips post, if you make any sale, promotion or product fulfillment competitive (in any way, shape or form), I’m in.

I’m also a big fan of the concept that is contest marketing, especially online as it’s a great tactic for social media, SEO and content marketing. Unfortunately, too many interactive and social media marketers don’t understand the basics of contest marketing because they want to reap the immediate benefits of followers, links and exposure.

We’ve stopped heeding the lessons of Little Orphan Annie’s secret decoder ring and replaced it with technology. For example, if I see one more video contest “to tell us why you love [INSERT COMPANY A]” I may start foaming at the mouth. Your competitors did that five years ago. Similarly, your entire creative hook cannot be giving away Apple products.

As I mentioned above, this style of marketing is a strategy that’s been used for decades to suck people into advertising. If you need more proof, ask my mother how many boxes of Cap’n Crunch I ravaged throughout my childhood to find the misguided, sea-faring cereal pusher whenever he disappeared.

Plenty of companies have made me look like a sucker persuaded me to buy their products or use their services by making the buying decision process a game. Ironically, I see these lessons played out everyday in contests that don’t even include interactive or social elements, while social marketers can’t get past the technology.

Looking back, there’s a few pillars of contest marketing that were and are omnipresent, but for whatever reason we forget to translate into our interactive creative…

Make it collectible

This summer, Baskin Robbins brought back what may have been the best promotion of my youth, the ice cream helmet sundae. Yes, you can get these at the ballpark in your major league city of choice. However, at BR you can get any and all MLB teams – not just your hometown team – at any participating location. As a child (and as someone who still thinks he’s a child) this was (is) very important stuff.

With 30 Major League Baseball teams, I want to go back often. I want to bring my friends. I want them all. And if a team changes helmets or logos next summer, I want to add it to my collection. Hypothetically, of course.

If your social contest allows people to believe they are collecting something of value, you win. The helmet sundae promotion isn’t even a contest per se, but through collection, they make it a game.

Between this promotion and finding our friend the Cap’n, I wonder how I made it through my childhood with a full set of teeth.

Make it cumulative

With many of the Foursquare badges, you get rewarded for often doing things a certain way multiple times. This is by design.

Pepsi’s “Caps for Caps” contest “wins” because I can’t get the prize instantly, I must collect three matching teams under the soda cap to get the cheaply-made, unknown style of baseball cap which I will ultimately lose.

The thought process is, this new game will make existing purchasers of the product buy it a few more times than they’d normally would at a cost that is minimal to the sponsor.

Sure, I could go buy a new baseball cap for much cheaper that the cost of “winning” the cap (and again, the teeth thing), but that’s no fun. I want to earn that sucker.

Make your online contest a journey, give users a roadmap. Many times these contests are not designed to find new customers, but increase the amount/frequency existing customers consume. And as we know, that’s a much easier task than converting new customers.

Make it LIMITED TIME ONLY!

Yes, all contests and promotions must end. But there is a secret sauce to the thought process. Limited time creates urgency when done right.

With any contest or promotion, you have to straddle the fine line between too short and too long. A contest that’s too short will limit the entries (bad for creative contests) and a contest or promo that’s too long risks a trail off of epic proportions (bad for Twitter/Facebook contests). If the sole visibility tactic is advertising, contests of any length can also be brutally expensive.

Working with clients who want to do a social or even a video contest (albeit in a more creative way than established above), you need to have that discussion about how long it takes for someone to submit an entry and if the prize is worth the time and effort for the entrants’ creative process.

With Baskin Robbins, with no real barrier to entry, it’s merely a race against time: OMG! HOW CAN I EAT 30 SUNDAES IN A FEW SHORT MONTHS?

Most people can’t, and they know it. It’s a formula that combines a lot of things, but if the end result is getting me to make a few extra trips to Baskin Robbins over the course of the summer, it worked. In this instance, I can’t get the helmet sundaes anywhere else, so instead of East Coast Custard, I’m heading to BR. Hypothetically, of course.

And if your contest or promo isn’t being judged by the bottom line, whether in prospective leads or sales, you probably shouldn’t have gone down that route to begin with.

If you’re trying to get your contest off the ground, or just want to get more formulaic thinking into your social strategy, visit our social media marketing capabilities page or contact us today. Remember, while these big companies were given as examples, the lessons can be applied to just about any company promotion, big or small.

And with that, I’ll leave you with sounds of the Crunch Bunch Kids and their hit “Where’s the Cap’n?” If you get through the entire video, let me know in the comments and I’ll meet you for a ice cream helmet sundae.

Games photo courtesy of sparetomato

Helmet photo courtesy of penner42