Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

Action List: Start a Footy Tipping Comp

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

footy-tipping

Now this strategy won’t work for every website, but I think that starting a football tipping competition could work wonders for some online businesses.

I thought it was appropriate to raise this as a possibility, given that the AFL and NRL football season is not too far away…and I was prompted to do so by an email this week from FootyTips.com.au - here’s the text:

The Footy season is almost here – use footy tipping as a powerful marketing tool

Drive traffic to your website and build client relationships in a fun interactive way, with your own branded footy tipping competition.

The footy season is almost here – and now is the time to start planning your footy tipping marketing solution to promote your products and/or services.

How can footy tipping help your business?

  • Drive regular traffic to your website
  • Provides opportunities to promote your products
  • Establish and build an email database
  • Interact and build strong client relationships

Now, you can administer your own tipping competition manually, if you wish.  But, in my book,  that’s far too onerous.  It’s best to use an existing online tipping system, like FootyTips.com.au.

FootyTips.com.au offers branded solutions from around $6,000, but if you’re a small business that can’t afford this amount, you can simply set up an unbranded competition on the FootyTips.com.au website for free. 

So, who would benefit from a football tipping competition?  Localised and community websites, distinctly Australian websites, and sites that sell products to a demographic that aligns or overlaps with a football demographic (eg sports books, beer mugs)

A printing house, The Printing Hub,  here in Adelaide runs a footy tipping comp each year.  The face of their business is Brownlow Medallist and ex-Hawthorn player John Platten, so they create a good deal of interest in their tipping comp by having him involved.  As a customer, I receive a short, weekly email from John with information about the tipping comp – who’s leading the charge, who tipped poorly, etc. – a good little marketing strategy that keeps The Printing Hub at top of mind.

Some tips for your tipping comp:

  • Don’t leave it too late – you need to be recruiting people now for your tipping comp.  One or two weeks before the season starts is not enough lead time to recruit a decent pool of tippers.
  • Offer a worthwhile prize – a $1000 prize will attract lots of new prospects to your website as word of mouth spreads.
  • Consider offering weekly prizes as this gives you a reason to keep in contact with the tippers throughout the season, and an excuse to send out a regular email newsletter.  It also encourages those who do poorly in the first few rounds of the football season to continue tipping each week, because they still have a chance of winning something.  Offering a prize for last place will also help.
  • Actively promote your competition on your website’s home page, in email newsletters and via social networking websites.
  • Make sure that you put some metrics in place  so that you can get some idea of the value of the competition to your business – eg. measure the clickthroughs from the footy tipping site to your own site using a unique URL.  Be aware that there are many ‘compers’ out there who join hundreds of competitions and rarely transact with the host business.  If you use the unbranded version of FootyTips.com.au, then you will attract these people, as it is possible to enter multiple tipping competitions simultaneously via the FootyTips.com.au website.

Happy tipping!

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Posted in Action List for the Netpreneur | 1 Comment »

Recommended Reading: Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Purple CowI’ve just finished reading Seth Godin’s much-vaunted marketing manifesto, Purple Cow. 

It’s a fairly short read – less than 140 pages of fairly big type – so I was able to polish it off over several nights whilst my wife was breastfeeding our new-born (before I am accused of being inattentive, please note that I was on hand to render assistance at the drop of a hat, even at 2am in the morning).

Godin is a well-known marketing guru, with a string of books and one of the world’s most popular blogs (in fact, I think I read somewhere that it is the world’s MOST popular blog?).

Purple Cow is perhaps his most recognised book title.  In this book, Godin challenges businesses to extract themselves from the old paradigm of mass media marketing.  He argues that businesses must cancel their multi-million dollar advertising budgets, in favour of ‘being remarkable’ - thus becoming a ‘Purple Cow’ that stands out from the rest of the pack (herd?).  Godin believes that products will only survive in a crowded marketplace if businesses stop advertising and start innovating.

There are plentry of books about innovation and investing in R&D, but Godin’s little book contains some great concepts, case studies and anecdotes that make it a worthwhile read.  It certainly provides some inspiration and has prompted me to take a close look at my business strategy going forward.  I would recommend having a read.

You can buy the book here from my online bookstore, Boomerang Books…

Here’s the book blurb:

You’re either a Purple Cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice. What do Apple, Starbucks, Dyson and Pret a Manger have in common? How do they achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and-true brands to gasp their last? The old checklist of P’s used by marketers – Pricing, Promotion, Publicity – aren’t working anymore. The golden age of advertising is over. It’s time to add a new P – the Purple Cow. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat-out unbelievable. In his new bestseller, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It’s a manifesto for anyone who wants to help create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place.

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Michael Bloch: The Unexpected Gift

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

taming-the-beastThrowing in an unexpected gift after the sale can be a great way to keep customers, encourage people to buy more and incite them to tell others about you.

I buy coffee online  – I just scoot out to the site, follow a well beaten path to the order form, done in 60 seconds. It also means no stops along the way to check out other items.

When I unpacked my latest shipment of coffee, there was a nice surprise – a small bar of fair trade organic chocolate. I happen to love chocolate :) . This gift had a number of effects:

a) It was a nice surprise, leading to even more warm and fuzzy feelings about the business

b) I’m reminded that they sell chocolate – something I had forgotten about

c) I’ve been back out to their online store to check out other goodies I’ve missed seeing on past visits.

d) Even if I wasn’t a chocalate fiend, I likely would have given the free bar to someone who was and told them where it came from.

e) I’ve written about the business on my own site as a result of my positive experience with them

f) Given it was a no strings attached gift, there’s a greater chance I’d buy it in the future. It was far more effective than a written blurb about the chocolate. There’s only so many ways you can paint the concept of melt-in-your-mouth dark chocolate.

All this positive stuff from a bar that might have cost the business a dollar. Of course, not everyone would be as excited as I was about this small gift; but chocolate? I mean, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with that!

One of the other great aspects about this strategy is that it felt very personal. There was a handwritten note accompanying the chocolate with just 3 words on it – “With compliments, Robert”. The paper the message was on didn’t even have the company logo on it; which further added to the personal feel.

Free gifts you can provide

If you’re not in the business of selling coffee or chocolate, but other physical goods; consider using low cost items you’re overstocked on and having trouble shifting. Alternatively, request samples from manufacturers that you can then distribute to your customers. Your suppliers may be more than happy to provide these samples to you for free if you explain how you intend to use them.

Old favorites such as pens with your logo or other trinkets that have some practical value are well received. Bought in quantities of a thousand, refillable pens with your logo printed on them can cost as little as 35c each.

What if you don’t sell physical goods? Then the gift you provide doesn’t have to be a physical. Here’s some suggestions for purely online businesses selling digital goods and services.

Subscription bonus

After a few months of subscription, give away a free month to select clients. Flag the free gift with them via a personal email, recognizing their loyalty. Including a gentle reminder for them to let others know about you doesn’t hurt. Ask this as a personal favor rather than as an expectation.

Software

If you have low priced software items that you sell, surprise your clients who have bought other more expensive titles with a free license -  encourage them to give it to someone else if they can’t use it.

You can also pick up cheap premium software packages from other software companies offering reseller rights. In these arrangements, you can distribute the software without charging for it as part of a existing commercial relationship with a client, but you can’t give it away totally free to just anyone that visits your site – that way the software title retains some perceived dollar value.

Another effective strategy is providing clients with a software item that’s reached the end of its life cycle. The software is still useful, but not popular enough to warrant promoting or supporting it any more. Let the client know what the retail value of the software was.

Reports and white papers

Put together a *useful* report or white paper that isn’t generally available to non-customers; and be sure to flag this when you distribute it to your clients. Don’t use the white paper as a hard sell for another product; it’s meant to be a gift of value to make your clients feel special. Be sure to let your customers know what their bonus is worth.

Remember the gift principle

The power of the unexpected bonus is simply that the client hasn’t had to do *anything* to get the bonus and it’s totally unexpected. If you make people jump through hoops to get the freebie or hint about it in your pre-sales pitch, it loses the feeling of being a gift.

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