January 18, 2013 at 14:45How are contests more profitable than direct advertising, or how we came up with a contest for diafan.CMS
It’s no secret to anyone what competitions are held for. Of course, this is a form of advertising, and often in the form of a competition it is more effective than classic direct exposure advertising. Because, firstly, the advertiser is relatively inexpensive: you just need a prize pool. Secondly, the public outcry is higher and the attention of the target audience is more closely. And for online competitions there is also the benefit that after the competition there will be traces that will give additional returns for a long time to come. At least so it seemed to us when we decided to hold a competition. Is it really so - time will tell.
I must say right away that we have not held contests before, this is our first experience. Although online advertising has been used and we are using all kinds. And interestingly, the network has a lot of information on how to launch this or that type of traditional advertising, but you will not find a guide to the competition. Therefore, we organized the competition from scratch. And against the background of the fact that we have been advertising on the Internet for a long time, we will have something to compare with. We will talk about everything below.
So, we have a product - this is diafan.CMS site management system. And the product is not bad, users are satisfied, partners are happy and do not give up on us over time. All users recommend us to friends and colleagues. And we are glad that we made such a good engine and rightly want to increase our market share. How to do it? Of course, we need to advertise, which we do. But shooting from a cannon at sparrows, being advertised on the Yandex main page, is completely reluctant, so we are looking for a balance of minimum budget expenditure and maximum efficiency.
To complete the picture, as well as to make this post useful to those who are going to advertise on the Internet, I’ll tell you what we use:
1. Social networks... It's free if we talk about participants and reposts. Perhaps we are not yet densely or correctly engaged in this advertising channel, but we see little sense in social networks. Maybe this is due to the specifics of our product, but most of the participants in our social network groups are those who are already our user.
2. Advertising on specialized forums : banners, fixing topics. The cost is about 5000 rubles per month for one forum. In general, the exhaust is very weak, our site traffic is growing slightly, targeted user registrations and sales are not particularly growing.
3. Banner and blocks on specialized services for webmasters , such as pr-cy. The price is small, 5000-10000 rubles per month. The result is good: dozens of transitions per day, registration.
4. Advertising on mass-visited IT sites, type Habr and similar. About 10,000 rubles per month per site. Banner advertising, plus publications. Publications give good jumps in traffic, better known as the habraeffect :). Instant sales and registrations are not growing much, but in general such advertising works well for fame.
5. Contextual advertising . Yandex.Direct, Adsense, Runner. In general, search advertising on the Internet is unlikely to ever lose ground - it is effective. We use, use and have to use. The budget for our keywords is small, about 20,000 rubles a month. Recoil, attendance and registration is.
6. Mediatargetlet’s highlight a separate item advertising on this network. It can be used both as contextual (for search phrases), there and in regular mode on indirectly-themed webmaster sites, such as liveinternet.ru. It gives a good effect with relatively little money. We set a limit of 1000 rubles per day, i.e. 30000 per month, but the site allows you to spend much more.
7. Banner advertising throughout the Internet - pop -ups, flops, richmedia, etc. by sections of the webmaster audience. A prominent sales representative of such advertising is Soloway. Not very expensive for our topic, in the range of 35,000-40000 rubles per month. Very massive, but not very effective.
8. Banners on themed sites about CMSsuch as cmslist or cmsmagazine. CMSlist is very weak, but the block above the rating in CMSmagazine is normal, there are transitions, there are registrations. The cost is about 40,000 rubles per month.
9. Sponsorship . Any events like RIF + KiB, offline-IT magazines, tagline sites. Instant near-zero effect. However, at the end of the year, plus is also not seen. Single transitions per month with 100% failures. And expensive, 50,000, 100,000 rubles a month and above.
The trouble with any classic advertisement is that it only externally displays the advertised product, and has no feedback from the consumer. In addition, the classic advertising "catches the eye" as long as you pay for it. And many users have long been immune to advertising, they have learned to simply not notice banners and other advertising stars. And for greater efficiency, it is necessary that the potential user not only noticed, but also tried the product in action, could discuss it with other participants, share it with friends. Here the competition with its motivation should help us.
The effectiveness of the competition is not yet known to us, but we assume that it will be most effective. Based on the results of the competition, we will additionally report.
Organizing the contest, we took the initial data on average figures from the above: budget - about 45,000 rubles and a month.
Our task is that after the announcement of the competition and the initial appeal of the public to participate, "word of mouth" will work. For this to happen, people must have a reason, that is, the competition must be very tempting.
With an amount of 45,000 rubles, you can afford to establish a very decent prize for the contestants. Since our audience is all the webmasters who create sites on boxed CMS, the prize can be, for example, a candy bar or a good laptop. You can make just € 1000. But then there is a risk that there will be many dissatisfied if there are several work of equal value, claiming victory, and only one will receive a prize. Therefore, we suggested that it would be better to make several equal prizes easier than one expensive one, so that not one but several people could be named winners. And the prize is needed more universally, so that if you don’t give yourself, then give it to your mom. For example, tablets. This will be the rule of a good competition number 1: it is better to have more prizes with smaller prizes than vice versa.
What is needed to ensure that as many people as possible participate in the competition? Obviously, no matter what the valuable prize, asking people to complete the mega-task makes no sense. There are no fools, and few will plow just for the chance to get a prize, albeit a good one. And since the goal of the competition is to attract attention and involve as many people as possible, the task should be quite trite, literally at the level of entertainment. We draw the rule of a good competition №2: a simple task.
Whatever the simple task of the competition is still work and time spent. And getting prizes is not a guarantee, but only a chance. Therefore, it is quite logical that people will be much more willing to participate in a win-win contest, where there is guaranteed to be a "comforting" prize for any place. It turns out rule number 3:All participants must benefit from the competition .
Even if there are consolation prizes, all the same, the contestants will strive to take the main places. And nobody likes fake contests, where the first places are occupied by unknown participants, with names similar to bots. This happens especially often when the jury determines the winners. But it is impossible to refuse the jury, since then only user voting will remain. And this is even worse, because whoever has a better wrapping script won. Therefore, the rules need to clearly discuss how and by what principle leaders will be identified. That is, the rule of a good competition No. 4 is the principle and maximum transparency of determining the winners .
What we have done, you can evaluate for yourself. According to these rules, we organized our competition for webmasters . In short, we invite all web developers to try our diafan.CMS in action and win prizes. Guaranteed prize - a license for diafan.CMS, as well as additional experience, knowledge and skills that will not go anywhere from you. :)
I must say right away that we have not held contests before, this is our first experience. Although online advertising has been used and we are using all kinds. And interestingly, the network has a lot of information on how to launch this or that type of traditional advertising, but you will not find a guide to the competition. Therefore, we organized the competition from scratch. And against the background of the fact that we have been advertising on the Internet for a long time, we will have something to compare with. We will talk about everything below.
Internet advertising
So, we have a product - this is diafan.CMS site management system. And the product is not bad, users are satisfied, partners are happy and do not give up on us over time. All users recommend us to friends and colleagues. And we are glad that we made such a good engine and rightly want to increase our market share. How to do it? Of course, we need to advertise, which we do. But shooting from a cannon at sparrows, being advertised on the Yandex main page, is completely reluctant, so we are looking for a balance of minimum budget expenditure and maximum efficiency.
To complete the picture, as well as to make this post useful to those who are going to advertise on the Internet, I’ll tell you what we use:
1. Social networks... It's free if we talk about participants and reposts. Perhaps we are not yet densely or correctly engaged in this advertising channel, but we see little sense in social networks. Maybe this is due to the specifics of our product, but most of the participants in our social network groups are those who are already our user.
2. Advertising on specialized forums : banners, fixing topics. The cost is about 5000 rubles per month for one forum. In general, the exhaust is very weak, our site traffic is growing slightly, targeted user registrations and sales are not particularly growing.
3. Banner and blocks on specialized services for webmasters , such as pr-cy. The price is small, 5000-10000 rubles per month. The result is good: dozens of transitions per day, registration.
4. Advertising on mass-visited IT sites, type Habr and similar. About 10,000 rubles per month per site. Banner advertising, plus publications. Publications give good jumps in traffic, better known as the habraeffect :). Instant sales and registrations are not growing much, but in general such advertising works well for fame.
5. Contextual advertising . Yandex.Direct, Adsense, Runner. In general, search advertising on the Internet is unlikely to ever lose ground - it is effective. We use, use and have to use. The budget for our keywords is small, about 20,000 rubles a month. Recoil, attendance and registration is.
6. Mediatargetlet’s highlight a separate item advertising on this network. It can be used both as contextual (for search phrases), there and in regular mode on indirectly-themed webmaster sites, such as liveinternet.ru. It gives a good effect with relatively little money. We set a limit of 1000 rubles per day, i.e. 30000 per month, but the site allows you to spend much more.
7. Banner advertising throughout the Internet - pop -ups, flops, richmedia, etc. by sections of the webmaster audience. A prominent sales representative of such advertising is Soloway. Not very expensive for our topic, in the range of 35,000-40000 rubles per month. Very massive, but not very effective.
8. Banners on themed sites about CMSsuch as cmslist or cmsmagazine. CMSlist is very weak, but the block above the rating in CMSmagazine is normal, there are transitions, there are registrations. The cost is about 40,000 rubles per month.
9. Sponsorship . Any events like RIF + KiB, offline-IT magazines, tagline sites. Instant near-zero effect. However, at the end of the year, plus is also not seen. Single transitions per month with 100% failures. And expensive, 50,000, 100,000 rubles a month and above.
The trouble with any classic advertisement is that it only externally displays the advertised product, and has no feedback from the consumer. In addition, the classic advertising "catches the eye" as long as you pay for it. And many users have long been immune to advertising, they have learned to simply not notice banners and other advertising stars. And for greater efficiency, it is necessary that the potential user not only noticed, but also tried the product in action, could discuss it with other participants, share it with friends. Here the competition with its motivation should help us.
Competition
The effectiveness of the competition is not yet known to us, but we assume that it will be most effective. Based on the results of the competition, we will additionally report.
Organizing the contest, we took the initial data on average figures from the above: budget - about 45,000 rubles and a month.
Our task is that after the announcement of the competition and the initial appeal of the public to participate, "word of mouth" will work. For this to happen, people must have a reason, that is, the competition must be very tempting.
We derive the rules of a good competition
With an amount of 45,000 rubles, you can afford to establish a very decent prize for the contestants. Since our audience is all the webmasters who create sites on boxed CMS, the prize can be, for example, a candy bar or a good laptop. You can make just € 1000. But then there is a risk that there will be many dissatisfied if there are several work of equal value, claiming victory, and only one will receive a prize. Therefore, we suggested that it would be better to make several equal prizes easier than one expensive one, so that not one but several people could be named winners. And the prize is needed more universally, so that if you don’t give yourself, then give it to your mom. For example, tablets. This will be the rule of a good competition number 1: it is better to have more prizes with smaller prizes than vice versa.
What is needed to ensure that as many people as possible participate in the competition? Obviously, no matter what the valuable prize, asking people to complete the mega-task makes no sense. There are no fools, and few will plow just for the chance to get a prize, albeit a good one. And since the goal of the competition is to attract attention and involve as many people as possible, the task should be quite trite, literally at the level of entertainment. We draw the rule of a good competition №2: a simple task.
Whatever the simple task of the competition is still work and time spent. And getting prizes is not a guarantee, but only a chance. Therefore, it is quite logical that people will be much more willing to participate in a win-win contest, where there is guaranteed to be a "comforting" prize for any place. It turns out rule number 3:All participants must benefit from the competition .
Even if there are consolation prizes, all the same, the contestants will strive to take the main places. And nobody likes fake contests, where the first places are occupied by unknown participants, with names similar to bots. This happens especially often when the jury determines the winners. But it is impossible to refuse the jury, since then only user voting will remain. And this is even worse, because whoever has a better wrapping script won. Therefore, the rules need to clearly discuss how and by what principle leaders will be identified. That is, the rule of a good competition No. 4 is the principle and maximum transparency of determining the winners .
What happened
What we have done, you can evaluate for yourself. According to these rules, we organized our competition for webmasters . In short, we invite all web developers to try our diafan.CMS in action and win prizes. Guaranteed prize - a license for diafan.CMS, as well as additional experience, knowledge and skills that will not go anywhere from you. :)