Contests: possibly your best marketing idea...

Today is July 4th, and Nathan's is holding its famous annual hot dog eating contest in Coney Island, New York. According the a story CNN ran today, this contest has done marketing wonders for the hot dog and burger joint. Since 2003, Nathan's sales have doubled, with very little budget spent on any other types of marketing - Nathan's has invested most of its annual marketing budget to promote its hot dog eating contests. A pretty gutsy strategy, which luckily has worked very well for them.

This got me thinking today about the various types of marketing programs I've seen succeed, and it does not surprise me that when done right, the types of marketing that engages its users can by far be one of the best marketing investments you can make. We recently ran a couple of such programs to engage with our audiences, and in all of the cases they worked wonders. In one of the programs we asked our technical users to take an online quiz to show off their level of technical know-how, and the results were really good. During the American football season, we asked our users to play a virtual online football game, where they would move up 10 yards for every correct answers about our products, the company and the types of problems we solved. And when they achieved a "touch down" they would qualify for a special prize. Again, the results were by far better than any other online program we had done. What was great about this game, is that not only did it attract more people on average than other programs because of it's "fun" and "entertainment" factor, but we used the game to educate the market about our products, the market itself, our company and how we could help them solve their critical challenges. I don't want to take credit for this idea all together, as it wasn't mine, but how it was executed and the engagement process was done well enough to make it a huge success.

So, the lesson here for you is: find ways to engage with your audience, and contests and fun ways to establish that engagement work really well. But also pay close attention to the details of the event and put yourself in the audiences place, and why they may or may not want to engage. On average, compared to any other program, you'll find this to be very successful. User engagement marketing programs should always be on your annual marketing plan.