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Competitions as promotions

Written by: Tash Hughes

Article Overview: An inexpensive and effective means of marketing your business may be offering prizes in competitions. You may be surprised at how many advantages there are to this process.

Competitions as promotions

As a business owner, it isn’t always easy to find effective and affordable ways to tell more people about your business and products/services.

One way to gain extra exposure for your business is to offer prizes to people through competitions. You can do this by running competitions yourself, or by donating prizes to other organisations for their competitions.

Advantages

The prize you offer has a set price and will often cost less than advertising options you otherwise consider. Yet, your business can be seen by many additional people, especially if you offer the prize to someone else for their competition.

If your business relies on people becoming aware of the quality of your goods and services, then you need more people to actually try your product so they can start the word of mouth process and provide you with testimonials.

By offering prizes to community groups and support organisations, you can support worthwhile causes whilst also helping your business. It can also give you a community-spirited and generous image.

Competitions through other businesses and websites can be chosen to match your target audience. For instance, if you sell nappies a competition prize for a parenting website will be seen by parents who need nappies and if you are a masseur, offering a prize to a local sports club is likely to result in more clients.

Benefits

By offering competition prizes, you can benefit in a number of ways.

* The prize winner will be happy with you and is likely to mention your business and/or product to others, thus giving you some word of mouth promotion

* During the competition, your business name will be spotted by all entrants, and others who decide not to enter. And, of course, the more people who see your name, the more potential clients you have.

* An online competition will link to your site which may increase your page rankings.

* If the prize is a consumable, or requires consumables from you, you may find the winner makes repeat purchases which will more than cover the cost of the initial prize.

* The prize winner may give you a testimonial for your product/service which can be used to gain future clients.

* If you have offered the prize through someone else’s competition, you are also likely to be viewed favourably by them and thus gain more word of mouth advertising.

* For the sake of entering a competition, more people will visit your site than otherwise so it is an effective way of increasing traffic to your site.

* You can grow your mailing list by making that a condition of entry, and a larger mailing list can lead to many more sales.

© 2006, Tash Hughes

Tash Hughes is a professional and skilled writer who makes technical and otherwise boring information accessible for everyone a business needs to communicate with. Next time you need a media release, webcopy, articles, newsletters, reports or any other business document, visit www.wordconstructions.com to see how Tash and her team can help your business succeed.

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