Would You Promote Your Business Online Using a Sponsored Giveaway?
This post will come as no surprise as I have hinted several times that I am now looking to run future online giveaways on the Real Fresh TV site after the fantastic success of the first iPhone giveaway, flaws and all…
First, thanks again to Imran who left an insightful comment suggesting I look at running giveaways as a revenue earner for the site. He even went as far as suggesting that they may be better than Google AdSense.
Judging by anecdotal evidence on AdSense earnings on the vast majority of blogs, he is probably right.
Well, Imran, like minds think alike, as they say…
Whilst keeping an eye on votes as they came in for the iPhone giveaway on Saturday, it dawned on me that the real value of the iPhone giveaway has been the engagement shown by entrants as the competition progressed.
I have been amazed by people’s involvement with the giveaway, even after they made their entries.
As you probably know, the first few days of the first British iPhone giveaway were marred by malicious voting down of entries by a handful of determined site visitors.
We then had issues modifying the voting system used to prevent voting down of entries.
To accommodate all this disruption, I made a series of deadline extensions that probably caused the giveaway to lose momentum after its initial launch on Monday 5th November.
However, what has been overlooked so far is the great determination shown by the readers voting down other entries.
The voting system used on the site is designed to prevent people voting more than once for an entry. To vote down entries, one would have had to persistently visit the site and then vote down as many entries as possible. To be most effective, you would have to vote down entries as they were made. Even if you were using a proxy service, you still had to visit the site to vote.
My point is that by cheating, a small percentage of the competition entrants actually engaged with the competition over and above what I had expected of anyone entering the giveaway.
This leads me to believe that gadget giveaways can be used as an effective marketing and polling tool.
I’m currently developing a self-service addition to the site that allows users to purchase exclusive marketing and promotional services on the site by sponsoring 5 Day Gadget Giveaways.
Each gadget giveaway is managed by Real Fresh TV and includes a polling element (not unlike the poll used in our iPhone giveaway) and a suggest-a-winning-entry element, once again, not unlike the ‘suggest-a-TV-show-you’d-like-to-watch-on-an-iPhone’ question featured in the iPhone giveaway.
Real Fresh TV chooses a desirable gadget to give away. The promoter chooses the questions asked in the poll and also chooses the ‘suggest-a-winning-entry’ question.
Real Fresh TV promotes the giveaway on the site, providing daily updates and monitoring entrants for the promoter. Here’s a snapshot of our site engagement statistics. In addition, Real Fresh TV also asks each prize winner to submit a review of the prize, with pictures, to Real Fresh TV within 24 hours of receiving it as a way of keeping the rest of our audience involved.
The entry with the highest votes after 5 days wins the prize.
That’s the service in a nutshell.
The promoting company and promoted product or service receive daily promotion and marketing at every stage of the process, even after the prize has been delivered.
What do you think? Would you promote your business online in this way? Can you spot any obvious flaws?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
Image credit: bobstaake.com
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