if you want to achieve your revenue and audience goals, you need to plan out your promotions strategy for the next quarter ahead of time. Fortunately, building an integrated promotions calendar that incorporates contests, ballots, and deals doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Learn how simple it can be in the Calendar Check-In webinar for Q2.
1. #PromotionsLab
D R I V I N G R E V E N U E | B U I L D I N G D A T A B A S E | G R O W I N G A U D I E N C E
Calendar Check In
February 2015
2. #PromotionsLab
Matt Chaney
Affiliate Success | Second Street |
@MattChaney | chaney@secondstreet.com
Welcome
Liz Crider
Affiliate Success | Second Street |
@emcrider | liz@secondstreet.com
13. #PromotionsLab
D R I V I N G R E V E N U E | B U I L D I N G D A T A B A S E | G R O W I N G A U D I E N C E
BASKETBALL
PROMOTIONS
HOW TO DRIVE REVENUE
& RESULTS WITH
STILL TIME!
28. #PromotionsLab
Why Pick ‘Ems?
Managed & Custom
Pick ‘Em
Top
Examples
Pro Football
College Basketball
Award Shows
Golf
Contest
Entry
Medium barrier
Audience Targeted
Engagement High
Shelf Life Months
40. #PromotionsLab
Sample April Promotion Calendar
Promotion Month Sponsor Revenue
Golf Pick’em April Kickoff
Automotive,
Financial
$15,000
Golf Card April - August Golf Courses, Retail $75,000
Quiz
“What’s Your Golf
Game Like?”
April - June
Automotive, Food
& Beverage, Golf
Courses
$5,000
Spring Cleaning
Sweepstakes
April
Cleaning Services,
Landscaping,
Home Decor
$5,000
81. #PromotionsLab
Matt Chaney
Affiliate Success | Second Street |
@MattChaney | chaney@secondstreet.com
Ask us Anything!
Liz Crider
Affiliate Success | Second Street |
@emcrider | liz@secondstreet.com
Hinweis der Redaktion
Liz
Welcome
Happy for you to be here
Today we are going to discuss how print media can drive big revenue with reader’s choice ballots
Name
A part of our Affiliate Success Team here at Second Street
Moderator
Super excited about our rock star panel today who’s going to share their insights into how their having some tremendous success with ballots
First a couple of housekeeping
We are recording this webinar, so anyone who registered will automatically receiving an email with links to that and our key takeaways
We also encourage you to ask questions throughout the webinar.
Just post those questions into the chat box of the GTW panel on the left of your screen
We will have staff members monitoring that.
And we’ll also save some time at the end to answer a couple with our panel.
You can also make comments and asks questions via Twitter. Just use the hashtag #promotionslab, as you seen the on the screen. This will also be on each of the slides in the bottom left
And we’re going to be giving away a prize to our top tweeter, so fire up your Twitter accounts and get ready.
We also encourage you to follow us @secondstreetlab
www.secondstreetlab.com
Twitter: @secondstreetlab
www.facebook.com/secondstreetmedia
We can answer questions on Twitter if we don’t get to them on the webinar.
At little bit about Second Street. We are a software and technology company working with local and national media companies around the country to help increase ROI by Building & Engaging their audiences through our suite of products
And we are proud to work with our 3,000+ media partners spanning all mediums and representing both markets large and small. And everything in between.
I see that several of you on the call are current Voters Choice partners and I know you will learn some things from our panel today that will help you increase your readers choice revenue even more, and I know just as many of you out there are considering Voter’s Choice and I hope you will hear today about how your colleagues in the industry are seeing phenomenal growth by taking advantage of Voter’s Choice. Just wait and see what our panelists are doing with ballots. Its phenomenal!
I’m so excited. Let’s jump on in.
Liz
Liz –
There are so many options out there- and we are going to show you several – but make sure you are looking at the right htings at the right time.
We know that the categories we are showing you today are the big ones – the winners – but you don’t have to do eerything - pick what works for you – what you can accomplish – and do it well – then next time – turn it up a notch
Liz
Having a plan is truly your Blue print for success; your road map – we want to walk you through what you need to be successful – you can do this – you can generate revenue – but a good plan will get you there
Liz
A plan is also going to be great for your sales people – we have several partners tell us that a plan takes the guess work out of selling – it allows their team to focus on the right things at the right time
Liz
And really – all of these culminate in generating big revenue for you – have a plan, know where you are going, sell efficiently and you WILL see big dollars.
Chaney
Chaney
With the tournament a little over a month away, you still have time to take advantage of this huge opportunity. There are lots of ways to grow revenue and engage your audience around college basketball. Let’s take a look at a couple of those.
Chaney
Not only will it allow your users to pick upfront, the traditional model with 64 teams
Where you can make your picks before the start of the tournament
Keep in mind this doesn’t negate any of your picks in your Upfront bracket – the Round of 16 and Round of 4 are 2 standalone brackets with new picks and more prizes
The BEST PART- People don’t have to register more than once - This is all within one game
AND it’s Customizable - if you just want to run one 64 team upfront bracket contest - you can
This is optional –
But we’re really excited about it because it gives people more chances to play and win
Each game has an opportunity to win national prizes and local prizes
Chaney
Sweepstakes are flexible and easy to execute. They’re the workhorse of contests. When paired with a local great prize, they can boost both your email database and social media activity. All of that engagement also translates into great branding for your advertiser, a way to gather consumer insights via survey questions, and of course, helping them build their database with an opt-in.
Chaney
Ballots are a great way to engage your audience. A basketball ballot could include categories like Best Coach, Best Buzzer-Beater, Best Mascot, or Best Student Section just to name a few.
Here we have an example of niche ballot from the Westerly Sun in Westerly, RI who created a high school basketball MVP ballot. What a perfect local tie-in for a market that may not have a team in the tournament, but that wants to tap into all of the buzz around basketball. In case you can’t see it, they also had a local credit sponsor, so there’s also definitely money to be made here.
Chaney
Next up is our newest promotion type – Quizzes. HUGE OPPORTUNIITY. These are an absolute must for your basketball strategy! These offer you a great way to interact with your audience in a fun and entertaining way not to mention creating a new sponsorship opportunity. You can even build an entire quiz around an advertiser such as Where should you watch the game? (get a beer sponsor and feature locations where the beer can be purchased)
We have two types of quizzes you can run - personality and trivia. Here we have a great example of a sports personality quiz – Which Wisconsin Badger are You? In my case, I ended up being Bo Ryan, which I hope is a good thing
Chaney
Check out our Playbook!
Why media companies should run basketball promotions.
Success stories and case studies for basketball promotions that drive results.
Tips for planning your basketball strategy.
And best practices for marketing and executing your basketball promotions.
This year we have updated case studies, calendars and timelines,
Liz
Liz
We are going to go month by month and give you some categories and promotions that will work in your market – and don’t forget – we aren’t saying you should do ALL of these – pick what you can handle, what your resources allow and do it really well – then add to that success next time!
Liz
Liz
Liz
Liz
Market 109
Liz
Market 109
Results
$112K Gross in 2014
$55K Gross and Growing 2015
Must Pay Cart Fee
Valid Entire Season
Liz
Liz
Characteristics of a Sports pickem– Long shelf-life for contest; frequency (checking in regularly)
High level of engagement with your audience
They reach a targeted audience.
Liz
Overview of how contest is explained to advertisers
Mulligan Match-Up ran for 24 weeks from the beginning of the season in April through the playoffs in October.
Using the multiple choice version of the Upickem contests, we fashioned the online contest to match the contest we ran in print.
A 6x21.5 entry form appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal on Mondays, along with golf course sponsor ads and the entry form also ran as a 4x11 stand alone on Tuesdays. Players were allowed to submit as many as ten print entries, which increased the sale of single copy papers.
The results were then published in the Sunday paper along with the sponsor ads
The results were also published on the contest page. 1200 online entries each week and 1500 print entries each week
Liz
Mulligan Course Ad
5x6 teaser ads also ran weekly, featuring one of each of the 18 participating sponsor golf courses.
Liz
After the final game we modified the welcome page to promote the following contest, which is our local Pro Football pickem, which brings about the same amount of revenue and has just as much participation
$102,288 in revenue was received from the courses in exchange for print and online.
A total of 402 prizes valuing at $47,958 were given away.
Heavy print promotion
Frequency and Reach
Multiple sponsors
Sponsor “offer” page
Great prizes each week
Chaney
Chaney
The Characteristics of a sweeps contests are
They have a Very low barrier to entry
They Reach a BROAD audience – great at expanding your reach
Sweeps are awesome at collecting email opt-ins or likes for Facebook.
Have low engagement
And can be run in a matter of days.
Chaney
Market
Promotion
Highlights
Giving away a mountain bike provided by the title sponsor – a laser and skin care clinic. They also had 7 secondary sponsors – everything from a Mercedes Benz dealer to pet and flower retailers- showing how a simple sweeps can attract advertising dollars and give those brands a new, interesting way to interact with RochesterMN.com’s audience.
Chaney
Of course, the icing on top of that is that they also were able to nearly 400 opt-ins from 1,200 entries!
Chaney
Submission contests have have a higher barrier to entry than sweepstakes because you’re asking for the user to upload something be it a photo, video, MP3, but they have high engagement with a targeted demographic. You see a cutest baby contests here. Few promotions get as much engagement as one of those! They’re our top contest type if you’ve seen any of our 30 in 30 series of webinars.
Chaney
And here’s a perfect tie-in with spring.
Market
Promotion
Highlight:
They had a great sponsor – Lewis Greenscape, a local nursery - for this and even built the contest around a key time for the advertiser. What a great way to get people thinking about their backyards and comparing their yards with others – always a great motivator.
Chaney
They had 73 entries which generated nearly 1700 votes – talk about engagement! On top of that over 1,000 new optins covering three different newsletters: headlines, daily deals, promotions list.
Chaney
If that wasn’t enough, this sweepstakes also earned the newspaper $5,000 in revenue. The advertiser got some great exposure in print and certainly online not to mention all of the prospects that the advertiser got as a result of running this contest.
Chaney
Here’s a recap of the ideas for April
Target revenue goals
Based on mid-sized markets
Achieved by title sponsor and/or several smaller advertisers
You don’t have to them them; choose what works for you
---------------------------------------------------------
Sweepstakes – games for next year or tickets to college basketball tournament; cash, merchandise, pizza party
Card: pre-tournament promotion and throughout
Quiz: pre-tournament promotion and throughout
Managed college:
Custom bracket
Once you have selected which promotions you are going to run and built
out a timeline for the season, it’s time to actually fill in your calendar.
Use this sample calendar as a guide to help create your own auto racing
contest calendar. You don’t need to use all of these, so feel free to just pick
a few that would be a good fit for your market from the list. Be sure to
integrate it with the rest of your promotions calendar! REMEMBER we manage the tournament game so make sure to add that one to your calendar for sure!
Liz
Liz
Liz
Liz
liz
Liz
Chaney
Baseball season will be here before you know it, I know there’s a lot of buzz already building in St. Louis and around the country. And you can believe it is in KC coming off of their appearance in the world series.
Chaney
Right as we launched quizzes, WDAF in KC found an opportunity to run a quiz that had tons of local appeal – Which Royals Player Are You? This ran right as the world series started and to date there have been over 45K quizzes taken. While that is a little bit of a special circumstance, it just goes to show how these quizzes can really take off. It certainly help that one of the players actually took the quiz and got himself, which is that tweet you see on the screen. Really gave the quiz some amazing momentum.
Chaney
Just to demonstrate how these results can play out, the cross state rival the Cardinals also did a quiz in a similar vein – Which Cardinals Player are you? And boy did it take off on Facebook. This post that you see on the right got:
243 likes
151 shares
100s of comments – saying “Hey I got so and so. Who did you get it?” Including a lot of back and forth among users
Chaney
Here’s your recap for May
Remember you can choose to do any or all of these, but the key is to consider your resources, start small and have success, then build from there. That said, this should be a very manageable plan for any site. A great tie-in here would be to give away your spa card as part of your mother’s day contest, then layer in other local prizes to make it even more exciting for your audience.
Your baseball quiz can run anytime throughout the baseball season and even be
---------------------------------------------------------
Sweepstakes – games for next year or tickets to college basketball tournament; cash, merchandise, pizza party
Card: pre-tournament promotion and throughout
Quiz: pre-tournament promotion and throughout
Managed college:
Custom bracket
Once you have selected which promotions you are going to run and built
out a timeline for the season, it’s time to actually fill in your calendar.
Use this sample calendar as a guide to help create your own auto racing
contest calendar. You don’t need to use all of these, so feel free to just pick
a few that would be a good fit for your market from the list. Be sure to
integrate it with the rest of your promotions calendar! REMEMBER we manage the tournament game so make sure to add that one to your calendar for sure!
Liz
Liz
Liz
liz
Liz
Market 109
Results
$112K Gross in 2014
$55K Gross and Growing 2015
Must Pay Cart Fee
Valid Entire Season
Chaney
Chaney
Chaney
Chaney
Chaney
Market
Promotion
Interesting promotion – was supported by the corporate lead at Scripps. Ran this in markets around the country.
National Prize winner will receive one (1) Visa® gift card in the amount of $1,000 (ARV: $1,000).
One Local Prize -- The local prize winner will receive a family getaway to Fort Wayne, Indiana from Visit Fort Wayne (Total ARV: $400)
Sold to 3 sponsors: Corydon Indiana Convention Bureau, Hamilton County, Fort Wayne Convention Bureau
They all saw it appealing to attract visitors from Indy
Chaney
10k in revenue
Sold to 3 sponsors: Corydon Indiana Convention Bureau, Hamilton County, Fort Wayne Convention Bureau
They all saw it appealing to attract visitors from Indy
Chaney
10k in revenue
Sold to 3 sponsors: Corydon Indiana Convention Bureau, Hamilton County, Fort Wayne Convention Bureau
They all saw it appealing to attract visitors from Indy
Chaney
This contest ran over 9 week
chaney
Chaney
Family
Best family friendly festival
Best child care center
Best day camp
Best ride at the fair
Craziest food at the fair
Favorite live band
Already working with fair; this was a way to expand upon an existing relationship and align with efforts in print
Chaney
Chaney
Chaney
---------------------------------------------------------
Sweepstakes – games for next year or tickets to college basketball tournament; cash, merchandise, pizza party
Card: pre-tournament promotion and throughout
Quiz: pre-tournament promotion and throughout
Managed college:
Custom bracket
Once you have selected which promotions you are going to run and built
out a timeline for the season, it’s time to actually fill in your calendar.
Use this sample calendar as a guide to help create your own auto racing
contest calendar. You don’t need to use all of these, so feel free to just pick
a few that would be a good fit for your market from the list. Be sure to
integrate it with the rest of your promotions calendar! REMEMBER we manage the tournament game so make sure to add that one to your calendar for sure!
Liz
Now we just want to highlight a couple of resources that we make available to our partners to help ensure that they are as successful as possible with their ballots
Chaney
Types of promotions
A process to evaluating opportunities
At the end of each you’ll be able to create your own promotions calendar based on your audience, revenue and database goals
Chaney
Discuss the unique aspects of selling each of these promotions
Learn a methodical approach to prospecting
Get familiar with the needs analysis process with advertiser including the crucial follow-up meeting and what to focus on
Chaney
Learn how to build out and execute the promotions we’ve been discussing here
Chaney
liz
Liz
Liz
Liz
Liz
Chaney
Liz
Liz
Liz
Head to twitter or look in the GTM chat panel – we will give you the link!
Golf, Bride, Movie Awards – not to mention the millions you could create on your own
Liz
Mulligan Teaser Ad PDF
We teased the contest with a 3x6 almost daily the week leading up to the first tournament.
One of the biggest draws for the advertisers is to have their advertisements appear twice weekly on those banner pages.
Mulligan Online Advertiser Page
The welcome page had a link that said, “Click here to view weekly deals at our sponsoring golf courses,” which directed viewers to a landing page featuring the same ads that had run in the paper that week.
Mulligan Extended Ad
The contest was so successful and popular with both the participants and the sponsors, that we extended the contest into the September Fed Ex Cup playoffs, and nine of the sponsors continued on.