So this case study is of a non-traditional giveaway
I have done that worked out very well, creating a win-win-win situation for me,
my bloggers and multiple brands!
This one is kind of lengthy so I suggest you go
through it either in parts or when you have a minute!
So here’s the basic profile of the promotion:
Timeline: This
is an annual promotion I do every February
Sponsored by: Lots
of companies (I’ll explain in a minute)
Background
As I’ve said a few times here, my main blog,
Bariatric Foodie, is a monetized blog that served the needs of people who are
having, or have had, bariatric (weight loss) surgery. This particular promotion
was born of things I learned from social media.
One of those things came from simply paying
attention to what works and what doesn’t. What works, on my Facebook and
Twitter pages, for instance, is posting general discussion topics about life
after weight loss surgery, as opposed to only posting topics related to food or
my recipes. This keeps engagement on my page fairly high and so when I do post
recipes, there are people active in my little community to click through to
them.
A big need my readers identified is help with
setting and keeping goals. It’s a big topic for anyone trying to lose weight. So
I began to think about a way that I could make that happen through a promotion.
My initial idea was that I should find a way to encourage people to make and
keep goals.
My second thought on the matter was about timing. We
all are great at making and keeping goals in January. But come February we are
either about to give up or we already have. So I knew I wanted to do this in February.
The month also provided something that gave way to even more ideas – exactly
four weeks!
Thus the Bariatric Foodie Pledge was born. I won’t
take you through my other thought processes BUT I will say the contest works
like this.
- At the beginning of each week, people
who wish to participate can “pledge” a goal. It can be any goal they want,
although I do give some background education on S.M.A.R.T. goals.
- Throughout the week, on Facebook and
Twitter, we encourage each other to keep up with our goals and stay
accountable.
- At the end of each week, I call for
people to “check-in” their goals by answering three questions: Did you achieve
your goal? What challenged or inspired you? How will you keep this goal going?
- At the end of each week everyone who
pledged a goal and checked got put into a drawing to win a prize.
- For people who pledged and checked in
all four weeks, there was a drawing for a grand prize.
Prizes
My first year doing The Pledge I didn’t have a very
impressive audience nor did I know half the things I know now about marketing
yourself to brands! So I bought all the prizes that I gave away (I would never,
ever, ever recommend you do this in any giveaway you do. Bloggers are a
relatively cheap and effective mode of promotion for brands and very likely
they are willing to give you something.
It’s just up to you to make the right ask to the right person.)
The second year, I had learned a bit more and so I
invited companies to sponsor a week of the Pledge on one of two levels: weekly
sponsor (providing weekly prizes) or a grand sponsor (providing a grand prize).
There were requirements at each level. A weekly sponsor had to provide three
prizes of at least $25 in value. They had to ship the prizes directly to the
winner.
In exchange for sponsoring a week of the pledge, the
sponsoring company got a free badge-sized ad on my blog for their sponsorship
week and mentions in my social media related to the Pledge that week.
In the second year there was only one grand prize
sponsor and that sponsor agreed to ship a prize of at least $50 in value, in
exchange for a banner-sized ad for the length of the pledge.
After each sponsor’s pledge week was over, I emailed
them the prize winners name, thanking them for their sponsorship and trying to
entice them to buy a blog ad with a small advertising discount.
Challenges
In 2014 I’ll run this promotion for the fourth time.
Each year seems to bring new challenges, many of them associated with audience
growth. Here are just a few.
Logistics
This has by far been one of the banes of my
existence. In my first year, when barely 100 people participated, I did it all
manually. Folks could pledge their goal by leaving blog comment, posting it on
Facebook or Tweeting it. From there I made a spreadsheet of pledgers. Same deal
with checking-in.
This was both time and labor intensive, especially (and this
sounds bad) for something I wasn’t being paid for.
In the third year of The Pledge I attempted to use
Rafflecopter to collect pledges but that quickly failed and I had to switch
streams. I ended up making a form on Google Docs which folks could fill out
when they pledged and checked-in. But glitches abounded! Some mobile users
couldn’t see the form, others had trouble submitting it, while others still didn’t
have a Google account and therefore ran into problems. About halfway through I
figured out that if mobile users were able to download the Google Drive app,
they had a much easier time of things.
Expectations
At the outset of this promotion, when my audience
was smaller, it was easier to convey what this promotion was all about. This
was mainly because most of my Facebook likes and Twitter followers came from a
pool of people who actively read my blog.
Last year it became increasingly apparent that there
is a generous population of people who interact with Bariatric Foodie who have
not only never been to my blog but seem to have missed that the blog even
exists!
All this boils down to the fact that there were
mixed expectations. If you look at the way this contest works, it’s a lot. You
have to make a goal, pledge it, work on it
and report back. That’s far more than most blogs ask you to do for a prize.
Last year I got a lot of complaints,
especially as I was experiencing growing pains with the whole desktop-to-mobile
movement.
Brand
Conversion
I never did do very well in converting Pledge
sponsors into advertisers. This is partly because of a movement of brands
toward affiliate marketing. It’s much cheaper for them to offer you an
affiliate account than to constantly pay for dedicated advertising.
Last year, I began trying to incentivize advertising
by making submission of a prize to The Pledge free for advertisers while there
was a fee for non-advertisers. That didn’t work out so well either as I
reliably call on a select number of brands that my readers love who are quite
accustomed to not being charged to do this! So I faced an “either just take the
prizes for free or get nothing” scenario. It was then that I decided this would
be my big Good Samaritan (so to speak) act of the year. Although, it brought
some successes I’ll discuss in a minute.
Limitation
of the weekly/grand prize model
I figured out eventually that limiting the grand
prize to one company or brand was a bad idea. Partly because with a bigger
audience you need bigger prizes, but also because that meant I could only work
with a total of five brands: four for weekly prizes and one grand prize.
So last year I switched to allowing multiple grand
prize sponsors. As I start to think about The Pledge for 2014 (actually I’ve
been thinking about it since it ended for 2013!), I think it’s also wise to
open up the weekly sponsorships to more than one brand as well. I now have
brands contacting me about getting in
on this, which technically could give me more leverage to charge them, but
again I resigned myself to this being a totally free act on my part! (Earning
my way into the pearly gates, maybe?)
Successes
Where there were many challenges there has also been
many, many, many successes!
Affiliate
Conversions
While I don’t get paid from brands to feature their
products as a weekly or grand prize sponsor, I made damn sure each of them was
available through at least one of my affiliate accounts. So when I promoted
their product, I was promoting it with my affiliate account link, which did, in
turn, earn me money.
Google
Adsense
You might remember AdSense is driven by traffic. The
more eyeballs you can get on your site, the more likely they’ll click something
and then you get the few pennies that result. Last year I started to pay
attention to Google’s personalized tips for maximizing my AdSense returns and
as a result saw much higher returns during the pledge.
Increased
overall audience
This was good because I’d just published my first
book “The Bariatric Foodie Guide to Perfect Protein Shakes” and the raised
engagement gave me an opportunity to showcase that and bump up sales.
Which was
a plus!
Feel
good vibes
Don’t ever underestimate the power of an audience
that not only feels connected to you but also feels you are operating in their
best interests. I care deeply for my readers and want them to be successful!
This promotion exemplifies that feeling! By the end of it 13 people have won
actual, physical prizes but everyone
tends to express feeling like they got something out of this. That’s worth a
lot.
So there you have it. One non-traditional giveaway
that was a failure, and one that is working well.
My point in sharing these case studies is to
encourage you to be innovative and think outside the box. It’s a critical skill
for anyone who works on the web, but especially bloggers. The field changes
every day. Expectations change every day. You have to stay up with, or ahead
of, the curve.
