Travis Ketchum's slide deck from the Facebook for Brands conference in Vancouver, BC on January 26th & 27th, 2013.

1. Leveraging Contests For
Leads & Influence
(And Looking Like a Pro Doing It)

2. Why Contests?
• Incredibly powerful way to get likes & leads
• Turns users into brand ambassadors
• Fun way to reward users and find new ones
• Greatly increases campaign efficiency
• High user engagement tolerances

3. Why Travis Ketchum?
Founder at Contest Domination
Lives in Seattle, WA
Previously ran User Acquisition & JV Programs

4. Answering the “who”
• Business-to-Consumer Companies
• All sizes, from “mom & pop” to fortune 500
• Businesses who benefit from detailed leads
• Nuts & Bolts: Succinct lead & referral program
• Offline businesses have the largest opportunity

5. Answering the “why”
• It’s not just cliche, “the money is in the list”
• A great incentive to offer-up real information
• Extremely high engagement tolerances
• People actually love entering contests
• Users sell for you, borrowed credibility

6. Answering the “when”
• Contests are “active”, require some oversight
• Small businesses might do them quarterly
• Larger teams could run concurrent campaigns
• Attractive all year (not just seasonally)
• Great way to generate buzz before a launch

7. How it works
• You offer a great prize people can win
• They enter their name & email
• Provide an easy share link to earn more entries
• Only award entries when traffic = opt-ins
• Run your campaign, rinse & repeat

8. Picking the right prize
• Critical for attracting qualified leads
• Alignment with products & services
• Don’t devalue your time (intangibles rock!)
• Perceived Value > Actual Cost
• Prime your funnel for a real purchase

9. Being FB Compliant
• Protect yourself & clients
• Use a FB App for contests
• Don’t use comments as entry
• “Likes” shouldn’t boost entries
• Give FB a legal release

10. To “Gate” or Not
• Ask, “What’s our goal?”
• Social Proof vs Engagement
• Like Gates add friction
• Friction can lower conversion
• Know what you/client want

11. Case Study: Mixergy
• Popular Interview Blog
• Sells premium memberships
• Wanted more subscribers
• Hoped to sell more subscriptions
• Marketing-phobic audience Andrew Warner

12. Mixergy Plan
• Give away 3 lifetime subscriptions to premium
• 1 point for entry, 10 points for referrals
• Post on social & mail existing leads
• Survey why people entered the contest
• Bonus: Private Q&A with at least 1 referral

13. Mixergy Results
• 5,527 Total Contest Entries
• 3,714 Non-referral entries
• 1,813 Social referral entries
• 1,147 New Twitter Followers
• 678 New Facebook Likes
• 80-90 Percent of Social was Referral

14. Case Study: Local Deals
• Started from absolute zero
• Wanted a local audience only
• Focused on FB traffic to leads
• Town of 56k not for Groupon
• Still big enough to corner Anthony Veltri

15. Local Deals Plan
• Decided to run contests for local gift cards
• Curated existing local coupons & deals
• Planned to purchase Facebook Ads for exposure
• Targeted ads just for Corvallis, OR
• Borrowed local business credibility (checkable)

16. Local Deals Results
• Generated over 2,300 new Facebook Likes
• Curated an email list of 2,100 and growing
• Average open rates of 40-45 percent
• Average click rates of 18-25 percent
• Local businesses immediately wanted ad space

17. Case Study: Event Promo
• Live music event promoter
• Wanted location centric lists
• Started with ~ 800 people
• Aimed for 2k+ new leads
• A bootstrap budget Christian Alva

18. Event Promo Plan
• Used Facebook Ads to target likes and location
• Follow up with leads for relevant shows
• Use one primary lead list in a single area
• Ask local bands to sponsor prizes
• Local show tickets & merchandise for prizes

19. Event Promo Results
• Started using contests in April 2012
• Took 7 months to capture ~2k unique leads
• Month 8 had a special sold out event in Vegas
• Did a big push, captured 2,100 leads in one day
• Over 11k FB Likes, ~7k “talking about” etc

20. Case Study: Webinars
• YouTube Video Marketer
• Uses webinars to monetize
• Averaged 450 registrations
• Averaged 150 live attendees
• Tight, loyal customer base James Wedmore

21. Webinar Booster Plan
• Setup a contest page for webinar registration
• Award a blend of training + product access
• Require attendance to win prizes
• Give out prizes throughout webinar, not at once
• Mail existing audience, no ad budget at all

22. Webinar Booster Results
• Total registrations blew past 1,150
• Roughly 600 live attendee’s engaged
• Consistent sales conversion ~ 20 percent
• Hundreds of fresh, interested leads
• Activated more previous leads than before

23. Selling to Clients
• Understanding what they think they want
• Translating into actionable business objectives
• Delivering a balance of vanity & performance
• Mutual understanding of priorities
• There can only be a single, #1 objective

24. Contest Takeaways
• Contests are great for leads & social proof
• You can repeat and scale campaigns
• Users love them & have a high tolerance
• It’s a marketing campaign that also gives back
• Turns users into brand champions

25. Questions?
Travis Ketchum
Founder, Contest Domination
travis@contestdomination.com
@TravisKetchum
fb.com/TravisKetchum
in/travisketchum