Improve Your Marketing Strategy by Organizing a "Leading Project” Contest
All marketing strategies are exhausted sooner or later. To amp up your marketing, you have to keep your eyes open for fresh ideas and newly-minted industry trends. The organization of contests that showcase your project’s expertise is the right choice for meeting ever-changing marketing trends.
Why should you always improve your marketing strategy?
The value of every business, be it a startup or an Apple-level company, is measured by two factors: profitability and client loyalty. The marketing strategy is the bridge that keeps you connected to your acquired audience and attracts new clients. Here’s why improving a marketing strategy is worth a try:
- Keep a promise. Every business has a value to offer. By catering to the interests of your clients, you build loyal relationships with your target audience. To increase growth and make regular improvements to your projects, leverage effective marketing strategies and keep your promise to be the best.
- Elevate engagement. Acquiring new customers is a challenge, but retaining them is a double-challenge. Successful marketing strategies maintain a dialogue with the audience by keeping people engaged. If you never stop talking, the chances are high that people will never stop listening.
- Stay one step ahead. Competition is a mighty force which determines the destinies of businesses. Unique and trending marketing ideas can help you beat competitors and stay one step ahead.
What is a “leading project” contest
You can improve your marketing strategy by organizing contests that focus on project innovation. A project is the idea wrapped in the cloak of operational and administrative processes which help a business solve the needs of clients by updating existing services or creating the new ones. A leading project contest, tied to a specific industry, is a thematic competition in which you can market your idea or raise the awareness of the business.
How contests can improve a marketing strategy?
By setting up contests to improve a marketing strategy, you operate the most powerful tools for client engagement, which include the spirit of competition and a buzzy content. Discover what a business can achieve if your marketing strategy leverages contests:
- Drive word-of-mouth. A great benefit of contests is that they make your audience spread the word about you. Public voting, user-generated content as a form of contest entry, and referrals make your contest go viral.
- Capture data. By luring people to apply through the promise of prizes, you can capture meaningful data about your clients. Don’t introduce too many roadblocks for submission, but asking several smart questions about the preferences or favorite products is the right move.
- Build a followers’ base. Your marketing efforts deserve public attention. Contest promotion helps build a huge base of followers through social media promotion.
- Keep the level of engagement high. Both contest submissions and voting promote interaction with your business. Since people love investing in projects that pay off, you can keep them engaged by encouraging contest participation.
How to improve your marketing strategy by organizing a “leading project” contest
So, the decision is made. It might be daunting, challenging, and hard in the initial stages. But, if you’re set on making your marketing strategy more effective through organization of a “leading project’ contest, the following success framework will help you reach the goal:
- Craft a strong challenge statement. Your “leading project” contest should target a specific industry, a value offer, and tools that help attain the goal. In other words, to ensure that people accept the challenge, make the challenge clear. Depending on the concept of your contest, you can create a video-guide, build a theme-centered design for you contest website, or communicate the idea through diverse promotional campaigns.
To discover more about thematic project contests, treat yourself to a delish guide on SMART corporate awards.
- Make a contest digestible. For sure, only truly decent projects can get the honor to be called a “leading project.” That is why you have to be strict and demanding when it comes to the contest rules. But, don’t exaggerate. Try to break your contest into several digestible challenges. Let’s say, the potential participants should first submit a 2-pages pitch; those who make it to the next round submit a video/visual presentation, etc. If you make it all-in-one, people might get overwhelmed and give up.
- Handle it smartly. Operational and administrative efficiency make the show. To ensure that everything runs smoothly and your “leading project” contest brings you the expected benefits, you have to keep everything under control. Pick an effective contest management platform to simplify the key processes, assign responsibilities to your team members, and provide regular updates to keep people informed. The main thing is: do NOT start this on the night before your event.
- Reap real-time profits. One of the best ways to improve marketing strategy through contests is to generate profits not only at the end, but also at every stage of the contest set-up. Retrieve contacts from public voting, make connections onsite, and organize side events like social responsibility awards or personal achievement contests during the event.
The best examples of how to improve marketing strategy through contests
To fuel your imagination, check out some successful “leading project” campaigns that actually work:
For architecture gurus, CANaction organizes an inspiring project contest that requires not only project submission, but also collaborative learning, and works in focus groups of participants. This all-in-one strategy helps the company to solidify marketing efforts and attract both professional architects, newbies, and fans.
The Best Living Lab Project Award
In an attempt to promote the practices of living labs, ENoLL awards the most prominent practices and promotes them in branded manuals and other marketing resources.
MAPEI, which is a global company that produces building materials, is adept at capturing the preferences of its target audience through contests. Annually, the corporation organizes project award contests asking entrants to create their own design and architecture projects.
Conclusion
A “leading project” contest is a universal phenomena that can help businesses solidify their marketing efforts within any industry. If you’re ready to make your marketing twice as successful as it is, don’t hesitate to launch your own project contest! To enable successful submission, voting, and reporting practices, you can entrust your contest to Judgify automation.