# Marketing idea



## Morph T (Sep 8, 2009)

Hi guys

Thought I'd share this with you, as it seems to have worked well for me so far - 

I've put a competition to win one of my t-shirts on my website, and then added that link onto a contest forum, (where people just search the net looking for competitions, then let everyone know where the comps are on these forums). So far I've had a whole lot more traffic! When they enter the competition on my website they're are asked if they are keen to be updated with discounts, and most have ticked YES, which means I have all these new people for my email database, and can send them regular updates!
Hope that makes sense!! So far it seems to be working really well for me


----------



## bornover (Apr 10, 2008)

Nice job Tracie. Can you give us an idea of how much your website traffic went up? You know, like 25% or 50%, whatever it is.


----------



## Morph T (Sep 8, 2009)

Well I don't have much traffic generally - I went from an average of 13 a day, to 200!! Not bad, but they haven't actually resulted in anymore sales than usual...  But at least I have built up a pretty decent email database....


----------



## bornover (Apr 10, 2008)

That's a 1500% increase! Tracie, that is a great start. Keep thinking of ideas and work at them, it will pay off sooner than later.


----------



## Morph T (Sep 8, 2009)

Thanks Mark!


----------



## ladyumbrella (Aug 25, 2009)

Great idea...I'll definitely give it a go...


----------



## tonygraystone (May 1, 2008)

Comps are also a stronger insentive to visit.

rather then... 
'come look at my site' 

you get... 
'come look at my site FOR THE CHANCE TO WIN THE BEST THING EVER!'


----------



## ladyumbrella (Aug 25, 2009)

Very true...I just kicked off one of our first competition "FOR THE CHANCE TO WIN THE BEST THING EVER!"/t-shirts and it is going pretty good so far...really good actually, nuts even..

Anyone else run competitions before? Know any sites that you can submit competitions to? or forums that are dedicated to running competitions? or similar...

Cheers..


----------



## ladyumbrella (Aug 25, 2009)

Ok so..its a week on now and the results of running a competition are pretty good - for us anyway and what we wanted to achieve..I've found a few sites that are dedicated to just competitions and are insanely useful..I put them all neatly in my blog so you can check them there if you want but if you want traffic, more mailing list members, more twitterers, more facebook fans, more myspacers - run a competition...they are also kinda fun...


----------



## Javiergil1910 (Feb 4, 2009)

Thanks for sharing! This is a great idea. I am just starting and am only getting about 10-30 hits a day on my website. I have been running a "special offer" sort of thing and have been telling everyone following us on twitter, myspace, etc. that if they order by a certain date we will throw in a free pair of sunglasses. We have only received 1 sale so far.... not to good since its been going on for 2 weeks now. Any idea as to forums you can post special offers to? Would you mind sharing forums you can post competitions to? Thanks so much! I really enjoyed this thread.


----------



## ladyumbrella (Aug 25, 2009)

Hey, eh, well for forums and competitions there is a whole myriad of them out there... I actually did a blog about it a while back - LadyUmbrella - T-Shirts and Life..: Blogs, t-shirts and competition tips.. where I have em all listed and say what I did...I'll warn you though, it is long and rambling but it gets there in the end...


----------



## muneca (Sep 30, 2008)

Hey Tracie, 

Welcome to the site! I haven't see any posts from you previously. However, I'm glad I found this one today. Good idea! I'll have to keep that in mind for the future when I launch my site! Again, GREAT JOB & thanks for sharing. Good luck to you in business!


----------



## adam.smsg (Oct 22, 2009)

Challenging people is definitely the way to go. Its all about getting people involved really. I worked a flea market a few months ago and had a sign in front of my booth that said:

"solve for x get 50% off" with an algebra question.

I made them easy enough mostly because I just wanted to get traffic and I definitely did. It was insane. I lacked womens sizes though and that hurt my sales quite a bit. I underestimated that by quite a bit.



ladyumbrella said:


> Hey, eh, well for forums and competitions there is a whole myriad of them out there... I actually did a blog about it a while back - LadyUmbrella - T-Shirts and Life..: Blogs, t-shirts and competition tips.. where I have em all listed and say what I did...I'll warn you though, it is long and rambling but it gets there in the end...


REALLY like your site by the way. Great aesthetic.


----------



## ladyumbrella (Aug 25, 2009)

Freakin dig the algebra idea - give people no choice but to hang around and check out your stuff - everyone thinks they can do algebra (and most people can) but straight up challenging is a master stroke I think....expect future LadyUmbrella stands to be flooded with a concoction of X,Y's and Z's..really dig the idea....and thanks for liking our site....ole...


----------



## dmob (Oct 1, 2007)

I really like the algebra idea, excellent. I have seen someone use a similar idea, they offered a piece of retro memorabelia which related to their t shirts. People had to put the answer to the question on a slip which included their email address, the vendor after the event contacted the first picked correct answer.
The slip had an opt in for future free contests and news, most people ticked the box.


----------



## adam.smsg (Oct 22, 2009)

Riddles worked really well too because it made people come back to it. I had a riddle up that said:

What appears once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years.

People would look at it, try to solve it, fail and continuously come back to try and solve it.This didnt lead to a lot of sales (because of other circumstances) but it made my booth look really busy and aided in the word of mouth aspect. My booth was literally never quiet. I would definitely try this out if you ever work flea markets.

I think it goes back to the whole "viral" idea going on these days. Lost is good at this. It gets people engaged in what theyre doing. People dont really want to "look" at stuff anymore (unless its REALLY interesting like that new LEVIS commercial). They wanna "do". Im trying to figure out a way to incorporate this on the web for my brand. Pretty challenging.


----------



## Cloak (Dec 17, 2008)

Not all that hard, but I'm also pretty good at riddles.  Great idea though. M, btw.


----------



## IAMTHETREND (Oct 31, 2008)

tons of great ideas in this post! We used to give away a free shirt a week on our site, but it never occurred to me that there would be a website dedicated to online contests.... looking back it was pretty stupid to think that there wouldnt be one!

anyways, when we were doing it. We would usually give a way a t shirt of a brand we were featuring such as one week we featured Arkaik Clothing, So we made people think of t-shirt related dinosaur names such as: Tee Rex. We made people leave the comments using facebook connect, so that when they made a comment it would show up on their facebook wall, which in turn attracted some of their friends to check us out. worked pretty good!

if you can use facebook connect for commenting in any way on your site, i recommend it!


----------



## Optiq (Oct 13, 2009)

ALL NEWBIES PAY ATTENTION TO THIS!!!!!!!!! This is how you generate business. Not necessarily by following this idea, but thinking of ways to structure things that draws people to you and organizes them in a way to set them up for a sale. It's not about sitting back and waiting to see where your 50/50 chance goes, it's about taking control through little things like this to give people a purpose and some way of interacting with your company.


Good idea by the way, I just wanted to point that out because a lot of people do crash and burn by just sitting around waiting for people to notice them. They'll notice you, but what makes them feel like paying attention for a little while once they see you? You came up with an answer and have improved your business. You said you haven't really gotten any customers from it yet, but money isn't the only form of growth, you went from 13 to 200 hits a day. Find out as much as you can about this crowd, come up with different surveys so you can put their personalities together and know what they're more likely to do depending on whatever elements are involved. Once you got a good overview on how they are, you know what will make them tell their friends about you, you'll even know what types of friends they have and will have something made out ahead of time to snatch them in once they get there. Keep experimenting and building, once you have an actual "flow" going you will see a pattern in the "tide" and will be able to come up with a way to benefit from every type of condition the flow settles and rises to.


----------



## bahamianqt (Jul 2, 2009)

I love this idea, i'll definitely put something like this up when i finish my website.


----------



## muneca (Sep 30, 2008)

good idea guys. i will keep the competition in mind when my site is launched. thanks all!


----------



## jetsoak (Oct 31, 2009)

I had some down time today so I'd thought I see how a simple math problem would give you a dollar off and I made up a mock page with it in.

Feel free to give it a try....
jetsoak | details | sample

(not trying to advertise just showing an example)


----------



## ladyumbrella (Aug 25, 2009)

Nice implementation of a "puzzle"..especially at a crucial point in the sales process...customer is at the product page and then gets a dollar off the price, just pushing that impulse button...Good work...


----------



## jetsoak (Oct 31, 2009)

its a quite simple math problem and I don't know if I'd put it on a live page, but it would be interesting to see how often it's used.

and thanks!


----------



## ladyumbrella (Aug 25, 2009)

Ye, simple is always good though...one thing you could do might be to play around with something like "If Tom has one water gun full with 1.5 liters of water and plans on Jetsoaking Tim who has a water gun with half the amount of water Tom has but fires three times quicker - who would run out of water first?" for answers you could go "Tom", "Tim", "They'd both get wet, just give me a discount"...

..just a thought...


----------



## marcmarcmarc (Jun 20, 2009)

when going live with my t-shirt biz, I'll definitely use contests as well. 

I also thought about giving out prices that have a high cultural value in my target audience. for example nostalgic objects and on top one or two shirts out of my shop. that may besides helping me in branding my label also help me generate some word of mouth.


----------



## muneca (Sep 30, 2008)

okay, i like that guys. i will have to think of some more historic ideas for mine. i think i will start testing their knowledge on their history. don't worry, i'm not making 'em go to the library on this one. my questions will be based on things my customers should already know...and if not. they will appreciate the refresher/reminder. is a buck really enough to give off or should it be more?


----------



## muneca (Sep 30, 2008)

okay, i like that guys. i will have to think of some more historic ideas for mine. i think i will start testing their knowledge on their history. don't worry, i'm not making 'em go to the library on this one. my questions will be based on things my customers should already know...and if not. they will appreciate the refresher/reminder. is a buck really enough to give off or should it be more?


----------



## ddknox (Oct 16, 2009)

I have been working with a friend on developing a video featuring Oneslev t-shirts along with techno rock music. This friend, Jimm, is a music teacher and can create videos. So anyway, we hope to have this up and running this week. So as far as marketing, I am going to try the music video approach and see what happens. We plan on putting this on YouTube as well.


----------



## azzurro89 (Aug 18, 2009)

It might just be me but i dont want to give away something for nothing.. Because of this, when i do a contest i want it to be of benefit to me as well as the people entering the contest. Im starting a comp on our facebook page that asks people to come up with a tag line for our business as its something that we defiantly need. That way we get something as well as exposure.


----------



## marcmarcmarc (Jun 20, 2009)

you're not giving away things for nothing. at least you're getting contact informations and the people's attention. especially for new clothing lines this is of tremendous worth imao.


----------



## azzurro89 (Aug 18, 2009)

marcmarcmarc said:


> you're not giving away things for nothing. at least you're getting contact informations and the people's attention. especially for new clothing lines this is of tremendous worth imao.


Of course it is, but why not reward them for giving you feedback and helping you achieve in your business? Get every positive you can out of it!


----------



## marcmarcmarc (Jun 20, 2009)

yeah, actually you're right. there should be enough things that you could outsource to the customer included in a competition.


----------



## adam.smsg (Oct 22, 2009)

Good to hear that idea is working for you guys. As I said, it did wonders at those flea markets I worked.

Keep it up peeps. I have a few other gems Im gonna share here and there (after I use em of course)


----------



## Nikelover (Nov 6, 2009)

Morph T said:


> Hi guys
> 
> Thought I'd share this with you, as it seems to have worked well for me so far -
> 
> ...



you found a very good idea in marketing strategy. i hope i can apply this one on my own too.


----------



## teeshirtsdirect (May 7, 2009)

Wow, this is a really top idea! 

The giveaway aspect is nothing new, but promoting the giveaway on competition sites is actual genius! Loads of people want stuff for free and i never thought of tapping directly into them using competition sites.

Thanks for being so selfless as to share this 

Hopefully your increased traffic will result in some more sales soon 

Big Love,
TSD x


----------



## tonygraystone (May 1, 2008)

Im going to be running a give away comp shortly but i cant decide what info to collect from entrants. Either newsletter signup (email) our facebook fan?

Im thinking email address is safe but facebook has viral potential

What do people think is the best info to collect from a comp?


----------



## Ethcs (Aug 4, 2009)

This is an interesting post. I started a competition yesterday before I read this. The competition strategy has a lot of merit based on my previous experience. We've learned that challenging your customers is a great angle. For example our current competition asks entrants to come up with an acronym for Ethcs. We sent the details to our current members, posted it on our blog and posted it on a number of competition websites. Entrants post their ideas on our Facebook fan page which gives us an opportunity to interact with them and provides us with more people to market to in the future. 

For those of you interested in stats, within the first six hours of announcing the competition on sites like contest.co.nz & gimme.co.nz etc we gained an additional 20+ fans, a huge spike in our blog traffic and about a 50% increase in typical daily website traffic. Plus 2 sales that I can track back to the contest website links. 

I'll keep you guys updated with stats as the competition runs a little longer if you guys are interested?


----------



## marcmarcmarc (Jun 20, 2009)

@ethcs:
this is amazing!


----------



## teeshirtsdirect (May 7, 2009)

Hey Ethcs,

That's an interesting addition to the whole idea- challenging your target audience with an actual task.
The stats are also impressive, as is the fact it resulted in direct sales.

I for one would be really interested to hear how it continues, specifically if/how many more sales result from it, along with the continuing stats.

You guys are really contributing alot by sharing this information, so thanks 

TSD x


----------



## Ethcs (Aug 4, 2009)

Ok so I thought I'd check in with an update and some additional information for anyone that's interested. 
The competition is going really well. We haven't yet made any additional sales since the opening day of the comp but some of the acronyms that have been entered are brilliant and the winning entry will actually become part of our branding. We've received over 50 entries but a real positive for me is that fans have been interacting with each other on our fan page, commenting on each others ideas etc. We've made an additional 45-50 fans in 3-4 days and traffic to our blog continues to spike in a big way. Increased blog traffic was one of my goals for this comp as our blog has only recently been launched and we wanted to get it out there. 

Here are the sites that I've listed the competition at and a rough idea of how useful they've been.

Hypersweep - Getting a lot of traffic from here
Gimme.co.nz - Some traffic but this site also features your comp on their facebook page
Contest.co.nz - A lot of traffic
Blinky.co.nz - some traffic but also 15+ tweets/facebook shares & they feature your comp on facebook
prizefinder.com? - some traffic

Hope some of this is uesful to you guys.


----------



## designnbuy (Jan 1, 2010)

Wonderful idea to get target traffic to your site! This type of competition can really do wonders by attracting so many people to your site. One of the most useful marketing tips!!


----------



## AngrySpade (Feb 7, 2010)

Would it be against any rules if someone posted some links to forums where I could post about at contest I've been running?


----------



## JSimmons (Oct 26, 2009)

I am having my website built as we speak. In the meantime, you can go from my website to my facebook page for now. I am thinking about having some kind of contest to get more traffic. Any suggestions? My site is in my signature.


----------



## publick (Mar 14, 2010)

This may not work, since the people who appear on your website is not the targeted cutomer. Moreover, since you are linking from the site where things are suppose to be free (sweeps), you are looking at the people who expect to have things for free.

If you use newsletter service, you can try to send newsletter to these people and see how many of them actually open the newsletter. If it is less than 20%, than I would say just dump the idea.


----------



## SHIROINEKO (Mar 31, 2010)

People like competition


----------



## tonygraystone (May 1, 2008)

> This may not work, since the people who appear on your website is not the targeted cutomer


I fund this, traffic from contest sites are people looking for free stuff, so little sales. Good for general awarness and linkbacks tho...


----------



## SHIROINEKO (Mar 31, 2010)

Nice idea. I once wanna try that. But.....


----------



## thepeachdesign (Mar 6, 2010)

A Lot of great tips here. Thanks for sharing.


----------

