Trying Something

Like many marketers, 2009 came to me bundled with a mandate to re-think about marketing spend. We want to be extremely pragmatic about where we spend. Think Stevens' Extreme Marketing.

So, I needed to figure out how to reach a very niche audience. People have been banging on my door to sell me lists of 5000-10000 contacts, but those cost thousands of dollars and about 85% of the contacts in those lists are not in our target audience. So, they wouldn't like hearing from us. Other efforts, like magazine or e-zine advertising reach 30000 viewers, most of which are again outside of my target. And they cost a huge portion of this small pragmatic company's desired marketing budget.

So, how do we get feedback from our target audience while putting our brand out there without spending a fortune? Well, we're trying something new. Not that someone else hasn't likely done it before, but it's new for us.

In short, we launched a viral contest. We are offering $1000 to the winner of our simple contest. Real money. No tricks. But those who enter need to encourage their peers (our intended audience) to also participate because we need 1000 entries to validate the contest for pay out.

In the end, everyone wins. We get some highly targeted feedback, which is critical for us. Some additional people learn who we are. And the participants get a real chance to win a decent prize while having a little fun (the contest is to provide the best caption for a cartoon). They also, by the way, should be interested in our solutions since they have matching job responsibilities. And nobody who absolutely shouldn't care will get bothered by unsolicited contact.

I'll let you know how it goes.