Effective Ways to Launch an Online Contest: Tips for Contest Holders
Creative individuals are everywhere across the world. It is up to you to identify them and make most out of their skills and experiences. Better the reach and relationship you have with freelancers, greater the quality of work you can expect from them. Price and time remain constant factor in any case. That is the thumb rule for any outsourcing business you do. The same holds true for creative jobs as well.
Creativity needs to be harnessed:
Creativity needs to be nourished first and then excavated. You cannot expect the best quality output from handpicked professionals. The chances are rare you will succeed in this. More the number of people you involve in research work, greater the options you have in filtering the best. The idea is to get the work done by best of the best person across the world.
Whether it is to find an appropriate business domain name for branding; to design a custom logo for website or to create tagline and slogans for marketing – there is no dearth of talented and passionate people online. It is all about how good resources you are using online and what type of requirements you have.
A good number of social business networking platforms are there to help you in this. There are thousands of creative and skilled professionals only to serve clients for their creative assignments.
Launch a contest:
If you want to hire a consultant or an agency to crowdsource your design, naming or branding related activities – the best idea is to launch a contest. By arranging contests for domain name ideas, logo design and tagline or slogan creation, it is possible to get the best quality output from wild sources.
In this article we will discuss in detail how launching contests can help in branding and marketing activities.
What are contests?
Contests are a kind of events where multiple contestants around the world compete with each other for a common cause. The idea is to invite multiple talents to a collaborative platform, assign them a common target with a deadline and specifications, choose the best among all works submitted and finally award the person with promised money. . Such competitions are healthy as they motivate creative people to use best of their skills, knowledge, innovations and ideas. Contests are challenging as well as rewarding.
Who should launch contests?
1. Entrepreneurs and small businesses who look for great names for their new brands or domain names for their new business websites
2. Commercial website owners who need business name ideas, customized logo, tagline and slogan for branding and marketing activities
3. Employers who want to crowdsource jobs like viral marketing video creation, website testing, usability testing, article writing, SEO analysis, site design and more.
Types of contests:
Contests can be arranged for any of these following jobs:
• Naming a business, a company, a brand, a new product or service
• Brainstorming new business ideas, launching start ups
• Choosing unique business domain names, website names
• Designing commercial logos, writing slogans, taglines, catch-lines
• Apps development and logo design for Facebook, iPhone
• Twitter name creation
• Usability analysis, testing and research works
• Business strategy development, marketing consultations
• SEO advice and conversion optimizations
• Article writing and marketing, video making and promotion
• Custom website design, artwork design, B2B application development
Who take part in contests?
Online contests are quite popular among freelance designers, idea marketers, business consultants and service providers who need quick money and recognition for the work done. Freelancers and part-timers who love to take challenges and work on highly competitive jobs are the ideal participants for contests.
How to launch contests?
First, a contest holder needs to select types of contests to be arranged. This depends on specific job requirements. This could be anything like business naming and branding, design and logo creation, testing and research or domain name selection.
Next step is to define a budget – the money contest owner wants to spend on the activity. There are suitable packages offered by contest running websites.
Once the package is selected, it is time to describe the contest. The description would include contest title, contest category, primary information about the company and its marketing and branding objectives, target audience, words counts, if necessary and other specifications. One can also upload doc files to post the contest details. Every contest maintains a strict deadline beyond which no entries are allowed.
The final step is to provide payment related information such as prize money, payment options.
Once contest is launched participants all across network start making entries. After reviewing all submitted entries contest owner selects the best work eligible to win. Name of the winner is announced publicly and paid at the end of the contest.
Why ask third party sites for arranging contests?
Social Business networking sites, online contests and quiz organizers, freelance job sites, brand marketing consultants, ad agencies conduct online contests time to time. Since these sites have large number of members registered as service providers, getting necessary help for any kind of requirement is not an issue.Participating in contests is a regular activity for many experienced freelancers. They are well equipped with the knowledge and skills that are required to meet the expectations.
Moreover, hiring these talents is cost-effective and time-saving. Contest holder needs to pay to only one – the winner out of all members participated. This saves costs of running large marketing campaign in-house or of hiring an expensive ad firm. The prize money is pre-defined in a contest which avoids further negotiation or payment related issues with contestants.
Most importantly by launching contests through a third party networking site it is possible to save huge infrastructure and arrangement costs. You can also avoid additional advertisement costs and contest handling charges.
Thus, arranging contests online is a great way to solve multiple marketing needs. If you are looking to launch a contest, make sure you have chosen the right networking site for this.
About Author:
Dan Rubin, the author of this article is the founder of Wubb.com – a complete business social networking hub. The Florida based company aims to reach out to all business people who need recognition, exposure and conversions online. He feels Wubb could be the next generation online marketplace for all companies – small as well as large scales who want to find freelancers online. To know more about how it can happen, visit http://www.wubb.com
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