Have you ever run a contest to get traffic? I'm launching a new site and I'm trying to figure out different ways to spread the word. I'm mainly interested in viral marketing strategies. I'm budgeting myself $200 for initial promotion of the site and I thought I'd spend it in 2 ways. 1 - pay 100 people $1 each to visit and test my site, mostly just to make sure it's working well and correctly and to get feedback on anything they had problems with before I really launch it. Hopefully these folks will like it well enough to spread the word using the social bookmarking plug-in and the tell a friend function. 2 - Run a contest to see which domain can drive the most traffic to the site over the course of a month. People can review my site on their blog/forum/newsletter/whatever and promote by any method other than spam. I'll monitor the traffic and post results every 48 hours so people know how they're doing. They can either promote the site itself or the contest, whichever they think would be more appropriate for their audience. The top 4 referrers would get prizes in the order of highest to lowest traffic. Prizes would be in the amount of $40, $30, $20 and $10 paid by paypal. People can post about it however they wan and as many times as they want, but only traffic that is generated from the site they registered for the contest with will be counted. The site they register must be their site, not a general site like digg, etc. As a bonus, I'll post a list of blogs/sites that are registered for the contest and the 4 winners will be listed on the front page through the end of 2008. So, do these ideas seem like they'll work? When I launch this viral campaign I'll start a thread about it tracking my progress and efforts so you guys can see how it's working and maybe make some suggestions. Thanks for your thoughts.
I don't see why it wouldn't work. People like getting paid and contests are a sure fire way to get traffic if you promote it correctly.
Thanks. I think I'm going to throw in a couple more prizes - some entrecard credits - so I can get it running through the EC community.
Running a contest can never hurt. I think it would work out well for you. I don't run contests on my site (yet), but I do run specials once a month, and when that one day of the month rolls around my sales go up
I don't like the idea of burning $100 on 100 visitors. Purchasing signature links in similar niche forums would be better, IMHO. As for the prizes- I have done MANY contests over the years and got burned on just about every occurrence. The winners get their prizes, and are never seen again. Wish I had an answer as to how contests can work. Will be watching to see how this case unfolds for you. If you are successful, I may need to give it another shot..
Just about anything. So far I have some cash prizes, some entrecard credits, an article, some advertising space and a couple other things in the works. The contest/prizes are going to be for bloggers mostly so if you have a business/provide a service that they might find useful then there you go.
There is no niche for the website I'm going to be using this for. It's something that I hope will go viral and the only way for that to happen is to get traffic. If that traffic has to start out paid then so be it. It also gives me a chance to test the site and get honest feedback to see if there's anything that needs tweaking. As for the winners getting the prizes and never being seen again...I'm not sure what that means. I guess it depends on the goal of your contest but again, the goal of mine is to increase traffic. So as long as the winners have sent me traffic they've done their role so it doesn't matter much if they're seen again. I'm not looking for visitors for a lifetime here...