Using Promotional Products in Contests

While it is rare and something no one wants to happen, there is the occasional time when a promotional campaign flops. Whether it was just the wrong time, the wrong promotion or just plain bad luck, sometimes despite our best efforts a flop can happen. There is, however, a way you can turn this negative into a positive.

Using Up Leftovers
Most of the time, when a campaign flops, there is plenty of promotional product left over. Instead of shipping all this product (which by the way you paid for) to the dump, come up with another way to use it. Don’t repeat the promotional campaign you just did, after all if it didn’t work the first time, then it is unlikely to work a second time any better. Instead go back to the drawing board, square your shoulders and build the best promotional contest you can think of. Why not? What have you really got to loose? The last campaign didn’t work out, you still have a bunch of promotional product left over, and what your business needs now more than anything is an injection of excitement, and nothing is more exciting than a contest.

Determining the Type of Contest
The first step in designing the contest is to decide what it is going to be about. For the most part the old write your name down and we will draw from a hat works great. However when you are trying to recycle a bunch of promotional products this may not be the best way to do it. Instead take a look at what you have. If you have a bunch of small promotional products, get a few bigger ones, make sure they are something people want. Then order them. Once they arrive launch the contest but this time everyone is a winner (yes you give them the old promotional products) but at the same time a nice new sparkly prize is for the big winner.

Building a Buzz
The next step - once you have the pieces ready - is to start generating a buzz about the contest. This is going to take some work, but this is also where the old promotional products will come in very handy. Make sure to give one to every customer who walks through the door, make sure they know that they have been entered into a contest, make sure they know that the prize is something big and something they want. After all this is a change to make good off of the last one and its time to pull out all the stops.

Once you have people aware of the contest, and once you have gotten a buzz going, it is time to give away the big prize. You want this to be a big event. Do something big like slash prices at your business, or even order a grip of new promotional products to give away. The important thing here is to build as much a sense of excitement as you can. Also make sure everyone involved is feeling like a winner already. That way even if they don’t win the big prize they still feel a great buzz from your business. This is sure to bring people back in droves, and even if you were not in that bad of shape, improving the state of your business is always a good thing.

Energizing the Company
Once the contest is done, there is likely to be a new sense of energy in the company. This sense of energy is likely to pervade from the employees all the way to the customers. Again it is important to remember just because something did not go as well as we would like is no reason not to try a different strategy. That is the wonderful thing about using promotional products as prizes in a contest, it is a way to make everyone feel like they are a winner, and when people feel like winners they are likely to go back to the source that gave them that feeling.

It doesn’t take a bad promotional campaign to inspire a contest either. If you are a looking for a way to do your next promotional campaign, it might be worth taking a chance on a real big contest. After all if everyone is a winner that means you as well.