Are Sweepstakes worth the Money

From the day I started working with online data I was told "Sweepstakes are worthless". Yet I have seen more Marketing sweepstakes come and go in the industry than I can count. I mean there are specialty companies that create sweepstakes and they are really profitable. The company isn't putting up the money for the prize, they are just producing the site and fulfilling the prizes, the client is coming up with the money. So, are companies seeing real returns for their dollars? I can't speak to my data but looking at the press releases and other sources it appears that sweepstakes do generate awareness about new or reborn products and yes have attributable sales to them. The only thing I would like to see is did the consumer enter the sweeps to "get a chance to win" what they already planned on purchasing? I will continue to scour the blogs/posts/PR to find the answer because to me that is the real question not, did anyone that bought my product enter the sweeps....

Web Analytics Planning Update

Bob posted a comment on the previous planning post:

Bob Page said...
"It's been six months since you implemented your methodology .. how's it working out?"

I felt the need to respond where it was picked up by the feed readers, due to that is how I am realizing this blog is being consumed.

Well, here is the update. Things didn't go 100% as planned, but we have made tremendous progress. The full blown planning document didn't quite make the light of day. The core of the document made it into our Scope Of Work document (SOW). Which is a massive improvement from our previous process. The SOW identifies all the business requirements and all the supporting documentation needed to perform the campaign analysis. We work in a very fast paced marketing climate and I wasn't able to be everywhere all the time. We "upgraded" our account staff and we went through an education process, "Web Analytics 101" if you will and they are now asking the questions that need to be asked. We made our account staff web analytics advocates, this eliminated the stress of having to be everywhere and also enabled the analysts to do their job, not sit in meetings. I/We decided that the "Value Add" part of what my department does is the analysis, consulting and optimization recommendations. We need to continue to educate the front line and foster their advocatcy.

The methodology has changed slightly, but I learned that trying to force people to behave differently is not in anyone's best interest. You need to work with the system and make the system work for you. I think the methodology with constantly morph and will become more perfect with every revision.

Chris

Forrester Day Two

The second day was very insightful. Charlene discussed why and how we should be listening to our consumers and developing our marketing on their terms opposed to trying to market "at them". Her take is that society has become "pull" marketing focused and "push" marketing is slowly dying. From my experience I think she is on the right track, more and more people are doing their own research online and generating their own hypotheses. The number one influencer in that research is peer groups not the OEM...

The next session was focused on Frog Design and Sprint/Nextel and how they are working together to create consumer goods of the future. It was a good presentation but more focused on things to come on the next ten years not what is happening today.

I then took a break and caught up on some work.

When I returned I sat in a session about segmentation and how companies are using segmentation to better market to their consumers. I was really enamored with Best Buy and their approach. Most companies segment their consumers and then focus on the high profit segment and let the other segments go away or they try to push the other segments into the highly profitable segment. Both seem pretty silly. BestBuy takes a different approach. All segments are alike, lets create business managers and have them focus on their particular segment. Set goals and objectives for that segment and let each segment flourish on their own. To me this is one aspect Charlene was talking about, find out what drives a particular segment and then market to that segment the way they want on their terms.

The final session I sat in was about Viral marketing, Jacob McKee from Lego was there and I think he really understands what needs to be done for his company. But his responses were more around enthusiast management not viral. He really knows how to foster an enthusiast and convert them into a brand advocate. I really think he and Jim Nail summed it up when they informed the crowd, "people are already talking about your products, find them and make them advocates."


My view.... Of course

Chris