Monday, October 29, 2007

Online Contest a Slam Dunk for Website Traffic

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) partnered with 5W Public Relations in New York to generate traffic to their newly redesigned website. The team devised a web based contest that I thought was absolutely brilliant and fun – check it out!

The web based contest, PetStyle Contest, invited animal lovers to upload their favorite picture of their pets. Piggy backing off of American Idol’s voting tactics, registered users were allowed to vote for their favorite picture. The top 10 pictures won various prizes.

This fun and innovative contest yielded great results for the SPCA:

Coverage by industry reporters on local and regional beats, publications and blogs
Viral penetration by “send a friend email option” which was utilized 9,500 times
Generated traffic – 1.5 million pageviews (doubling previous total)
Created new brand loyalty – 700 people offered to volunteer for SPCA
Active participation in event – 3,650 photos submitted and 12,500 voters

The next time you are thinking of a creative way to drive more traffic to your website and satisfy your customers – remember the SPCA’s creative efforts. It’s not only beneficial to you but also to your audience.

For more information check out http://www.spca.org/

2 comments:

larybla said...

I think contests are greate ways to generate traffic and other benefits as mentioned in the article. I am a small marketer and don't have a lot of resources to fund a prize. Anyone with any ideas of budget prizes? What about a marketing ebook?

the pr lawyer said...

As long as it's a good book, that's a great way to promote the book too. It also needs to be a book that would be targeted to the same audience as the contest -- otherwise, it's of no value. You can be very creative with prizes. Often, you can partner with another organization that will donate the prize. Have fun with it and don't be afraid to ask others to get involved.