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Oct
9

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How to Launch your Startup with a Giveaway Campaign

Category: Beginners Guide, Business Strategy, Online contest Tags: , , , 1 Comment

You are a startup, and you have just released a new product, and you would like to let a maximum of people to know there is something new and valuable in the marketplace. After you have sent your tweets, Facebook status updates and emailed your friends and contacts, you still don’t notice anything great happening. Your website traffic gets back to 20 unique visits a day, and Techcrunch/Mashable never answered your message.

It’s time to think about some proven ways to get more people into your website at a low cost your unfunded startup could afford, and also something you can have control over: Giveaways Contests

Giveaways Contests are one of the most effective way to entice people to do something for you. Here are few steps you can follow to promote your startup with a giveaway Campaign.

What is a giveaway?

A giveaway is a marketing tactic where something is given away for free. Companies often use giveaways to spread the word about their products, to make their brand more memorable in customers’ minds, or to get people to try something new in the hopes that they will continue to buy the product.

Big companies know well how effective giveaways campaigns are, and do thousands of giveaways campaigns a year. Small businesses still have to grasp  the concept and use it to their advantage, like the big guys!

Define your target audience

The first step in your overall effort is to define precisely your target audience, or the very people you want to attract to your giveaway promotion. Don’t write “I want to reach students”, but “I want to reach students who are interested into become entrepreneurs”.

Select your prize

A good definition of our audience will help you know what kind prize to attach to your promotion. Women with a newborn would love to receive a huge discount on pampers diapers, or will fiercely compete to win “1 year Free supply of pampers diapers delivered to their door”. Startup founders will fiercely compete to win a $1000 Facebook ads credits or Google Adwords credits.

Chose your price regarding the intrinsic motivation of your target audience, and keep in mind to select a prize that could be somehow related to your brand.

A caution here. It’ll be inefficient to use your own startup product for a giveaway when no one knows about you, or your brand is not strong enough to entice a lot of people.

Use an online tool to organize your contests

There are many tools online to organize contests. Most of them are similar to Goodbuzz, and can be equally capable in helping you manage your online contests. Here are few of them:

- Strutta.com
- Wildfireapp.com
- Rafflecopter.com
- Contestmachine.com
- Giveawaytools.com

You can all give them a trial, however if you want to go with the most simple, and the most focused on marketing results, you might give your preference to Goodbuzz. Typically, any user of Goodbuzz widget would get 30% to 50% traffic increase to his/her website in less than 30 days.

The main value of Goodbuzz is that it makes it easier for small business and event organizers to create and run a giveaway. The widget manages everything for the advertiser, from participants registration to the prize claiming. The pages are clean. The advertiser has access to all participants contacts, and also real time statistics about sharing and participation. The advertiser could also customize in advance what people will share on social medias making the impact of their campaign more powerful.

Here are some feedback we have received from our users.

“We have evidenced that GoodBuzz Share to Win solution yields 7 times more Sharing activity compared to traditional Tweet and Like this Buttons.
In addition, a single Share via GoodBuzz yields 11 Visits to our web site. We have found that integrating GoodBuzz campaign as an integral part of web site user experience is the Best way to deploy social media sharing in a fun and intuitive, and most rewarding way.”

Testimonial from Joiku.com – they have ran about 8 promotions with Goodbuzz: http://www.joiku.com/share-to-win

I did see about a 30% increase in page views and visitors, but I didn’t promote it as fiercely as I should have.  I was really just giving Goodbuzz a test run to see if it would be good to use for one of my clients.
Thanks so much!

Testimonial from Christa Wojciechowski – webbella.com
twitter.com/webbella
facebook.com/webbella 

4. Promote your contests

Even if your promotion prize is very attractive, you still need to spend some time and resource to promote it:

  • Post the promotion on your blog
  • Insert a link to the promotion page into your newsletters
  • Advertise the promotion using your current advertising channels: adwords, facebook ads, linkedin ads, banners, sponsorship, PR, twitter, etc.

Remember, don’t post your giveaways contest on contests directories or contests aggregation portals. You’ll get lot of entries but mainly from “professional” freebies seekers. They are not interested in your business. They use automated tools to enter hundreds of contest daily, and they will unsubscribe from your list instantly afterward. They want only your prize, and don’t care about who you are, and what your business is all about.

5. Monitor your progress toward your goals

The goal for a giveaway contest could be branding, list building, community engagement or publicity. Your giveaways tools should be able to help you get an instant idea of how your promotion is doing, eventually contact your best evangelists or supporters who would give you additional feedback about your brand and products.

Here is a typical dashboard we provide for Goodbuzz users:

6. Contact the winner and deliver your prize

You should build trust in your brand by delivering the prize you’ve promised to the winners. Announcing the winner could be the moment you chose to get your news in front of all the participants into your contest. Eventually, you can take a shortcut to give a discount to non-winners, and announce upcoming events or products.

7. Keep in on touch, but don’t spam

Once you have build a mailing list or get followers from your promotion, make sure you keep in touch with your new contacts. Engage them with new contests, and provide them information that might enhance your brand.

If you have any question, or need help to create and run a giveaway contest, you can contact me at mk@goodbuzz.org

Jan
18

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The best advertisement for a Startup

Category: Beginners Guide, Success stories Tags: , , Leave a Comment

Without comment here are the 2 best advertisements ever for startups that made history.

“You press the button, … We do the rest.” Kodak

“You make the music … we sell it worldwide” Cdbaby.com

Lesson learned: Help your customers kick ass

 

Jan
13

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Tutorial: How to Start a promotion with Goodbuzz

Category: Beginners Guide, GoodBuzz Video Tags: , , Leave a Comment

Dec
27

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Goodbuzz Challenges Advertisers on How to spend their Budget

Category: Beginners Guide, Press Release, Social Medias Tags: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Goodbuzz’s new social marketing app  challenges advertisers, not to spend their advertising budget in a traditional way, but to give directly their budget to theirs fans, followers and clients to do the marketing job for them.

“Imagine you have a $1000 budget to promote your website, your shop on etsy, or to launch new product. How will you spend this money?”

Will you spend it to:
⁃    Buy clicks on Google Adwords?
⁃    Buy traffic from Stumbleupon? clicks from Reddit?
⁃    Try Facebook Ads?
⁃    Buy banner display on some blogs or affiliate networks?

Whatever your decision, now ask yourself, when you’re looking for an event to go to, a product to buy, or a non-profit to support, do you pay attention to advertising or do you listen to what your friends recommend?

If your answer is, “I listen more to my friends and direct contacts”, then Goodbuzz is the place to leverage people power to promote your business and events.

How it works is that advertisers post their advertisement to the Goodbuzz website and deposit a tip (a sum of money) for people who like the advertisement and want to spread the message to friends and followers. At the end of the campaign, the tip is split between these sharers, relative to the leads they’ve generated.

Goodbuzz works because nowadays 75% of people discover new things because another person has shared them with them.

“As a result, Goodbuzz helps advertisers achieve amazing marketing results, and creates opportunity for a lot of people to earn extra money every month doing what they have always been doing, sharing what they like with friends and followers.”

Goodbuzz has just launched, and still has to see his big plan to change the advertising landmark to become a reality. There are only few promotions now as the platform is exiting beta version, but GoodBuzz’s execution is as good as its idea… The web app is well designed and has a ton of features.

Dec
26

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Earn Money Every time You Share Something

Category: Beginners Guide, Friendcasting, Social Medias, Success stories Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Could you imagine earning money every time you share something on the web?
Sharing on the web is something you are already doing. Every time you find something interesting you click to “like it” or “share it” with friends and followers.

Do you know that every day, people share millions of companies’ links on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. and by the way drive traffic to their websites and shops, making their business to grow, and in the end making them a lot of money.

Slowly, many companies began to recognize that the time you spend finding and sharing their content is precious, and are ready to give back. They will start giving tips, like in restaurants and bars, to people who spread their message. And, GoodBuzz is the platform to go to receive these tips.

How it works?  
Advertisers post their advertisements, then deposit a tip (a sum of money) for people who happen to like what they are doing, to spread the message to their friends and followers. At the end of the campaign, the tip is split between the people who spread the advertiser’s message.

Meet Ella. Ella is a marketer in New York. She has an event to promote, and needs to make sure that she fills up the seats or maximizes visitors. After she has sent her tweets, Facebook status updates and emailed her friends and business contacts, she still can’t seem to fill up the seats.

Ella was running out of time, when a friend told her about Goodbuzz. Ella posted her event on Goodbuzz; offered $500 tips to people to help her spread the message.

The results were instant. Hundreds of people visited the event page and spread her message to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and by email. In less than 48hours, her event sold out. Ella is Happy!

It worked, because nowadays 75% of people discover new things because another person has shared them with them.

Francis is one of the people who helped Ella. At the end of the campaign, Francis received eight dollars and fifty cents for the leads generated for Ella.
During the last 15 days, Francis has earned a total of $128 tips doing what he has always been doing, sharing useful content with friends and followers. Francis is Happy! The time he spent finding and sharing is rewarded.

Join Goodbuzz to Earn extra cash every month while supporting people and business you like.

Dec
26

By

Ask people to help you spread your message

Category: Beginners Guide, P2P Peer to Peer Marketing, Peer Referral Network, Referral Requests, Success stories Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

Meet Ella. Ella is a marketer in New York. She has an event to promote, and needs to make sure that she fills up the seats or maximizes visitors. After she has sent her tweets, Facebook status updates and emailed her friends and business contacts, she still can’t seem to fill up the seats.

Often, event organizers’ campaigns are limited by the number of people they could reach directly through their mailing list, twitter followers, facebook friends, etc. Otherwise they have to spend money in advertising trying to reach their indirect contacts.

Unfortunately, advertising doesn’t work very well for events, because when it comes to event promotion, the event producer is the less influential in people decision to attend. In reality, it’s the event endorsers who has the power and the ability to draw the biggest part of the attendees. The more endorsers you can mobilize for your event promotion, the faster you’ll reach your target audience. Endorsers are the backbone of any successful event promotion.

But, how could Ella get hundreds of endorsers for here event now?
Ella doesn’t have a big rolodex, and no direct connection to influential bloggers and journalists. Furthermore, all other promotional actions require a lot of time to be effective.

Ella was running out of time, when a friend told her about Goodbuzz. Ella posted her event on Goodbuzz; offered $500 tips to people to help her spread the message.

The results were instant. Hundreds of people visited the event page and spread her message to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and by email. In less than 48hours, her event sold out. Ella is Happy!

It worked, because nowadays 75% of people discover new things because another person has shared them with them.

Francis is one of the people who helped Ella. At the end of the campaign, Francis received eight dollars and fifty cents for the leads generated for Ella. Francis is Happy! The time he spent finding and sharing is rewarded.

When traditional methods have failed you, give Goodbuzz a try. It is easy to use, safe for brands, affordable, and delivers better marketing results faster.

Dec
16

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How to Scale Yourself and Change the world

Category: Beginners Guide, Life Success Tags: , , , , , Leave a Comment

The world as Steve Jobs saw it:

When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

Dec
1

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Why people share, what they share, when and how much?

Category: Beginners Guide, Peer Referral Network, Social Medias Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

  • Sharing is Big, it’s the second largest activity on the web, and the most widespread social behavior

  • Sharing is now bigger and more powerful than friends, followers, connections, and is poised to take over search in the next years.

Facebook now accounts for 8.93% of all website visits in the US. All of Google’s properties including YouTube, Gmail, Google accounts for 9.85% – Experian Hitwise

  • The Zuckerberg’s Law

In 2010, people spent nearly 25% of their time on social networks (a 43% increase from 2009) compared to only 3.3% for search, and 4.4 for web portals. (Nielsen)
As an advertiser, you might be where your customers spent their time.

  • Sharing is the heart of the Web


The average consumer mentions specific brands over 90 times per week in conversations with friends, family, and co-workers. (Keller Fay, WOMMA, 2010).
You want to be among the brands mentioned, do you?

When people share, they share their love for your brand, your product or service.

  • Sharing has economical value

In a study conducted by social networking site myYearbook, 81 per-cent of respondents said they’d received advice from friends and fol-lowers relating to a product purchase through a social site; 74 per-cent of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision. (Click Z, January 2010)

A visitor coming from a social media site is ten times more likely to make a purchase online than an average visitor (Simply Zesty, 2010)

Majority of consumers (74%) rely on social networks to guide pur-chase decisions. (Gartner, July 2010)

  • Sharing closes the gap between awareness and purchase

Eighty-three percent of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their de-cision to buy the product in the first place. (Manage Smarter, Sep-tember 2009)

69% of Moms are likely to purchase a product based on what was heard through their online social network. (emarketer, 2010)

In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media. (Opinion from Socialnomics, August 2009)

  • Why do you need sharing from your fans?

A recent ComScore Report discovered that the Facebook Newsfeed is the primary location where branded content is consumed. Users are 40-150 times more likely to consume branded content in the Newsfeed than to visit the Fan Page itself.

Unfortunately, only a tiny fragment (2.5% or less) of what a brand posts on a fan page reaches its fans’ newsfeed or profile page.


To get fast and better results, advertisers need to focus on the News feeds.

  • Why people will unlike, hide or  unfollow you?

43% of Facebook users who “unlike” or hide a brand do so because of too much marketing into their newsfeed. 41% of users who have un-followed a brand on Twitter did so because they were over-marketed to – ExactTarget

You are not always the best person to push your message. Let people to it for you. First, they market you to themselves, then they market you to their friends. A Double win.

People influence people. Sharing is how they do that on the web or in real life.

Nov
17

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3 Quotes from 3 of the Best Marketing Genius of our Time

Category: Beginners Guide Tags: , , Leave a Comment

“In our new world speed matters a lot. Things are changing so fast. Marketers need innovation that delivers on scale, and on speed.”

Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, VivaKi

“The number one and most important crime against marketing is “Not spending 15% of your Marketing budget, every month, on experimenting with new techniques / channels / ideas.”

Our world changes at immense speed. Consistently allocate 15% of your marketing budget trying things you don’t currently do, is a better way to ensure your relevancy and fat bottom-line.”

Avinash Kaushik, Marketing guru, Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google

“The secret is respecting the consumer. You are interrupting their life. All advertising is unwanted, so if you’re going to crash the party, bring some champagne with you. “

Bob Thacker, senior VP-marketing and advertising at OfficeMax

Apr
26

By

The Best Explanation of GoodBuzz

Category: Beginners Guide, Event Promotion, Media Coverage, Mission Statement Tags: , , Leave a Comment

The best thing that could happen to you is when your customers explain your service to other customers better than you will do yourself.
This week, GoodBuzz received a lot of media coverage, and among all, the following explanation of what is the GoodBuzz network has all captured the essence of the service:

You have an event but you need to make sure that you fill up the seats or maximizing your visitors, you have sent your tweets, facebook status updates and emailed your friends, but still can’t seem to fill up the seats. Goodbuzz could be the right solution for you in this situation.

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