Can Contests Work for B2B Marketing?

Contests are a very popular viral marketing method for B2C Web sites. In a consumer-focused model, it makes a lot of sense to bring in a large number of potential customers to your site, with the hope of converting them into buyers or adding them to your direct marketing lists.

But, are contests a sensible marketing tactic for B2B companies?

Concerns

Understandable questions and concerns include:

• Brand Damage – Will a contest damage my brand?
• Lead Generation - Is this a cost-effective way to generate leads?
• Audience Participation - Would any of my potential customers ever participate?
• Legal Ramifications - How can the liability risks be minimized?
• Blown Budget - Why waste the money and resources?

Brand Damage

Any time you put your company out there, you are taking some risk. Running a contest is definitely one of the riskier activities for a B2B company to engage in. However, when done well, a contest program will enhance your company’s brand awareness.

One way to mitigate the risk of damaging your brand is to offer a prize that is highly-relevant to your business. If you are a manufacturer of industrial equipment, offering an iPod to the winners doesn’t align well with your brand. The best way to make an offering relevant is to give away one of your own products or services.

But, you can come up with other interesting ideas such as getting a partner to offer a complementary product to your business, providing a relevant industry research report, training/education from a third party, passes to an industry event, or even passes to an event that your audience would naturally be interested in attending (but that is not an industry event).

You can also minimize risk by thinking through your promotional plan and making sure not to reach out to sites, bloggers, communities, etc. that might react negatively to your contest.

Lead Generation

Generally speaking, contests are not going to generate direct leads for a B2B company.

It’s not that leads can’t be generated, it is more that people do not participate in contests because they are actively seeking the contest sponsor’s products and services.

There are definitely exceptions to this. For example, MasterLift (a Canadian forklift truck company) created a contest called “Pimp My Lift”. A case study was written about this contest in MarketingSherpa, where MasterLift indicated that the contest generated leads and increased sales. Here is a link to the MarketingSherpa case study, but you will either need to be a registered member of MarketingSherpa, or you can access this article with a free trial – ‘Pimped-Out’ Microsite Triggers Viral Explosion: Accounts Double; Sales Leap.

If a contest is not focused on generating direct leads, the contact lists that are generated from a contest provide opportunities to add industry-relevant people to an ongoing Marketing communications stream (e.g. newsletters, product announcements, trade show invitations, etc.). Depending on your lead qualification criteria, you could classify contest entrants as “soft” leads.

In order for a B2B company to justify the expense of managing a contest, there has to be the belief that there are a host of benefits other than direct lead generation (see the Benefits section of this newsletter below for more information).

Audience Participation

Here’s the question – “Would any of my potential customers ever participate in a contest?”

“Yes.” And, “No.”

This will depend on the level of seniority of the people you are target in your typical sales process.

It is doubtful that a contest will capture the participation of C-level employees or other senior executives.

If you are selling to small business owners, you may be able to capture a portion of that audience.

However, if your typical buyer is a “mid-level” employee, then there is a very good chance that you will be able to target that audience. In cases where purchasing decisions are made at the executive level, there is still the opportunity to capture the attention and participation of initial researchers and influencers in the buying process.

Legal Ramifications

Any contest is definitely going to require the participation of a legal representative.

However, because contests have been run many, many times by other companies, even in the B2B world, there are plenty of opportunities to examine how other companies have structured their guidelines.  Try this Google search for “sample contest rules“.

Blown Budget

With any marketing initiative, especially one that relies on a viral promotion component, there is always the risk of wasting time and money.

Below you will find a discussion of the Benefits that contests can bring, as well as a list of Resources that include case studies and examples of B2B companies that have effectively used contests.

Benefits

• Links – Contests are the perfect vehicle to generate links to your Web site. In-bound links will ultimately help you achieve better rankings in search engines for keywords that will generate direct leads.
   
• Traffic – Simply put, more traffic to the site equals more opportunity to educate people about your products and services.
   
• Marketing Lists – Contests will generate submissions/registrations that can feed your e-mail marketing lists.
   
• Brand Awareness – Beyond the visits that will come to your site, your company’s brand will be seen across all of the places where the contest is being promoted (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, community websites, etc.)
   
• Content – Many contests will gather content for your Web site, via User Generated Content. If your contest has asked for submissions (video, articles, tools, etc.), then you will have something extremely valuable to use on your site to help with search engine optimization and link building.
   
• Social Media Buzz – Not only will you build registration lists that can be used for e-mail marketing, your social media profiles will receive attention and followers/fans/subscribers.

Examples & Resources

MarketingSherpa (case studies):

• B2B Viral Campaigns that Delivered: 6 Examples
• Trade Show Strategy Overhaul: 6 Steps to 36% Larger Deal Size
• How to Build a Subscriber List Inexpensively Using Blogs, Contests
• How Branded Cookies and Gas Card Giveaway Beat Budget Cuts: 6 Steps to 10% Lead Gen
• ‘Pimped-Out’ Microsite Triggers Viral Explosion: Accounts Double; Sales Leap

Articles & Case Studies:

Bonus! An SEO Contest

Submit Your SEO Horror Story