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Win
Competitions on the Web - Part 1
By
Lynne Suzanne
When
I first discovered comping on the web, I thought hey,
this is great. Perhaps you thought so too.
Think
of the advantages – no postage costs, no envelopes.
Just settle down in front of the screen with a nice
cuppa tea. Log on to the Internet, search for a few
competitions and enter.
Bliss!
Or
so I thought. Perhaps this is your experience too.
I
decided to compare postal comping with comping on the
web and allocated myself an hour of Internet comping.
But where do you start? That’s a good question.
Well,
supermarkets have competition entry forms so why not
start there, seemed to be an obvious answer.
Bombarded
with TV adverts to visit www.companyname.co.uk and www.anothercompanyname.com
I concluded that if I keyed in each supermarket name
followed by either .co.uk or .com I’d get
somewhere.
So
I started with store names adding a .co.uk or .com
Now when you enter a website, it’s a bit like going
into a store. You go through the door, decide
which aisles to wander down, have a look around, take
any purchases to the check out, pay and exit. Similarly,
you enter a website and instead of viewing aisles, you
look at the navigation bar, which is usually on the
left hand side of your screen, make your selection and
with a double click of your mouse, in you go to another
page.
At
one web store I discovered a hyperlink which invited
me to `Register for news and win’. A hyperlink,
just in case you are new to web comping, is either a
word which appears in blue lettering and is underlined
or a picture, which when you move your mouse’s
cursor over it, displays a hand symbol.
This then tells you that if you double click you will
hyperlink straight into another page or in some instances
another website.
So
I double clicked the hyperlink, and hey presto,
I was on another page which explained about the prize
draw.
At
some websites you go straight to the prize competition
page where you can enter. Others take you to a
page which explains about the prize competition, only
after you’ve read through a mountain of text
about a new product or service and clicked through
half a dozen or so more pages to get to it.
Now
I know you’re not so naïve as to think that promoters
give away a car, holiday or other prizes just for the
fun of it. Organising competitions is a marketing
tool. Reasons for doing so are many.
It
could be to draw your attention to the launch of a new
product. The promoter may have added a new flavour to
its existing range of pizza and a prize draw will alert
your attention.
They
may want to ensure a new brand quickly becomes a household
name so ensures repetition of its name by inviting you
to see how many words you can make from its name.
Now
you’re not going to spend hours doing that are
you, without some sort of incentive. The incentive
of course is the prize.
Here’s
a real life instance of how powerful a marketing and
advertising tool competitions are…
You
can read Win Competitions on the Web – Part 2
© Copyright 2002 Lynne Suzanne www.win-with-lynne.co.uk
About
the author
Lynne Suzanne is a freelance writer, consultant and
speaker. She has written four books on winning prize
competitions and slogan writing and presents Win With
Lynne Roadshows and marketing seminars.
FREE Win With Lynne Expert Guide to Winning competition
prizes
http://www.win-with-lynne.co.uk
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