Photo Contests for Big Business are effective. Most of those contests are receiving 1000’s of photos, with 100,000’s of votes. That’s a lot of customer interaction for a relatively low investment of a photo contest.
However, my company, “Traverse City Video” isn’t exactly big business. We shoot about 8-10 weddings per summer and have been averaging 50 visitors per month to our site. Because photo contests through “PhotoScramble” are currently free, I purchased a $50 gift certificate to a local party store (for the prize) and created a contest. I was blown away by the 568% increase in traffic over the last month. Granted, I wasn’t getting thousands of hits to start with, but 568% is impressive non the less.
Photo Contest with PhotoScramble= 5 times more traffic to my site!
What can you do?
1. Find a local organization saturated with your target market. (boating club, sports league, playhouse, etc)
2. Offer a prize that is valuable to them, and inexpensive as possible for you
3. Create a photo contest on www.PhotoScramble.com, which is free through August. The theme should be fun and engaging, with photo requirements that are easy.
4. Push the contest however you can: facebook, newsletter, invoices, etc.
5. Watch the traffic increase to your site. For me, a $50 gift certificate meant 5 times more traffic for that month.
Zack Wessels, Traverse City Video