What Are the Best Contest Mechanisms?

School’s back in session in many parts of the country and those that aren’t back yet are in the final throes of summer vacation. At NuVoodoo, we’re getting ready for The NuVoodoo Fall 2019 Contesting and Marketing Guide. It’s our latest free webinar, set to launch after the Labor Day holiday on Wednesday, September 11. You’ll find registration links for any of three sessions of this new webinar at nuvoodoo.com/webinars.

We’ll take no more than 45 minutes (including time to answer your questions), but we’ll have a lot to cover:

• A review of contesting best practices from the NuVoodoo playbook.
• What the key advantages of FM are among different format constituencies.
• If Smart Speakers are really THAT important.
• The Social Media platforms that your station needs for organic reach and paid reach.
• Who skips pre-roll video ads … and who doesn’t.
• What the best contest packaging opportunities are.
• Whether or not radio has improved its image when it comes to “rigged contests.”

In the first webinar in the series, “How to Win the Workplace War,” NuVoodoo Marketing EVP Mike O’Connor, reached back to past NuVoodoo Ratings Prospects Studies to show the power of “The Name Game” for at-work listening (where listeners register for the contest and then listen for … their name). It’s also a powerful tool to lure heavy broadcast radio listeners, defined here as those listening at least an hour a day.

Call-in-to-win games continue to decline, as the demos that grew up with them slowly age out of the money. While it stirs the DJ within us all to see a bank of phone lines flashing, call-in contests are just less popular today. However, call-ins DO one very important thing: they allow stations a convenient way to grab audio from the winner. And using winner audio on the air is a powerful tool in keeping at bay the suspicion that contests are rigged or that the prizes don’t really get awarded.

If you’re going to play “The Name Game,” it’s wise to ask for no more information than you really need. In most cases, we believe that email address, name and a checkbox to confirm they’re “of age” is sufficient. The less information you require, the more people will register – which means more people are thinking about listening to your station to win the prize.

NuVoodoo VP Product & Business Development, PJ Kling, and I will dive deep into all things related to contesting, divvied up by ratings likelies, demos and format constituencies (including thirteen slices of music P1’s and four types of talk P1’s) in The NuVoodoo Fall 2019 Contesting and Marketing Guide. Register at nuvoodoo.com/webinars.