How To Run A Competition in Australia

So, you want to grow your business through an amazing promotion. Promotional campaigns have the potential to skyrocket your brand and your business — so we totally get the allure of these.

We’re really big on promotions for a few reasons. The right promotion, planned in accordance with your goals, doesn’t just have the ability to drive engagement and sales — it can reposition your brand.

The right promotion is fun too — fun in a way that resonates with your ideal target audience and sets you apart from a sea of competitors.

With a well-planned promotion, you can achieve both brand loyalty and business growth.

So, how do you pull off the perfect promotion? Well, there are a few things to consider:

• Your goals for the promotion — what are you hoping to achieve? An increase in sales? A bigger social following?
• The type of promotion — what kind of promotion will achieve your goals? Is it realistic for your business?
• Promotion insurance — what happens if someone wins the big prize? Have you taken out a promotion insurance policy?
• All the nitty-gritty bits — how will you pay for it? How will you market the promotion? How will winners be contacted?

Don’t stress though, we’re about to take you through it all.

Why run a promotion? What should your goal be?

The first step in running a successful promotion is working out why you’re doing it. As in, what’s the goal?

To identify your goal though, you’ll need to know what sort of things you can achieve with a promotion as well as why you’re opting for a promotion over a classic marketing campaign.

Work within a fixed budget, knowing larger prizes are covered by promotion insurance. Of course, you want to take a slice of it for your business.

Our favourite thing about promotional competitions is that they’re so safe. You can work within a fixed budget, understanding exactly what you have to cover and which larger prizes will be covered by your promotion insurance policy.

Engage your clientele with your brand, suppliers & sponsors

Engagement is a perk that comes with almost any promotional campaign. These campaigns are usually playful, fun, and engaging by nature — so it’s hard to go wrong.

Customers are incentivised to engage with you or your content for the incentive of the prize. But there’s often the two-fold benefit of additional engagement from the interest your promotion has stirred up.

Take this sport-based promotion as an example. Land Rover has run a promotion where at a Wallabies rugby game, they’ve given a lucky entrant the opportunity to win a Discovery Sport. The entrant has to kick the ball into the boot of the car to win it.

Not only has Land Rover drummed up customer engagement by running the competition for the chance to kick, but they’ve also created engagement and emotional investment in what happens — will he win it or won’t he?

That’s a whole stadium of additional engagement.

Expand your social media presence

We’ve all seen these. Go into the draw to win XYZ — just follow our page, like this post, and share it.

It’s a simple premise but with the right prize, offering the right kind of value, this can come with astronomical value for your business.

This is an especially smart promotion if the prize you’re offering qualifies the customer. As in, you’re receiving entries for the competition from people who already want or need your product.

Capture data & further develop your marketing tools

As businesses and marketing progress, data is becoming more and more valuable.

Promotional competitions can be used as an incentive for sharing data. Think customer feedback, contact details for further promotions, and valuable insights into your target market.

This data directly impacts your future marketing campaigns and arms you with valuable knowledge about your target market.

Achieve measurable ROI

A well-planned promotion with an on-point structure will deliver a measurable return on investment.

Whether via the entries, the trackable shares, or tracked purchases, you can trace your promotion back to the start. It means you know exactly where you’ve succeeded in your promotion and what that translates to in dollars.

Change your social status & messaging

Especially with games of skill and random promotions like weather games, you have an opportunity to change how your audience sees you.

We don’t just mean growing your brand and following either — although, promotions are proven to do just that.

What we mean is, you can change or cement how your brand is seen. Take Red Lion Hotel’s promotion as an example.

They simply put out a call, letting locals know that as long as the temperature was above 45 degrees, the beers were on them.

It’s a fun promotion that motivates people to visit their venue in the moment. However, a generous promotion like this creates brand loyalty too.

The promotion stirred up media attention too — of course. This all trickles into a perception that Red Lion Hotel is a place for locals to enjoy and that they don’t take themselves too seriously.

Exactly what you want from a local pub.

Engage clientele from competitor establishments

Brand loyalty is dwindling and consumers can be nabbed from their favourite brands — no matter how long they’ve stayed true to them.

Encourage your target market to jump ship with an offer they simply can’t refuse.

So, what are your goals?

Do you want to increase your social media following? Encourage an increase in sales? Rebrand as a youthful and cool brand that doesn’t take life too seriously? Define your goals now, so you know exactly what kind of promotion you need to run to grow your brand how you want to. You might want to look at the list of benefits and potential goals in the section above and define one key goal for your promotion with some other sub-goals. Your sub-goals are those flow-on effects where you think, “Yeah, that’d be nice too!”

Different Promotion Types & Whether They’re For You

Here are a bunch of different types of promotions that can be run using promotion insurance. We’ve broken these down with the pros and cons of each, so you can work out which type is best for your specific goals.

Games of Chance

Games of chance are all about luck. It means no real skill is required to win the prize — just good luck.

Here’s a fun example of a game of chance with $1 million on the line.

The Pros

Games of chance are usually a great way to drive sales. You can offer your customers an incentive to purchase your product with a game of chance promotion. When they purchase a certain product or use a certain membership for a purchase, they’ll go in the draw to win big.

 

The Cons

Games of chance can be really fun and engaging. However, given it’s a game of chance, winning that major prize (the one that’s covered by promotion insurance) isn’t guaranteed — which can dilute that incentive a little bit. On the flip though, this gives you a promising opportunity to offer a generous consolation prize… Making it a no-brainer for your target audience.

Wheel Spin

A randomly selected customer is given the opportunity to spin a wheel for a chance to win a huge prize. These are usually pretty fun, given that each segment of the wheel offers a totally different prize.

Envelope Draw

One envelope has a huge prize in it. You select a contestant at random and they get to pick from a bucket-full of envelopes — with hopes of picking the right one.

Dice Roll

A randomly selected contestant gets the chance to roll dice from a cup. They have the chance to win a huge prize if the dice lands on the right number or a combination of numbers.

Draw ‘N Match

One of your lucky customers is selected and given the opportunity to draw cards and match them to other cards. If they match a certain number of pairs, they win a huge prize.

Sports Score Predictions

One contestant is selected and given the opportunity to guess the score of a sporting game. If they guess the score correctly, they can win a huge prize.

Games of Skill

A game of skill is a game that requires some kind of skill to win it. These are usually sport-based. So, kicking a ball to hit a target, serving a tennis ball through a target, or kicking a ball to hit a cross bar – all protected by, you said it, promotion insurance.

An example of a game of skill is Toyo Tyres’ Kick for Cash. Contestants get the chance to win $100,000 by kicking a footy into a stack of four tyres. Watch a GWS Giants fan have a crack below.

The Pros

Games of skill are really great ways to leverage sponsorship deals. These are usually sport-based and typically take place at big sporting events. So, it makes sense for a sponsor of a team, code, or stadium to take that sponsorship further through a big promotion.

Games of skill offer an opportunity to drive sales in the promotional period leading up to the game and then a further opportunity of additional advertisement. These promotions are highly engaging and offer you the opportunity to reposition your brand.

 

The Cons

Games of skill can be a lot of fun and create an opportunity to really engage with your customers but there is a con… The con with games of skill is that they can have lower entry rates, due to there still being an effort required on their part — as opposed to games of chance.

It means these aren’t always the best if product sales and data capture are a couple of your bigger priorities.

Kick for Cash

A Kick for Cash promotion is just like in the video above. The contestant is drawn at random and asked to kick a ball either a certain distance, through a target, or at a target.

Cross Bar Kicking Challenge

A randomly selected contestant is given the opportunity to kick a ball and hit the cross bar for the chance to win a big prize.

Target Throw

One contestant is selected at random and given the opportunity to throw a ball through or into a target to win a big prize.

Target Kick

A randomly selected contestant is offered the opportunity to kick a ball through or into a target for the chance to win a huge prize.

Full/Half-Court Basketball Shot

A randomly selected contestant is given the chance to score from half or full court distance to win a massive prize.

Golf Hole-In-One Prizes

Brand sponsors run a promotion where a large prize is on offer when someone hits a hole-in-one on their sponsored hole. These promotions are perfect for corporate or charity golf days.

Weather Promotions

Weather promotions can be a lot of fun, especially if they’re relevant to the weather. We touched earlier on Adelaide’s Red Lion Hotel promotion, pouring out free beers for the community as long as the temperature stayed above 45 degrees.

It’s a great promotion because hot days and beer go hand-in-hand.

These are a fun way to be different, reposition your brand, and drive sales by creatively using promotion insurance.

The Pros

Weather promotions are a fun way to increase sales, encourage visits to your venue, and engage with your audience.

Particularly promotions that are based around “the worse it gets, the better our offer.” It sends a message that you’re in it with them.

 

The Cons

Weather promotions can become distasteful if based around severe weather events — like cyclones and floods. So it’s important to keep those events in mind if you’re offering discounts for rainfall.

Watch the Weather

The Watch the Weather game is a promotion based on the weather. As an example, if the temperature exceeds 40 degrees on boxing day at the MCG, then all ticket holders receive a $20 voucher to spend in the Cricket Australia shop.

Consumer Redemption Promotions

Consumer redemption promotions (or Trade Promotions) are all about the customer getting something for less or for free when they make a purchase. These are usually based on a predetermined mechanic, like buying something during a promotional period to win a guaranteed prize.

The Pros

These promotions are proven to seriously drive sales.

 

The Cons

These promotions have the opportunity to perform “too well”. Pssst. That’s where promotion insurance comes in, but we’ll get to that.