Summary: Fitness Expert Reveals Contest Marketing Tactics Today I talk with Craig Ballantyne who has been featured in Mens Health Magazine and runs the popular fitness website TurbulenceTraining.com. Inside the fitness industry the concept of Contest Marketing is a huge wave spreading like wild fire. Craig just spoke about this exact topic at Underground Online seminar in Washington and I was there. In our interview Craig steps us through the reasons why contest marketing will be visiting a niche near you! (I also managed to squeeze in some fitness tips!) What is Contest Marketing? You hold a contest so that your prospects and clients get more involved with you and have increased communication. The before and after contests also generate a huge amount of content such as photos, testimonials and extensive feedback on the program. The consistancy and commitment aspects of Contest Marketing increase your influence. Also you get to serve the community and provide a support forum for yoru clients. In fact you create celebrities and an entourage effect with your clients that can have a magnetic effect over time. How it works You can use this in any industry to get people involved so long as you come up worth creative ways to incentivize people to take action. There are three main stages. Stage 1 - Taking actions Stage 2 - Getting results Stage 3 - Getting the success stories People would often not take any action unless they had a contest to participate in. Humans like incentives and deadlines. The business to business contest provides the means for people to take action. Prizes are awarded to people forgetting results and forum participation is encouraged but not compulsary. The contest is open to anyone around the world whether they are clients or not. Rules There are legal implications so you need to check the rules in your area and also get legal advice. If you want to see the rules Craig uses listen to the audio. Making it free exposes the widest audience to your marketing. More Benefits People who participate in the forums the most get the best results. You get a lot more contact opportunities for you to develop the relationship. You get to announce the pre-content start then the close of the session. Then you get to let people know when the end is nigh and then the final close. Then you have the voting and then the final results. Then if you like you can let them know about the next contest. Craig runs three contests per year. People are so involved they get upset if you do not contact them! Where The Idea Came From People have a huge WIFM (whats in it for me) motivation to do this. Craig got the idea for this from Yanik Silver and the number of entires shocked him! Other Applications I asked Craig how I would involve readers in my blog contest. He suggested using something like an essay submission. In the past he had people submit the best answers about how the product he was selling enhanced for them. There were over 120 emotional submissions. They were combined into a report for helping others learn about the benefits of his program. Getting interaction from your client base has similar aspects to the social networking going on at the moment. There is no iron curtain bewtween the consumer and the expert. The Entourage Craig details the entourage technique. This is where your celebrity helps you bring others into your area. The celebrities are the first winners of the contest. Otrher people then are attracted to them and they get a big profile. Eventually other people will start to interview your celebrity clients. It then grows far more powerfully. Using before and after contests emplys the great aspects of visualization. Show a before and after results is the easiest way to demonstrate results. All of this can be done without a membership site. Market Research Running contests also helps you gather immense amount of ideas for market research.
