What Are Best Practices when Planning a Contest? How Do Contests Work?

Contests are games of skill. This means that the winner is selected based on the quality of their entry as defined by the criteria outlined within the official rules. This selection is done via a combination of judging and/or voting.

Including contests as a part of your marketing mix is a great way to drive deep engagement with excited consumers, driving customer loyalty, and strengthening connection to your brand.

When planning your contest, there are four (4) core pillars to keep in mind:

1. The Type of Promotion – In this case a contest
2. The Method of Entry – How and where do you want people to enter your promotion? Does this reflect your marketing goals? In the case of a contest, what does a consumer need to do to enter? Contest can be complex and have more details to communicate.
3. The Prizes – What is the incentive you are leading with? What prizes do want to award?
4. The Rules and Legal Compliance Requirements – We can help you with complete and legally-compliant rules, make sure all important details are spelled out, and that all legal best practices are followed.

Contests present a unique opportunity for Sponsors to be creative in the format of the “call to entry”. Popular contest entry methods include:

• Photo Contests: Submit a photo, following the contest guidelines
• Essay or Story Contests: Submit an essay, story, or answer a series of prompts
• Graphic Design Contests: Follow a creative design prompt as a part of the entry
• Video Contests:Submit a video, following the contest guidelines

The possibilities don’t end there! Plan your contest so that it aligns with your core marketing goals and KPIs.

Keeping this in mind, you are able to craft a contest that is designed to drive success across your marketing goals, such as:

• Creating buzz around new product launches
• Generating consumer content related to your brand or product
• Re-engaging lapsed customers
• Encouraging ratings, reviews, and referrals
• Collecting actionable first-party data from consumers

Once your contest ends, select your winners based on the criteria outlined within your official rules. Judging and voting are the primary methods of selecting winners in contests.

This process includes evaluating eligible entries against the criteria defined within the official rules to narrow down and select a winner.

Common criteria for contests include:

• Originality of the entry
• Focus on the contest topic or theme
• Relevance to the brand or promotion
• Quality/completeness of entry as it pertains to the sponsor’s prompt

Realtime Media offers judging and moderation services for contests, you can check out that FAQ article here!

To summarize, all contests have three (3) core milestones:

1) Call to entry/registration period – The active window in which consumers are called upon to take the required steps to enter the contest and the possibly opportunity or earning a prize! As defined within the program rules, people complete the steps listed to be included int eh judging and/or voting process to determine the winner..

2) Judging/Voting on a winner – Winners are selected via either judging and/or voting and win the prizes offered within the rules.

3) Winner notification and fulfillment – Notify winners, collect any paperwork, and then fulfill prizes.

Working with Realtime Media allows you to take advantage of our full team for support across all phases of your promotion how and where you need it.

Read more about the Realtime Media difference here, or take a closer look at other topics such as sweepstakes microsites, legal administration, or prize fulfillment.