making your competitions fun - iain haywood - brighton seo 2015 presentation

Brighton SEO 2015 - @iainhaywood1

Making your Competitions Fun

Iain Haywood, The Competition Agency

[email protected] / @iainhaywood

https://twitter.com/



At the heart of “fun” is Comic Sans MS

Comic Sans MS is at the core of everything fun. This is the most important thing you’ll learn today.




User acquisitionRetention/

activity

Opt-inEmail/

address/

phone

SEOLinks/signals/

coverage

RevenueBasket

upsell/sale of data

SocialSharing/

footprint

PRTraditional/

viral

06 01

02

0304

05

What can you run a competition or giveaway for, anyway?Amongst other things…




Fun

Time

Cost

Yield

Your campaign priorities

What’s the payoff? Quantity of links, opt-ins etc

Can you still go home at 6pm?

What are you going to have to spend?

Is the thing you’re making any good?




A campaign plan is typically knocked out in less than 60 minutesThough in many cases you can treat this as seconds

20What you’ll give away

30What you want out

10How you’ll do

it




Qualitative input

Time

Cost

Quantitative output

Your campaign priorities

Something for nothing?




3 Golden Rules




1: There is more than one type of entrant

• One is interested in winning your competition. They may also be

interested in your brand or vertical secondarily.

• The other is interested in your brand and vertical primarily, and

unless you’ve made a major hash of things, they’re very likely to be

interested in your competition also.

Broadly speaking, there are two




2: Your competition is unlikely to be a panacea

• With the effort 90% of people put in, it won’t be a silver bullet. It

won’t save your tanking sales.

• Don’t get dazzled by vanity metrics, remember from where and why

those numbers have materialised.

It could be, but it’s unlikely




Don’t be this guy.




3: Incentivisation fundamentally changes the nature of intent

• You are, in one way or another, changing why someone wants to do

something.

For the worse




Process




Difference between a competition and a giveaway?Or a contest and a sweepstake for our American cousins

Competition

Skill based Entry

Judged

Giveaway

Non-skill based

entry

Random draw




This is not scientific, this is not scientific, this is not scientific(but look at the animated bars!)

League of Legends

F2p bingo

KenoSpinto win

Technicalentry

Landingpage

RT and Follow/Like and Share

100%

75%

50%

0%

25%

Fun/enjoyment/quality/merit

0%

25%

50%

100%

75%

Reliance onIncentive




RT and Follow

Like and Share




Don’t do them

• Zero effort, zero effect

• No terms and conditions typically

• Usually unfairly drawn

• Minimal residual value




They haven’t even made contact

Your brand (surface)

A like or RetweetWhy does the entrant even need to see or care who you are

Ooh! A prize!Entrant is incentivized to perform the required action




Tips (if you have to do them)

• Shorturl Terms and Conditions

• Use inline images effectively

• Use a technical draw like Tweetdraw

• Moderate your expectations




Landing page




Landing pages

• A landing surface

• Can host competition creative, entry mechanism

• Visible Terms




At least you’re capturing now

Your brand’s landing page




Tips

• Host on a landing page as close to your root as possible (for links)

• Think about barrier to entry/entry mechanism (your filter)

• Is the entry method aligned with your objective? Multiple

methods/objectives?

• Actually promote something

• What is your competition creative? Try video (avoid being ctrl + f’d)

• Include full terms and conditions

• Avoid narrative entry




Eurgh

To enter our competition, do the following:

Simply email [email protected]

Follow us on twitter @windscreenwashers

Fan us on FB

Leave a comment below

Share every day

Good luck LOL :)



mailto:[email protected]


Technical Entry




Why technical

• Properly recorded entries, entrants more confident in entering

• Properly recorded and incentivised sharing, entrants more confident

in sharing

• Options to prioritise entry mechanics, offer more entry obligations

• Possibility of self sustainability or a viral coefficient >1

• Runs on rails/automated




You can get this in a dang box if you want to

• Promotional SaaS available

• Examples include:

–Gleam

–Rafflecopter

–Antavo




Build




Instant win




Wait.

That’s what they’re

giving away?




This is not scientific, this is not scientific, this is not scientific(but look at the animated bars!)

We’ve broken prize orbit now.

League of Legends

F2p bingo

KenoSpinto win

Technicalentry

Landingpage

RT and Follow/Like and Share

100%

75%

50%

0%

25%

Fun/enjoyment/quality/merit

0%

25%

50%

100%

75%

Reliance onIncentive




Games




F2p bingo – it’s not a leap

• No incentivisation

• F2p with in app purchases – users are paying to gamble for fun

• Extremely prevalent and profitable – check App Annie for f2p

bingo/casino/table games

• Same f2p features prevalent as most f2p games:

» Repeated user obligations

» Social obligations

» Repeated actions with a random result

» Visually exciting, it feels rewarding

» Progressive thresholds and levels




Introduce peers, and…

• League of Legends has 67 million MAU / 27 million DAU (as of

Jan ‘14)

• Most popular PC title/online game in most countries

• Most popular and lucrative eSport

• PvP




That’s a bit

of a leap, no?




Social obligationFriend grants extra lives, team play

Incentivised share/friend referralExtra plays for new players

Repeated action – random resultMystery chest, random drops of in game items

Instant WinNo skill involved, just make sure you enter

Daily Entry RequirementsEnter every day and improve your chances of winning

Recurring in-game obligation

Mining, farming, “Grinding”, leveling up

90% of DNA between today’s games and promotions are shared




Why




This is permanent infrastructure

That you can reuse and repurpose

Real Company “Stuff” – Wil Reynolds

• The entries, yield, traffic, new links and signals all end when your 4 week campaign does. If it’s transient, that’s it.

• You can measure CPAs against a sunk cost over years vs weeks

• If it’s good, those entries, shares, links and press snippets grow themselves, “while you sleep”




You’ll give less stuff awayIt’s a pain in the ass to post, anyway

You’ll gain

Passionate users

and advocates

(goodwill)

Better

understanding of

your users

Pull

You’ll reduce

Spend on prizes

over time

Logistical and

compliance effort

Time and effort

renewing

campaigns

Push




You actually know what the hell your users are doing

Registered Active Last played Shares Playtime total Most used

Bigjohn420 14/05/14 Y 09/04/15 3 23,03 Sword

Merknuggitz 11/08/14 N 12/08/14 0 1,01 Fists

LOL_gimp 12/08/14 Y 09/04/15 9 9,00 Mace

Lil_Kimchi 14/08/14 Y 09/04/15 1 30,02 Wand

N00benator 21/09/14 Y 09/04/15 2 66,42 Blunderbuss

Jono Alderson 01/01/15 Y 09/04/15 15 252,07 Kitten Ears

So you can continually improve every aspect of your build




Retention, retention, retention




It needn’t cost the earth

• Game engines

–Construct 2

–Stencyl

–Game Maker Studio

–Unity

• All have resource/asset repositories

• Free/low-cost

• Cross-platform publishing

• Buy off the shelf scripts and repurpose

• Want peers but don’t want multiplayer? Just get a highscore board!

• Achievements, leaderboards, social integration, can plug it in

–Clay.io




[email protected]

@iainhaywood

Contact me!Happy to clarify anything

Please remember Comic Sans



making your competitions fun - iain haywood - brighton seo 2015 presentation

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