Full Transcript
Josh: Hi and welcome to KickoffLabs On Growth. I'm Josh Ledgard and my goal with this podcast is to help you grow a sustainable business through the stories of our customers and our team. Today is a Q&A episode where I answer common questions from our customers.
Josh: Before we get started, I wanted to read a quote about the On Growth Podcast from Daniel at winebars.com, which is, by the way, a totally cool product you should check out. Didn't get paid for that, I just think it's a cool product. Anyway, onward with the quote from Daniel. "All of this came to me directly after I listened to your two podcasts on how to increase conversions and how to launch a new product with Solo. I can't thank you enough for putting those out," Daniel from winebars.com. Thanks, Daniel. I appreciate the feedback. It's great to know that the podcast is making a difference and it's helpful for you and other customers out there.
Josh: All right, our first question of the day comes from Nitson and he asks, "Is it usually okay to allow people worldwide to join a campaign or should we restrict to a specific country?" I'll say most people do not restrict entry into a campaign. It's kind of difficult to determine where somebody is coming from. We've had people say, "Can I restrict to a specific state or city or country?" And you can kind of guess where people are coming from with technology, but that is typically... Well, often wrong, and so it's not entirely accurate.
You might actually say, "Hey, Seattle residents,"... You're not restricting people who don't live in Seattle, but you're simply telling them that it's really not
going to apply to them.
Josh: I personally think the best thing to do is to have a soft restriction. And what I mean by that is, your landing page for the campaign should make it clear if you do want to restrict, that you're looking for people who live in a specific place. You might actually say, "Hey, Seattle residents," and then you're making it clear that it's for people who live in Seattle. You're not restricting people who don't live in Seattle, but you're simply telling them that it's really not going to apply to them. And if you want to go one step further, what I suggest is that you look at adding a required checkbox for people that just, kind of confirmation that says, "Check, yes, I live in Seattle."
Josh: Once you have those two things there, I think it's fair to open it up to everybody else. Because just imagine I might want to enter this promotion, but if you really locked it down and said, "I'm only going to allow people that I know are in Seattle," but I happen to be traveling and I'm in Europe, you're going to block me from your campaign. When the reality is, I should be allowed to enter. I'm just traveling and I happen to see the link for your campaign. That's a big reason why I'm a proponent of the soft restriction here. And like I said, soft restriction, just making it clear on your landing page who the target audience is, where they should live. And if you want to go one step further, having people enter a checkbox to verify they are indeed a where you are accepting promotions from.
Josh: The next question is also from Nitson, the next two actually. "Can I limit the free items I'm giving away? For example, when 100 people get an item and the promotion closes and I just want to have a hundred people, and have you seen this be effective? With KickoffLabs, we let you set your own rules. Lots of people want to limit the exposure to their giveaways by saying things like, "Free jeans when you get 10 points," and then a nice, big star that says, "First 10 people only." That works just fine.
You might start saying the first 10 people who are in this get it. And then if you feel like the campaign has become
really successful, you can expand that to 20 or 30 or a hundred.
Josh: In fact, I always recommend that you restrict things in advance because you can always expand the number later. You might start saying the first 10 people who are in this get it. And then if you feel like the campaign has become really successful, you can expand that to 20 or 30 or a hundred depending upon what you think about the quality of the leads that you're getting and how likely they are to make a purchase. Expanding is always easier than taking away. If you end up with a campaign and you say, "Boy, I really can't give away all of these items," then you're kind of stuck because you said you would and it was part of your campaign. I always recommend starting with kind of a limit and then expanding it as you go.
Josh: In a related question, "Is a $20 value item for bringing five friends a good amount?" Without knowing the rest of your product math in terms of what your costs are of that $20 item and how much you typically pay to acquire a customer, it's hard. In general, the numbers work well when somebody says $20 off or a specific value for five people. Just giving away something is trickier because you're not sure that they're going to turn into a customer.
It's safer to give away coupons or discount codes because then you know somebody is going to make a purchase. They're at
least going to have to enter their credit card at some point.
Josh: It's safer to give away coupons or discount codes because then you know somebody is going to make a purchase. They're at least going to have to enter their credit card at some point, and you can control sort of your pain level with that promotion because you know the kind of discount you're giving or kind of loss leader you're giving with that item and that promotion. And that also lets you set maybe a value for target for referrals that might be lower. You could have two referrals or three referrals to get a specific promotion back for the customer. And I'm always a fan of making things feel more achievable to make it easier for people to share and make it feel like they're going to get something out of sharing.
Josh: All right, our next set of questions is from Adam who asks, "What do you think the best type of contest is given our objective? Our ideal target market is parents or grandparents in the United States with children age between three and 10, who appreciate premium quality products and prefer sustainable and ethical brands." What I love about Adam is that he already has in mind that his product is not for everyone and they're not going to target everyone. He's coming in with a niche, parents with these younger children who are pro-environmental or ethical in their brand preferences.
Josh: I love the concept, in this case, of a giveaway for your actual products. Now I know I just said above with the last question about doing a discount. But I think in here, in this case, you might try if you're unsure, just sort of a bonus, entry-style competition. And we support that at KickoffLabs where people earn extra entries for referring friends, liking your brand, and sharing the competition, and every point they earn gives them a higher chance of winning.
Josh: You can also combine that with a discount for people that have three to five referrals like in the example I said above. But the reason I like the bonus entry in this kind of case is just because the product is probably something they'd be excited to get their grandkids or children, and so you're just going to be giving a couple away as part of the sweepstakes. But then you can also combine that with the other type of competition that says, if they get three, they get a certain discount off; and then that way you're having the excitement of a sweepstakes combined with the progress that's good for everybody in terms of just anybody can earn a certain discount on a product. Hopefully that helps.
We thought we'd announce one winner a week, but we would just keep the competition going so people don't have to enter
again.
Josh: Adam then asks, "What's the best way to manage winners in our scenario? Would you recommend announcing a winner each week or announcing them all at the end? We thought we'd announce one winner a week, but we would just keep the competition going so people don't have to enter again. We'd run Facebook ads for the entire campaign." Great. Facebook can let you target exactly your customer set of that audience of parents or grandparents with small children. But when it comes to the winners, I personally am a fan of having the winner each week, where you also send out a reminder to the list to keep sharing because they will earn a greater chance of winning in the next week.
Josh: And so we always tell people to send out regular emails and remind them to share for a reason, so each email becomes its own reminder and serves as a countdown to launch and stays on the top of people's mind as you head through your campaign. And don't worry about going over with the emails. If somebody is going to unsubscribe and be angry about the emails you're sending them, they probably weren't going to be a good customer anyway. A once-a-week email about your promotion in the campaign saying, "Hey, this person won, look. And you could win too," is not going to overwhelm people. I hope that helps. Best of luck with your campaign, Adam.
Josh: All right, the next question, a little bit of a longer one from Amy who says, "I don't want to mess this up. I want it to work for us. I'm not sure what campaign to choose. Basically, we're launching a new product and would like to grow our list by sending an email about that product then offering one to two different prizes for the most referrals to people in their industry that could use our products. We're a company that sells drugs, tobacco, underage drinking... I shouldn't stop there, prevention materials to schools, community organizers, military bases here in the US, et cetera. They support anti-drug programs by providing giveaways and enforcing courage, what teachers and trainers are teaching. I don't want people to just send the KickoffLabs email to just anyone. It needs to be people in like organizations that are decision makers. Over the years, we've gone for a print catalog which are super costly to email marketing and our list is definitely shrunk as people have changed careers, retired and moved on. I hope this makes sense."
Josh: It totally makes sense. I get it. You're seeing this big shift in how you want to do marketing from print to online. What I would say is, you have a lot of fears here, where you're scared that people will send it to people that are not interested. That's not typically what we see. And if they do, the person that they send it to or refer to the campaign is probably going to read your copy and say, "Boy, this really doesn't apply to me and I'm not going to opt-in because there's no way I'm opting in to something on the internet or signing my email address to something that I'm really not at least tangentially interested in."
Somebody who's not a decision maker today could be one tomorrow. They could also have influence with somebody who is a decision maker.
Josh: I would also not worry about things going to the decision maker because the decision maker is a moving target, where somebody who's not a decision maker today could be one tomorrow, and somebody who is not a decision maker today who signs up might be somebody who has influence with a decision maker so somebody who works for the boss or works for the person who signs the checks. I wouldn't have the fear about it not going out to people who aren't a decision maker. It usually is best just to let anybody join.
Josh: That said, you can ask some qualifying questions on your form that will cause some people to opt out, like choose what kind of company you work for and list those things like the military bases or the school, et cetera, and you limit it to those four or five choices. And if somebody random comes to this list and goes to sign up because their friends sent them, they say, "Wait, I don't work for these kinds of things. It might not be for me," and they're not going to sign up.
Josh: You could also add a checkbox to your form that says, "Do you have purchasing power?" It's just a yes or no question. You don't require it to enter, but that will give you a good idea or at least a little bit of pre-qualification from the leads themselves about the type of people who are signing up. Hope that's helpful, Amy. Best of luck with your campaign going forward. Thanks.
Josh: I hope you enjoyed this shorter Q&A-style episode of the On Growth Podcast. If you did, drop me a line at josh@kickofflabs.com. Also, if you haven't, check out kickofflabs.com if you're looking to run a lead generation campaign.
Josh: My goal with KickoffLabs is that anybody who signs up and is going to spend some money on marketing, be it, let's say you're going to spend $1,000 worth of effort on marketing, I want that to feel like you spent $1,500 on marketing. That's what the KickoffLabs technology can do for you, that goes over and above what you get from traditional, boring landing page campaigns. You can set up bonus entry, sweepstakes, refer a friend campaigns and other types of contests based on the templates that we provide you. Fully customizable. We've got an API. You can wire it all up yourself if you're technically inclined or you can just email us and say, "Hey, can you help me set this up," and we'll work something out with you. Go ahead, check out kickofflabs.com and I'll see you next time.
