Lori Feldman of St. Louis, Missouri writes:
“I am an ACT! Software consultant and I belong to The CRM (Cusomter Relationship Management) Alliance, a consortium of the top ACT! Consultants across the U.S.
“We have pooled resources to offer a $6,300 grand prize for a complete CRM/Email Marketing/Internet Marketing package for one winner, with other winners getting second- and third-place prizes. Your Hounds can read more about it here.
“Were launching the promotion next week and it will run through April 30. We’re promoting it through our alliance members’ lists, our vendor partners’ lists and through two lists we just purchased. We’re also using press releases before and after the event.
“Total value of the prizes is $17,000. That’s pretty hefty for our little group, and I’d love to do as much as I can to get the word out. Publicity and promotion ideas from you and your Hounds would be greatly appreciated.”
Hi Lori,
I am a firm believer in CRM softwre… it is critical to any business large or small and I find it invaluable.
Since ACT is geared to suit the needs of work-at-home intrepreneurs and small to medium sized offices, I think you may be able to get the word out through small business associations, work-at-home Moms, etc.
Search online for work-at-home and small bus e-zines who may be willing to get the word out for you. Telling their members about your free draw gives the e-zine owner something new, free and pratical to offer their members… which of course makes the ezine ownerlook good.
In exchange for doing this, you may also consider offering the e-zine owner a limited time coupon offer… say “10% off purchase price coupon” which could also be passed along to their members… so that everybody wins! 🙂
Hope this helps. Good luck!
CRQ
I think that you need to publicize this as a traditional group of news stories during the course of the contest. Each service that ACT software provides should be molded into story angles to be pitched to media. Highlight the benefits of each one of the services and provide comments from people whose sales have increased and time has been better managed as a result of using it. Since ACT profits from its software sales, the mention of the contest should be introduced through the “back door” — via details at the end of the releases. The “news” elements are really how ACT software helps particular segments of users.
One of the quckest ways would be to start reaching out to the many bloggers who blog about business topics. Set up a google Alert for “ACT” and “CRM software” and “contact management software” sho you know which bloggers are writing about it.
Tell Google you want to receive the list every day. Each day, check the list. Then post comments at the blogs that have written about this topic and mention the promotion within the comment.
Or you can start commenting at a particular blog, don’t mention the contest, then pitch that blogger several days letter with info on the contest.
You have almost two months to poromote this. A more time-consuming but VERY effective way to pull traffic to the contest is to create a Squidoo lens at Squidoo.com or a HubPage at HubPages.com. The search engines love these two content-sharing sites and will bring lots of traffic to you.