eBid Marketing Challenge!!

[HelenAndGraham]

Turn the whole thing into a cash prize competition for the eBidders and judge it on their verified sign-ups within the month of November. Easy to implement, easy to judge - the buddy points would reflect the success of each advertising campaign.

Perhaps it would be simpler for Gaz to look at the current CPA and offer a slightly lower figure to eBid members that introduce new members (paid after ten successful transactions maybe?). I appreciate your have a points scheme but nothing motivates much better than hard cash!

Not an idea for this challenge tho.

[*artsbanquet*]

Turn the whole thing into a cash prize competition for the eBidders and judge it on their verified sign-ups within the month of November. Easy to implement, easy to judge - the buddy points would reflect the success of each advertising campaign.[/QUOTE]

Can we possibly make this idea two-pronged? ie. 1. £500 cash for the Ebidder who gets the highest number of verified sign-ups. 2. £1500 cash (or £1000, £250, £250) prize for anyone who signs up as a verified member - their name goes into the draw.

I'm proposing No 2. as well because this would mean that we could submit the Ebid competition to competition websites and include news of the competition in all the packages we send out. A cash prize for existing EBidders is an excellent idea, but it makes it more insular and localized.

What I mean is that it would be good if the cash prize becomes not only a seller incentive, but also a buyer incentive.

Or maybe - everytime you purchase an item on Ebid, you get entered into the prize draw...something along those lines...

[Gothicina]

It still hasn't sunk in what counts as marketing and what counts as advertising. If I list all the options we have (I'll exclude bulk lister and RSS), Graham, can you point out which are marketing and which are advertising ( I hope everyone else doesn't think I'm thick for asking!!) - some of them are obvious by the name, but I thought it best to list them all anyway)

Option 4 - Distribute Flyers
Option 6 - Merchandise giveaways
Option 7 - Viral Ads
Option 8 - Sponsorship
Option 9 - Word of Mouth
Option 10 - Perfiliate Schemes (and Affiliate)
Option 11 - Charity auction promotions
Option 12 - Competitions

Some of these can overlap. Personally, I think we can manage all of them except option 2 and 3, and even these, we can use to get free publicity with the right stories.

I've found this thread very interesting.
Now we know the RSS & eBid Lister are being taken care of, I'd like to comment or ask questions on a few of the suggestions.

Would a stack of flyers arriving through the letterbox unasked for be seen as intrusive & be counter productive?
I think anyone that wants to already distributes flyers, if they want eBid produced ones I think they would need to opt in, as opposed to them being distributed to everyone.
I was sent a pile from another company, nobody asked if I wanted them, I didn't, some were used as scrap paper the rest ended up in the recycling bag.

Sponsorship & Charity Auction Promotions are great but what about the US, Canadian, Australian & smaller sites? Would £2,000 go that far? Or are the ideas solely to advertise the UK site?

Competitions - a good competion would attract lots of people, but would they actually use the site, or just sign up for the competition then forget about the site if they didn't win?

One not mentioned on the list is magazine advertising, most of that is much more affordable than tv, radio, or newspapers but would it actually work especially if it was too general?
Mo's Postcards ran an ad in one of the postcard collectors magazines, that seemed to work for the postcard section. Even at magazine rates £2,000 wouldn't go too far if we tried to cover all types of goods listed on eBid.

[*artsbanquet*]

Competitions - a good competion would attract lots of people, but would they actually use the site, or just sign up for the competition then forget about the site if they didn't win?

What I've seen a few sites do is to have a daily prize for members who login to the site. So maybe £50 as a daily prize if your name appears on the homepage.

Alternatively, offer a prize draw entry for every purchase that is made in a month as opposed to every sign-up.

OR a prize draw entry for sigining up to the Ebid newsletter mailing list - that means that Ebid can follow up and contact members long after the comp. is over.

Also - how about something like £5 off your first EBid order? (Not quite sure how that would work with a budget of £2000 though)

I agree with you about the flyers Gothicina - they can be very wasteful if not asked for.

[nykmedia]

Competitions - a good competion would attract lots of people, but would they actually use the site, or just sign up for the competition then forget about the site if they didn't win?

There has to be a follow up and that's where the eBid newsletter could come in - everyone signing up would also be opting in to receive a copy. The newsletter could be developed to actively encourage members to return to the site, look for bargains, list items etc. We need eBid to become a household name, make it THE topic of conversation for as many people as possible so that others want to join and find out more. That way, the by-product of such a competition would be the free, word-of-mouth marketing. I'm not talking a single competition, I'm talking an on-going strategy to actively lead specific sectors of the global online community into eBid. Members can only join once, so it has to keep up good momentum and appeal to different types each time. Nobody here has the capital to back a full-on international campaign, so it has to be done by our own network, which already spans the continents. Look how quickly multi-level marketing and pyramid sales caught on. eBid is the top of this pyramid and it's only what's supporting it that can push the site upwards. Affiliate marketing programmes work much the same way, in my opinion. I'f I'm way off the track, someone please say so.

[Gothicina]

The perfiliate scheme sounds good. I don't know much about them though. I love the idea of making movies with the G&M puppets!

Here's a pic of Gazza - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQy5BxF6jrs

He used to have a nice one as his avatar ages ago, but they took it down.

I found a picture of them both by doing a forum search, I knew I'd seen it somewhere

http://helpdesk.ebid.net/showthread.php?t=80909

[ropegg]

Marketing against advertising........ I'd have to say that this challenge was really meant to be for advertising, we're taking £2k from our Google Adwords budget to see if it can be spent any better to obtain more user sign ups.

Gazza

Since Gazza has said this is for more user sign ups, I don't feel like anything should be given for making purchases or for selling.

Turn the whole thing into a cash prize competition for the eBidders and judge it on their verified sign-ups within the month of November. Easy to implement, easy to judge - the buddy points would reflect the success of each advertising campaign.

Can we possibly make this idea two-pronged? ie. 1. £500 cash for the Ebidder who gets the highest number of verified sign-ups. 2. £1500 cash (or £1000, £250, £250) prize for anyone who signs up as a verified member - their name goes into the draw.

I'm proposing No 2. as well because this would mean that we could submit the Ebid competition to competition websites and include news of the competition in all the packages we send out. A cash prize for existing EBidders is an excellent idea, but it makes it more insular and localized.
What I mean is that it would be good if the cash prize becomes not only a seller incentive, but also a buyer incentive.

Or maybe - everytime you purchase an item on Ebid, you get entered into the prize draw...something along those lines.

I don't have any real ideas on how to make the £2K more productive than it has been for the eBid site.

With you cash project ---- in #1 an eBidder could get £500 cash for getting 3 verified sign-ups if no one else got over 2 verified sign-ups and in #2 someone could get £1500 cash even if there was only one verified sign-up. This would leave the opening for very little return on the money.

I think if any money is given ---- it should only be given if the CPA for the month is greater than what eBid has been getting with Google and Yahoo. If the CPA is greater the £2K could be given out like you suggested (£500 cash to the eBid member that had been verified responsible for the most new members and £1500 cash to one of the new members by means of a drawing).

I am not good at organizing a lot of things but as an eBid member that would like to see sales pick up for all eBid sites I do like to support and help with promotions, etc. as I can. I feel like if things keep getting tossed around the possibilty of something making a HIT IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION has a chance happening.

[Rednosty]

Mmm Why does all this go on when I was on Holiday! Groan Going to take me all week to catch up!..

Just to let you know I dream of ideas all the time and will get back to this thread when I catch up with things!

PS I used EBID tape to Put around my suitcases to mark them up so I could find them on the carousel at the airport... Clearly visable to anyone else looking!
And what ever I'm doing I am doing right as My sales whist away have gone to record levels!

SO Gazza I would like to groan at the amount of Work I've now got to do with the sales I've had !

[ToyCrazyUK]

PS I used EBID tape to Put around my suitcases to mark them up so I could find them on the carousel at the airport... Clearly visable to anyone else looking!

Nice one Red! Gazza - have we had any new members who said they heard about eBid whilst waiting for their suitcase?? I would be interested to see some of the things people put in this box - have you got a list of the weird ones?

[nykmedia]

Gazza / Mark,
Give us a clue - how many new members would you like to see signing up per £2,000 worth of advertising? I think the challenge would be better addressed if everyone knew exactly what was expected and then the why's and wherefore's opened up to the eBidders for suggestions which, I think, is what you are proposing. Is it like saying we have (theoretically or otherwise) £2,000 to spend and need to actively and economically 'recruit' xxx number of new members? In my opinion, that is what advertising is really about - money spent on buying people's attention, custom or loyalty.