Best Of Revenue Accelerators

If your Best Of revenue looks the same year after year, it may not be a sales problem. More often, it’s a strategy problem.

Many organizations continue offering the same packages, relying on the same products, and expecting different results. Meanwhile, sales teams are smaller, resources are stretched thinner, and traditional revenue programs often deliver diminishing returns. The good news is that significant revenue growth doesn’t necessarily require more staff or more work. It requires finding new ways to create value.

Here are some of the most effective revenue accelerators helping media organizations increase Best Of revenue today.

What’s Holding Best Of Revenue Back?

Three common challenges consistently prevent programs from reaching their revenue potential:

• Reduced sales staff
• Overreliance on traditional or legacy programs
• Stagnant Best Of offerings that haven’t evolved in years

Organizations that continue investing time in low-performing products while leaving Best Of opportunities untapped often limit their own growth.

Take a Hard Look at Legacy Programs

Many media companies continue producing recurring products like special sections simply because they’ve always done them.

The question worth asking is simple: Are your lowest-performing programs delivering enough value to justify the time, effort, and resources they require?

A small special section may generate some revenue, but it often requires considerable production, editorial, and sales effort. By comparison, a well-structured Best Of program can produce significantly higher returns while leveraging a proven audience engagement model. Reviewing your product mix and eliminating underperforming initiatives can free up resources to focus on programs with greater revenue potential.

Solving the Staffing Challenge

Staff reductions have become a reality for many organizations, but that doesn’t mean growth is impossible.

One option is to bring in fractional or contract-based support to help manage and coordinate a Best Of program. A dedicated project resource can help oversee execution, drive sales initiatives, and maintain momentum without requiring the budget commitment of a full-time hire.

Add Layers of Value

Sometimes the fastest path to revenue growth isn’t finding more customers. It’s increasing the value of what you’re already selling.

Three opportunities stand out:

• Text-to-Vote
• eCommerce
• Innovative packaging strategies

Together, these additions create new revenue streams while enhancing the overall advertiser experience.

Text-to-Vote: A Revenue and Engagement Multiplier

Text-to-Vote allows users to submit nominations and votes by sending a text message, creating an easier and faster way to participate. Entrants receive unique keywords that voters can use from anywhere, reducing friction and increasing engagement.

Why Businesses Buy It

The value proposition extends well beyond the ballot itself.

Text-to-Vote offers:

• Greater convenience for voters
• Increased engagement
• Expanded marketing reach
• A competitive advantage over businesses without keywords

Every customer touchpoint becomes an opportunity to generate votes, including receipts, invoices, social media posts, in-store signage, direct mail, QR codes, email campaigns, and customer conversations.

The Results Speak for Themselves

Programs adopting Text-to-Vote have reported substantial gains, including an average of:

• 28% growth in users
• 24% growth in voting activity
• 46% growth in opt-ins
• An ROI of 578% among participating organizations
• $14,000 YOY revenue increases

Data also suggests businesses utilizing Text-to-Vote are significantly more likely to perform well in their categories.

Analysis shows that businesses using keywords have an 80% higher chance of winning than those not investing in text-to-vote.

Best Practices for Selling Text-to-Vote

• Include keywords in every package
• Offer additional keywords as an upsell
• Provide marketing resources and templates
• Create QR-code-ready promotional assets
• Use simple four-digit numerical keywords to reduce confusion

One lesson learned repeatedly is not to undervalue the product. Early adopters frequently found demand was stronger than expected and realized they could charge more in future programs.

 

Unlock Passive Revenue with eCommerce

Unlike many new initiatives, eCommerce creates revenue opportunities with minimal ongoing effort.

The setup integrates with Stripe and enables businesses to purchase products directly through the ballot experience. Advertisers can even upload their own creative assets through a self-service portal, reducing fulfillment work for staff.

Purchasing can begin before nominations open and continue throughout the voting phase, maximizing selling opportunities.

You’ll be able to offer purchases a la carte ad purchases or create custom multi-media packages. The system will also allow businesses to purchase for just the nomination phase, the voting phase, or both phases – allowing you to secure early revenue and the ability to focus on larger clients.

Create Package Tiers That Drive Upgrades

Structured package offerings help guide buyers toward higher-value purchases. Packages should include:

• Three distinct package tiers
• Bundle multimedia opportunities
• Utilize callouts to drive sales

Some organizations report generating thousands of dollars in passive revenue simply through self-service ad purchases, with one example producing $4,100 in revenue and an average transaction value of $413.

Innovative Packaging Strategies

Many partners have reinvigorated excitement for their Best Of packaging by consistently revamping and reworking their packages to provide more value for their advertisers. Another benefit to this is creating a structure that allows you to increase pricing year over year, as inflation and the cost of living increases.

Tiered Featured Entrant Package

One of the biggest opportunities for revenue growth is creating clearer distinctions between paid and non-paid participation.

Recent enhancements allow organizations to:

• Restrict standalone entrant pages to featured entrants
• Hide enhanced business details from non-featured listings
• Reserve premium profile functionality for paying participants

By limiting premium visibility to featured entrants, businesses gain stronger incentives to upgrade. A basic package might include:

• Company logo
• Short business description
• Website link
• Social media links
• Unique URL

A premium package will add even more value by including everything present in the basic package as well as:

• Text-to-Vote keyword
• QR codes
• Trackable banner ads
• Vote in other categories buttons
• Expanded photo galleries

This layered approach gives businesses a clear reason to move beyond entry-level options while increasing average revenue per advertiser.

Use Early-Bird Pricing to Increase Rates Without Resistance

Many organizations struggle with raising prices, especially when long-term advertiser relationships are involved. Early-bird pricing offers a practical solution.

By positioning previous year’s rates as a limited-time discount, organizations can gradually increase pricing while still giving advertisers access to special savings. This strategy rewards early commitment, creates urgency, and helps offset rising costs over time.

The Takeaways

Growing Best Of revenue doesn’t require reinventing your program. It requires adding new layers of value.

Organizations seeing the strongest results are:

• Eliminating distractions from low-performing products
• Supplementing resources when needed
• Embracing Text-to-Vote
• Turning on eCommerce
• Creating stronger package tiers
• Leveraging self-service advertising opportunities
• Using early-bird pricing to raise rates strategically

The most successful Best Of programs aren’t simply selling recognition. They’re selling engagement, visibility, audience reach, and measurable marketing value. When advertisers see that value, revenue growth tends to follow

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