Best Of Ballot Goes All-In on Digital and Smashes Revenue Goals

The Idea

The Shaw Media team took a huge leap of faith and revamped all of their 2023 Readers Choice/Listeners Choice contest that generated $60,000 in print and $4,100 in radio, and instead got to work creating a Best Of program that would be a year-round celebration. They developed (with the close guidance of Matt Hummert & Julie Foley) a three phase Best Of ballot and set a lofty goal of $90,000.

The Execution

The Best of the Illinois Valley included a nomination phase that began in March, a voting phase that began in June, and concluded with a winners magazine, event, and online directory. The Shaw Media team also went all-in, creating an online landing page for their ballot that included information like media kits, email sign-ups, sales opportunities, and more. This was a one-stop-shop for businesses and participants alike to access any information about the ballot they needed – whether it was contest dates and rules or advertising opportunities.

In each phase, the Shaw Media team sold marketing packages including radio, print, and digital. The competing advertising reps from the radio and news teams utilized leads gathered through their Best Of landing page and worked together sharing the revenue of these packages and blew away the set goals for each phase.

The team also crafted marketing and invite emails emails to advertise their sales packages and drive engagement to their ballot:

The Results

After celebrating with the winners at their first annual event, the Shaw Media team brought in a whopping $166,300 – almost tripling their revenue from the previous year! They are continuing to sell merchandise on their website, and have also curated a bi-monthly newsletter to generate more revenue and traffic throughout the year.

In addition to revenue, they pulled in 25,000 nominations, over 108,000 votes, and over 2,000 opt-ins to various newsletters for their different markets.

To fully realize their goal of creating a year-round celebration, the Shaw Media team utilized the results of their Best Of to create more content like their blog:

and the Best of the Illinois Valley Newsletter – both capitalizing on content opportunities and promoting businesses who participated and won within their Best Of.

To end with a direct quote from the Shaw Media team on how they felt about their Best Of success: “We have really created the Best of the Illinois Valley brand and look forward to see how we can grow it in 2025!”