Green SpACE of the Week
WJXT-TV signed a six-month campaign with Ace Hardware for a $40,000 sponsorship investment. The first three months of the campaign focused on landscaping and asked users to share pictures of the yard to be shown on-air during the weather segments. Then, as Florida headed into hurricane season, the campaign turned to a series of quizzes around hurricane preparedness.
Home Rejuvenation Giveaway
WKDZ-FM had been running an in-person home show. Sponsors would gather contact information of interested consumers from attendees. But this year the show needed to go virtual. Instead of their traditional method of reaching customers, the team at the station put together a giveaway for a $2,800 home rejuvenation. They had record engagement and reached more people than they ever have with their in-person event.
Back to School Smiles
Ask every parent in your market, and I’m almost positive they all have a first-day-of-school photo somewhere on their phone. The Herald reached out to a local dentist about sponsoring this campaign. Local healthcare professionals are always looking for creative ways to reach potential patients. To make the sponsorship even more enticing, the paper added in fantastic lead-gen questions which resulted in 470 people saying they’d be interested in the dentist’s services.
Healthcare Heroes
Now more than ever, people are looking for ways to thank heroes in their communities. The Peoria Journal Star reached out to many of their current advertisers to see if they’d be interested in participating in this Healthcare Heroes ballot. Sponsors were very excited about the opportunity to support their community and their local healthcare workers. The paper was able to generate $20,000 from this campaign on top of the sponsors’ current investments.
High School OT Honors
WRAL-TV has found a lot of success with their high school sports ballot. Run in both the fall and the spring, this campaign asks community members to nominate their local student athletes for a chance to win. The station secured one title sponsor for the whole program. Pella, a national window and door company was thrilled with the opportunity to grow their database with the local community. This campaign grew the sponsor’s list by over 6,000 and WRAL brought in $115,000 in revenue from Pella’s robust sponsorship package.
Lake Tahoe’s Most Remarkable Women
Targeting a specific niche in their community – local women – this great ballot from the Tahoe Daily Tribune was a big win with their readers. These community-oriented campaigns are always a good idea to pitch to these top-dollar advertiser categories as these businesses want to be aligned with these initiatives. This ballot received 256 nominations and over 4,100 votes.
STAATS Services Furnace Giveaway
This sweepstakes was built to target a very specific demographic – local homeowners interested in a new furnace. The Peoria Journal Star worked with their sponsor, STAATS Services, to create a lead-generating sweepstakes. The client closed two sales valued at $13,000 within the first week. Prior to this, the sponsor was making a small digital spend every two months. Due to the success of this contest, they increased their spend by 338%!
Class of 2020
While we saw a surge of these contests in 2020, contests celebrating local high school graduates are a success every year. While you can put a special twist on your contest, this also works when you simply ask your audience to submit a photo of their graduate. A local university and a community bank sponsored this photo contest for a sponsorship total of $10,000 ($5,000 from each sponsor).
Baptist Health ‘Juice’ Quiz Campaign
The local hospital wanted an opportunity to reach the community and establish themselves as an expert in multiple healthcare areas. This custom multi-media annual campaign by WJXT-TV and WCWJ-TV includes monthly quizzes on topics important to the hospital. Paired with content on the hospital’s blog, Juice, these quizzes brought in over 1,500+ opt-ins for the sponsor. This comprehensive campaign led to an additional $170,000 revenue on top of what the hospital was already spending with the stations.
Are You Ready for Retirement?
The team at Daytona Beach News Journal reached out to their local insurance agencies about a potential campaign. Right now, people are much more interested in supporting local businesses. This custom quiz positioned Page Insurance Agency as an expert in their field. With lead-generation questions and an email opt-in, the quiz led to 78 people asking to be contacted about their retirement preparedness. The quiz campaign drove in $5,000 in sponsorship revenue for the paper.
Dog Walking Forecast
This inventive photo contest from WDTV-TV came from the need to create a promotion to entice our local Honda dealership, the owner of which has a soft spot for dogs. The Dog Walking Forecast runs twice during each morning news segment and includes a different submitted picture every day. More than 230 viewers submitted a photo of their dog for the contest and 17 of those users identified as in the market for a car and asked to be contacted by the dealership with their current deals! This campaign was a barking success and generated $10,000 in sponsorship revenue for the station.
Now is an ideal time to reach out to advertisers in these big spending industries. They are still spending, and many of them are even looking for additional advertising opportunities. Be prepared with solutions to achieve their goals.
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Liz is the Senior Director of Customer Success and has an extensive background in media. She is a huge advocate of the power of promotions for every department within an organization, including sales, marketing, audience development, and editorial.