6 Reasons You Need to Run Ballots

From massive revenue to large-scale community engagement, ballots offer huge advantages for media companies – don’t miss out!

If you’re not running a ballot, you may be missing out on one of your biggest (if not THE biggest!) opportunities you’ll have all year. Whether it’s a “Battle of the Bands,” “Top Doctors,” or even a citywide “Best of St. Louis” ballot, these campaigns have the ability to dramatically impact all areas of your company.

For many companies, their ballot has become their most important initiative all-year. Not only that, many of these ballots have become a highly-anticipated community event as well.

Still unsure if ballots are for you? Just check out these important reasons you need to start running a ballot today:

Grow Your Database

The highly shareable nature of a ballot means it has the potential to maximize consumer engagement and participation. Including an email opt-in on the registration form allows for you to build your database in addition to creating a list of new leads for your advertisers.

Sauk Valley Media created a high school sports ballot resulted in a 2,900% list growth in just eight weeks! Just think of the increase you could get to your database.

Sauk Valley Athlete of the Week Ballot

Offer Fun, Interactive Content

Not only do ballots align with existing content, but your audience will love them. Each ballot is an opportunity to create something fun and memorable for your audience. WHAM-TV found a way to drive large amounts of participation with a unique and adorable idea. They created buzz for their advertiser and over 400 email opt-ins with their memorable ballot.

CountryMax Ballot

Drive Massive Revenue

When you run a ballot, you can target new advertisers with unique opportunities. This allows you to create an entirely new revenue stream by selling ads during and after your ballot – online, in traditional media, and through event sponsorships. And if you create a special section featuring the winners, you can drive even more.

One small-market paper, the Sumter Item, was able to generate $140,000 from their annual best-of ballot (a 5x growth since previous year)!

Best of Sumter 2018 Ballot

Benefit Advertisers

It has never been easier to help your advertisers reach their goals with ballots. Whether they want to boost their email database or generate qualified leads, there’s a ballot that would work perfectly for them. For WRBR-FM, they ran a bike giveaway in which people voted on the bike to be given away. This was a great way for the advertiser to show off their collection, and every email opt-in was a new lead for the bike shop to pursue. Read the full story here!

Create Unique Content for Advertisers

Build Unique Content from Results

For Coastal Virginia Magazine, their magazine issue featuring the winners of their ballot has become their most popular all year. Nearly 100 advertisers pay to get ad space in the publication.

Allow Your Audience to Be Influencers

People are passionate about their favorite businesses. Whether it’s voting for the best pizza place, their preferred nail salon, or even their favorite local fire fighter – people are ready and willing to campaign for votes in a citywide metro ballot.

WDSN-FM’s Favorite Firefighter ballot celebrated local volunteer firefighters. The community loved the campaign and the WDSN email list saw a 28% increase and brought in $7,000 in revenue!

WDSN-FM Firefighter Ballot

Ballots are a huge opportunity that your company needs to be taking advantage of. From citywide metro ballots to niche audience ballots, there are tons of possibilities that could fit your needs. As you head to you next brainstorm session, make sure a ballot is making its way onto your calendar.