All the ways you can increase your Best Of revenue by $100k in the next year!

Selling a 3 Phase Ballot

Long story short, if you’re not running a 3 phase ballot and selling all 3 phases, you’re leaving money on the table. We typically see that 15% of revenue comes from nomination phase sales, 25% from voting phase sales, and 60% from winners’ phase sales. So if you aren’t selling in the nomination/voting phases, you’re missing out on a 40% increase in revenue.

Unlocking Passive Revenue with eCommerce

Our eCommerce integration allows you to sell ad spaces, featured listing upgrades, or custom packages​ for both the nomination and voting phases. Purchasing can happen BEFORE nomination ballot opens through the end of voting phase​ and businesses can upload their own assets!

You can promote the eCommerce site on your ballot, within B2B email campaigns, on your site, or more. The main goal of the eCommerce site is to allow you to reach those businesses in your area that haven’t yet advertised with you. Let you sales team focus on selling larger packages while the eCommerce site works for you!

For example, if your ballot typically generates $150,000 and you enable eCommerce, eCommerce could help you reach some of those smaller businesses who haven’t purchased with you yet. Even if you sell 12% more packages through eCommerce, that could equate to $18,000 in passive revenue.

Next-Level Sales Strategies

These strategies will help you find new revenue within your Best Of program.

Early Bird Specials

Offer discounted rates for your nomination and voting packages for those who purchase early.  This discounted rate is offered for a limited time that ends before the nomination phase begins. If you typically generate $150,000 in revenue, and you sell 75% of your packages before the nomination phase begins, that’s over $100,000 in revenue booked before your Best Of launches! And leaves your team plenty of time to go after more sales in the nomination and voting phases.

Tiered Featured Entrants

Separate your Featured Entrant offerings into two packages – Basic and Premier. Within the Basic package, businesses are provided with a logo​, short description​, links to their website & social pages​, and a unique URL. Within the Premier package, businesses are provided with a logo​, short description​, links to their website & social pages​, a unique URL, a QR code, a trackable entrant page banner ad, button promoting nomination/voting for their entry in multiple categories​ and a photo gallery of up to 8 photos promoting their business.

If you typically sell 100 featured listings at $249 each, but decide to offer a Premier package at $399 and 70% of your businesses purchase a Premier package over a Basic package, that would be an increase of $10,500 in revenue.

QR Codes

QR codes are a high value add that can be included in special ad packages. They can be crafted with your Best Of branding and be used in core media to drive your audience to featured listings.

 

Year-Round Ballot Revenue

The revenue hunt shouldn’t end when your Best Of does! There are so many opportunities to promote that revenue year-round.

• Winners’ Directory: You can sell thank you ads that will live on your Winners’ Directory year-round. Constantly drive your audience back to this directory to find the best businesses in town.

• Pickup Ads: These are ads that can be run in your publication honoring the winners when the ballot has ended. Selling these types of ads to winners could being in $20,00 in additional revenue.

• Hall of Fame: Craft anniversary packages for winners who’ve been featured in your Best Of over the past 5,10,15 years. This new package could create $20,000 in additional revenue.

• Thank You Emails: These are sold to only your winners and can be added to your premium winners’ packages to increase the value.

• Best Of Winners Newsletter: Craft a new newsletter that highlights the winners of your ballot per category. You can charge $500-$800 per winner and send 1-2 newsletters per month. This could help bring in $20,000 in additional revenue.

• Blog: This is a way for you to repurpose your winners into content. It can live on your ballot landing page, driving traffic back to your landing page all year long. Include X number of blog posts in your winners’ packages to drive up the value.

• Promotions: You didn’t think we’d get through this list without mentioning promotions, did you?! Sell promotions to your winners as additional lead-gen and audience growth. Brand the promotions so it is apparent that the sponsor of the promotion is a Best Of winner. Sell 2 per quarter and that could lead to an additional $20,000.

Text To Vote

Text to vote is a new and exciting way to help your local businesses get the audience to vote. Voters will simply text a keyword to vote for a business in your Best Of ballot​ – it’s convenient for voters, increases engagement, and provides more visibility for your advertisers.

It also will help you drive more next-level revenue! If you sell 100 keywords at $200 each, that is $20,000 in additional revenue.

Revenue Growth Potential

Just to prove we were keeping track, if you were to employ all of the ideas we offered, that could lead to $170,000+ in additional revenue. It’s a no brainer!

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