Selling the Voting Phase of Your Citywide Ballot

How to effectively pitch and overcome objections to the Voting Phase of your citywide ballot from your team or local advertisers

Your Best-Of program is, at its core, designed to help businesses thrive. It’s a year-round celebration that reminds local consumers who the best businesses are in your market.

Each phase of your ballot offers a unique value for your advertiser and it’s critical they fully understand that value. So we created this easy guide to pitching the Voting Phase and overcoming objections from your team or advertisers.

Value Proposition

• Your business gets to ‘claim your title’ if this is your first win or ‘defend your title’ if you won last year
• Our company only moves the top five nominees to the voting round, so getting the word out early and often is important to getting your business on the ballot
• Our company celebrates the winner and finalists (top three) year-round with articles, quizzes, polls, etc
• This allows you to establish your business as a leader in your field
• This can be a great employee recruiting opportunity for your business

This is an example of how to reach out to nominated businesses:

“Congratulations on being nominated in our Best of the Best contest! Now it’s time to begin your ‘Vote For Me’ campaign as we launch the Voting Phase of the contest for the year. We have voting packages available, let’s set up a time to talk!”

Overcoming Objections

Here are a few objections to the Voting Phase you may encounter and how to respond:

Client: “It’s rigged”
It’s free to participate in Best Of. We are presenting this package to you because it’s truly good for your business. Our audience is exponentially bigger and more valuable right now – and always during Best of Season. We promote this program everywhere. We also use a 3rd party and check IP addresses if we suspect fraudulent voting.

To learn more on how to sell your Citywide ballot, download our Maximize Your Engagement & Revenue with Ballots playbook. You can also find our guides to selling the Nomination Phase and Winner’s Phase here on the Lab.