How I used my life experience to win a marketing contest

On Friday night, I watched old episodes of TVO’s The Agenda.  One episode in particular called “The Limits of Economics“, amused me because the host, Steve Paikan, asked a group of (academic) economists to define “economics”.  Predictably, they couldn’t come up with a unanimous definition for their field of study, likely because economics is broken into several other fields, classical and more modern branches like behavioural economics, it’s so complex!  However, one thing they could all mostly agree on is that in any economic study or prediction or recommendation, it’s always worthwhile to borrow from other fields like psychology or sociology in order to get a full understanding of the issues that economists are asked to weigh in on.

I’ve always loved economics though I didn’t really understand any of it until my late 20′s.  Even now, I’d be kidding myself if I said with full certainty that I “understand” economics.  I need to read more on the subject.  One of my favourite books, and one that I plan on re-reading as part of my 101 books challenge is “Why Things Fail” by Paul Ormerod.  He addresses some of the questions we all have about why certain businesses survive and why others don’t, for example.  He even compares running a business to the game of chess and how it’s so much easier to play chess and to win at chess than it is to run a successful business.  For one, in the game of chess you have all of the pieces in front of you!

In my own experiences at work, I like to try new approaches to prove my own little theories sometimes.  A little while back, there was an announcement about a contest at work for employees to promote our products using a unique coupon code.  The concept was simple: be the one to make the most money for the company, win a prize!  Perfect.  I thought about my strategy for a few minutes and immediately told the contest organizers that I was looking forward to being the recipient of that prize.

I won the contest and here’s how I did it: it appears that I made the right guess.  I guessed that most people buy things they don’t need or didn’t even think about buying unless they discover it’s on sale.  Even better, they’ll buy something if they have a coupon for a decent discount (anything over 20% is what I considered ‘decent’).  When I was a kid, it seemed like every family I knew used coupons.  It was mostly from flyers and mostly for grocery shopping.  And then Air Miles came around and it seemed that all of my friends were buying products they don’t usually buy just to get the Air Miles.  At one point, even my own partner was buying a bunch of Kraft products at the grocery store.  So I said “Um, we don’t even eat have of this stuff” and I got “Yeah, but they’re offering three times the air miles on all Kraft products!!”.  Oh.

(I still don’t own an air miles card because I don’t like anything that rewards me for spending more than I need to and also because I think flying is the most annoying form of transportation)

So, based on all this, I did what I knew others wouldn’t do: I targetted coupon websites only.  For the first few days of the contest, I amassed a list of coupon websites that followed the following criteria:

1) Free to post
2) If it’s a forum, it has a category that targets the same users that we sell to (so if I worked for women’s clothing, I would look for a women’s clothing topic)
3) Allowed company employees to post coupons (this was important to me because I didn’t want to get the company in trouble by posting as a fake)

I spent an entire evening pasting different variations of announcements that I’d written up.

I let that do the work for me for a few days.  My competitors behaved as predicted.  They relied on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.  That’s what everybody else does, that’s what the pundits tell us to do – use social media!  Sadly, we rely on it too much and it’s becoming saturated with offers and groups and so much “blah blah” that you’re lucky if you can compete with everyone else for a customer’s attention for more than a few seconds.  The only way you can is by being witty and unique and not a lot of companies care to take chances; not enough companies invest in creativity.  Some of my competing colleagues then posted on couponing sites but I’d been the first one to post so I had a sort of “first to market” effect on their efforts.

After a few days of couponing websites, I then targetted social media by finding groups on Facebook related to our company’s products.  After mapping them out, I joined each one and posted the coupon on the group wall and in some cases, on their discussion boards.  Lastly, I posted on a few other forums on the web, again related to our company’s products.  And about 48 hours before the contest ended, I posted a personal note on Facebook in case any friends were interested.

I knew it would work.  I counted on the fact that people don’t always do what’s in their best interest.  From a marketing standpoint, that’s what we want.  We want to bring in profit for the company and I have enough indirect experience in retail to know how all of that works.  Rewards programs, coupons, discounts, promotions – most of the time, they’re not for your best interests, they’re for ours.  Take Chapters for example and their iRewards program.  Their books are typically more expensive than Amazon’s and if you buy them in-store, you’re sometimes looking at a price markup of more than 15%!  It’s convenient if you want a bestseller and you want it now – sure, pay for the convenience.  If not, it’s not worth the rewards program, it’s not worth even setting foot in the store. You’re much better off ordering online from amazon.ca.

Sometimes, coupons do work and they do benefit you.  If you were intent on buying the product in the first place, then it pays to wait for a sale or to google for a coupon.  I hardly pay full price when I order anything online now because a lot of companies purposely or mistakenly leave some of their older coupon codes active.  Before making a purchase, I google “ABC Company coupon code”, for example.  I’ll try it and if it works, I’m all set!

Here’s a great website for coupons and especially because they have a rating feature.  If it works, it’s clearly indicated next to the code by a thumb’s up!

So, the economists were right.  You have to know how and why people spend in order to understand the fragility and strengths of our economy. One of the economists on The Agenda laughed at the other economists by essentially telling them that economics has become more popular for its appeal than its usefulness.  He explained that you could have an entire room full of trained economists and a few random smart non-economists and the smart people could probably propose better solutions than the economists.  From a retailing perspective, it proves that you don’t need a degree in marketing or in finance to know how to apply a few little life lessons learned from observing people in action in order to make a quick profit.

The only thing I’m sad about is that nobody asked me how I did it.

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