Axosoft does all kinds of marketing and advertising. We do Google AdWords, SEO optimization, print ads and other online ads. We spend a lot of money on these activities and we're always trying to find a better way to do it. The more efficient we can be at marketing, the more resources that can be available for development. That's why we frequently try to do some unique marketing things. Last year, we gave away a 5-user version of our product for just $5 in a social marketing experiment. The deal was that for a period of 3 days, we sold OnTime 5-User Licenses for $5 and donated the proceeds to the Red Cross. In 3 days time, we sold more than 2,600 copies of OnTime and donated more than $14,000 to the Red Cross. I documented the details of the event in this blog post. That was super exciting, but marketing successes like that are rare and we haven't had another similar success for a long time. So Angelo and I thought we'd open up Axosoft's next super successful marketing idea to the public in a simple competition where the winner can win $5,000.
Win $5,000 Just for Posting a Unique Marketing Idea
So here's how this is going to work: We want to make this as public as possible and allow other companies to benefit from the idea pool that the $5,000 prize will generate. All you have to do to be eligible to win is to post your marketing idea as a comment to this blog post (and be a US Resident who's at least 18 years of age and not an Axosoft Employee). Yep, that's it! Crazy isn't it? It'll probably take you less than 30 seconds to submit an idea. Submit two or three! You can put multiple ideas in the same comment. Tell your friends or colleagues to submit their marketing ideas.
Geek to Geek Marketing <G2G>Marketing</G2G>
We're all big geeks at Axosoft (even if the sales team is not willing to admit it) and we love good, new and unique ideas, wherever they come from. Since Axosoft products are designed for highly technical people, we expect that geeks will have the best insight on how to market to our audience. This contest is designed to bring out the best ideas by some of the most talented individuals who normally wouldn't be asked to do marketing. So go ahead, do some marketing! Share your ideas - we know you got them!
Criteria for Winning
Keep the following guidelines in mind to help improve your chances of winning:
- Post your idea as a comment to this blog.
- It must cost less than $5,000 to implement your idea (this cost limit is independent of the $5,000 prize to the winner - that means the total cost of this experiment could be as much as $10,000 for Axosoft)
- If you know nothing about Axosoft or OnTime, you might want to do a little homework to make sure your idea applies to our type of company and product line.
- If your idea is complex to implement (in either time or resources), it lowers the probability of winning
- If you do the leg-work for the implementation of your idea, it increases your probability of winning (for example, if your idea is to do a video, submitting a completed video with your idea, significantly increases your probability of winning)
- You must submit your idea no later than May 15th, 2007
Remember that no proprietary ideas can be submitted. This is a public submission of your idea, which means anybody could see and use your idea for any purpose. That's part of the point. We want to encourage fresh and unique marketing ideas to flow and we anticipate that many will come from non-marketing people. Axosoft (and anyone who reads the submissions) may choose to implement many of the ideas, even though we will only select 1 idea to win the $5,000 prize.
Announcement of Winner
The winner will be selected and announced solely at my discretion on or before June 20th, 2007. Note that the submission deadline is May 15th, 2007, so it's quite possible we might test out multiple ideas in order to help us determine which idea was the best prior to picking the winner.
Things Might Change
You might have found this contest to be the simplest with the fewest rules that you've ever seen for a $5,000 prize. There's no 5-page fine-print set of rules. We intentionally want to keep things simple and let the ideas flow, but we also recognize that we might need to fine tune the rules to keep it on track. Therefore, we reserve the right to change the rules. If that happens, we'll work hard to preserve the spirit and simplicity of the contest.
Check Back Often
Since the ideas will be comments to this post, you can check back often to see other people's ideas and gauge how your idea compares. You might also get ideas from other ideas. Feel free to submit multiple times.
Good Luck!
Updates:
We just added a forum where you can discuss this contest and ask any questions you might have. This way, we can reserve comments for this blog post just for the actual marketing ideas / entries.
See Angelo's blog post, Calling All Geeks!, to read who should enter this contest and more...
MAY 8TH: As of May 8th, 2007, with approximately 45 idea submissions, we have not yet received any submissions of viral videos, flash animations or applications that might help spread the word viraly. I want to emphasize that if you can create a viral video, flash animation or even an application that can help promote Axosoft's OnTime, your likelihood of winning the $5,000 prize is extremely high! There's still time to create and submit your videos, flash and other potential viral apps!