As a result of the competition Eddie injected 161 new people into his database, created $2,198 of business and income from his existing clients and $1,717 in new business from new customers.
(And had a lot of fun in the process.)
Eddie ran a fun competition inviting people to guess the number of Jaffas in a jar.
Basically the Jaffas in the Jar was an offline and online competition giving people in business $3,137 in free Christmas gifts.
They got one FREE chance to guess how many Jaffas in the Jar on his website for their chance to win $3,000 of direct response copywriting for their business.
And they also got a free critique of their website home page valued at $137 for FREE in return for supplying Eddie with their name and email address.
This was something Eddie felt he could offer to help and support businesses so they could market themselves and get their message out there faster.
Here are some of the things that Eddie did in his competition.
Step 1: Eddie wears an orange suit and is known locally as Jaffaman Eddie.
That is his branding so he decided to throw a heap of Jaffas in an empty coffee jar and upload the image to his website and create a name captured or opt-in form that capture the entrants name and email address.
Step 2: Next Eddie featured the $3,137 FREE Christmas gift offer in his e-newsletter that went out to his database of customers, networking contacts, people he'd met and his suppliers. It included a link back to his website and the landing page where people could enter
Step 3: Each week Eddie would do a small video 60-second or so video and post it on his YouTube channel, the Eddie's Copywriting & Marketing Centre Facebook page Twitter page, LinkedIn and his website to keep people and entrants in the loop so they felt part of the competition.
Step 4: Eddie designed a crude but effective Christmas card, which was the size of a traditional business card. His Christmas card had Eddie wearing a Santa hat and playing his guitar on the front, and the $3,137 in FREE Christmas gifts offers on the back.
Eddie handed this Christmas card out at business networking event he attended and included it in his hardcopy newsletter mailings as well.
So how can you apply this fun competition strategy in your business?
Beauty services - a beauty service could create competition around show us your worst spray tan, haircut or nail for your chance to win $1,000 beauty makeover. They could go to your website, enter their name and email address and upload their photo to your website for their chance to win.
Trades and mechanical services - could create something such as get your car serviced and win your service fee back in full. Another idea may be to give away a lap around a race circuit, or get one car serviced or win a new set of tyres free etc.
Professional white collar services - could give away or create a competition around free gifts such as free marketing, get a website designed by us for your chance to win your website design back in full or win a FREE SEO package valued at XYZ etc.
Competitions can be a fun way to get high quality leads for a business.
And as Eddie notes, competitions can be easy to put into action.
People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing. - Dale Carnegie
Action Exercise:
How could you use a fun competition to market your business?
Graham McGregor is a marketing consultant and the creator of the 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage Report.' www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com (This is free and has now been read by business owners from 27 countries.) You can email him at the link above. 
