Is a Marketers dream a compers nightmare?

Recently I saw a great competition. I clicked the link and was delighted to see there was no 25 word or less answer required and what looked like a short form. My imagination took a sigh of relief, it had the day off and I was feeling high in spirits. The prize was also a good one. Straight forward. Cold hard cash. Five figures. It would look nicely sitting in a bank account. The competition ticked all my boxes and I was feeling productive, one competition down and another couple to go. After submitting the form, a dread came over me. This was no simple competition. What appeared was a marketers dream and a compers nightmare.

Page after page of survey questions. You know the ones. What kind of wine do you like to drink? Are you interested in pet insurance? What charities do you support? Are you interested in life insurance? It was 4 pages of continuous questions and multiple choice answers. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind answering a few questions here or there for a great competition and the privilege of entering. I get it. I too think about digital marketing strategies and how to stand out from the crowd. But is it just me or are these survey/competitions becoming more common? And I have to ask the question, How many people actually answer ‘Yes’ to contact them. I would imagine many do by accident but how many would actually be potential customers?

I remember a few years ago when Facebook competitions started to become popular. A lot of compers complained and resisted. Now they are commonplace and some people have dedicated social media profiles for such competitions. Maybe playing cat and mouse with ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ is just going to be part of the game. Competitions are going to take longer to enter. You almost have to work harder for your comps. There’s no more switching off to enter.

Now you have to be alert, waiting for your form to submit. On the flipside people are more likely to give up entering the competition all together. A lot of people will just think this is all too hard. I know I have. Pressed for time, I just couldn’t go through all the pages trying to evade answering ‘Yes’. There’s no doubt marketers are becoming smarter and these types of competitions are here to stay.

Businesses know they are competing for our time and want to get on our screens anyway they can. Brands need leads. Every week there seems to be more brands participating in these types of survey/competitions and maybe we as the compers are just going to have to get use to it. What do you think?