EBID Marketing Challenge. Proposals thread

[HannaHolly]

EDITED OPENING POST. POLL ADDED.

You have up to 15th January 2008 to vote. The final proposal may be one idea that costs £2000 to implement, or it may be a combination of supportive ideas which added together cost up to £2000. I suggest you vote for between 1 and 3 choices ( sorry i didn't know how to restrict voting on the poll!). I've used the private voting option so no one will know who you've voted for!

edit. read posts 43 and 44 when totalling votes in Jan


PROPOSALS
Proposer. Greenmason
Idea. SELLER OF THE MONTH/eBid SELLER CORNER (post 2)
Cost < £100 estimated

Proposer. HannaHolly
Idea. Youtube viral ad competition (post 3)
Cost £300

Proposer. NYKmedia
Idea. Press release section, online newsletter & development of existing newsletter (see posts 10, 11 & 23)
Cost. ??

Proposer. Artsbanquet
Idea. FREE £2.00 vouchers to spend on anything at Ebid ( post 7)
Cost. £2000

Proposer: Artsbanquet
Idea: Prize-Draw entry for new verified sign-ups to Ebid are put into a competition to win £500, £250 and 5x£50 prizes.
Cost: £1000

Proposer: Artsbanquet
Idea: Prize-Draw entry for signing up to Ebid's newsletter mailing list to win £500, £250 and 5x£50 prizes. (In order to sign up for the mailing list, I believe you have to register as a member first)
Cost: £1000

Proposer: Rednosty
Idea 200.000 impressions (ads) on http://www.wedigtv.com/ (post 26)
Cost £2000

Proposer. NYK media
Idea: improved Affiliate Programme (post 28)
Cost. NK

Proposer: NYKmedia
Idea: Sponsor a horse race, name it after eBid, eg: the www.eBid.net handicap. See ideas thread for more details.
Cost: £1000 approximately

To make the poll up to ten I've added one more option - ebid continue to spend the £2000 on adwords!

Original opening post

I have copied Gazzas message from the marketing thread below so everyone is clear what this thread is for.

Please post on this thread:-

• Your Proposal ( with a brief description or perhaps a link to where it is discussed in more detail).
• How much it will cost to impliment your proposal.

If you are posting your proposal here the assumption is that you will be doing whatever is needed to make it happen if your idea is the most popular once I add a poll!

Once everyone who is submitting a proposal has done so, I will add a poll where we can make up to three selections so that we can all vote for our favourite or favourites. Our final plan might be one idea which will cost £2000 to implement or it might be a mix of a few ideas that total up to £2000 altogether.

An example in case anyones unsure what they need to put on this thread:

If you think the £1 no reserve promotions idea would be much more effective if we put banner adds advertising it on other online websites. You will have researched how much it will costs to design a banner add, and to have it displayed on chosen sites for a month ( sorry to use 'real' ideas for the examples- but I thought that makes things clearer)

Please don't use this thread to discuss ideas or they'll get lost!

It's fine to propose more than one idea; please do this in in separate posts so it's easier when i add a poll

Gazzas original message

"Hi Everyone,

As i mentioned in post #75 we are looking for an opportunity to get a better return on our advertising budget than we currently are by advertising with Google, Yahoo, MS Live Search and the other online methods we use. We have trialed many different forms of advertising online and offline that lie within our budget and have found our current methods to be the best value for money in terms of cost per acquisition.

We see quite a few eBidders mention they would like to see us advertise more so we thought we'd create a chance for our users to get together and come up with a plan on how best to spend the budget. We're open to any ideas at all and sometimes the cheapest and most creative are the best and give a huge return for little spend. We will channel £2000 from a months advertising budget into the plan that is agreed on in the end by you all. Hopefully it will be a success and will allow us to channel a regular portion of our budget away from where it is currently being spent.

Ideally we'll be given the plan and estimated costs and then we will give the go ahead and then wait for the invoices and the new users!!

Thanks,
Gazza

[greenmasons]

Thanks for setting this thread up!
I'll have a go by adding my first proposal:

SELLER OF THE MONTH/eBid SELLER CORNER

This proposal is to add a completely new section to eBid exclusive to Sellers and Seller+ members. This could contain a wealth of information about Selling with Tips, Strategies and Advice from existing members. Think of it like a free on-line seminar with workshops on safe selling and how to ad advanced tools to auctions.
The whole section would help to promote safer selling and create more interesting listings for Buyers.
Experienced Sellers on eBid could share their knowledge about the site and run the special workshops.

The section would also include a 'Seller of the Month' feature where Gazza + Mark would randomly pick a seller and put them on the 'e-Spotlight' with an interview so we could find out a little more about them and their shop, how they found eBid and their plans for the future. This part of the Seller section would be viewable by Buyers as well.

The whole beauty of this idea is its very cheap, involving more manpower than money, but could become a magnet for PR and get eBid listed on Safe Shopping website pages. I think this idea is not an overnight solution to attracting new customers BUT in the Mid-to-Long Term it would help ensure new sellers come to eBid and help make the site an attractive one for new Buyers who stay rather than heading off to other auction sites.

****

The whole idea came to me as a way of increasing Successful Transactions, Improving Seller-Buyer Relations and in the long-term create more appealing auctions and better search results for Buyers.
The section could be called something simple like 'Sellers@eBid' or eBid Seller Community (Haven't thought of names much yet!).

This idea wouldn't cost much in the way of money, I think it would be more manpower for G+M but the workshops could be delegated to members to run and so the whole section becomes a Seller Community with input from everyone.

However, in the long run the section could easily be advertised on other sites attracting new potential sellers to come to eBid and get advice before opening up their own store...kind of like Business Link on eBid!!

Sorry I don't know much about the cost...I think this idea would be very cheap with regards to money, its more a manpower idea.

And that's my idea

Extremely cost effective but in the long-run it would create better Buyer-Seller Relationships and improve the experience of buying on eBid overall.

[HannaHolly]

Here's one of my ideas
Competition for an EBID video/viral ad on Youtube . Details on thread http://helpdesk.ebid.net/showpost.ph...&postcount=181

Winner is the ad which gets the most unique views after 4 weeks. The incentive of a decent cash prize should encourage participants to think about their videos- what will attract attention, what keywords ( other than EBID of course!) will get the most hits?
Joining youtube is free. viral ads ( e.g videos) can be made on mobile phones, digital cameras etc.. no specialist knowledge is required. Uploading to youtube is free.

Costs. £200 for the maker of the winning video. EBID goodie bags for all entrants ( est cost £100). Total costs £300.

Youtube was created in 2005. Taken over by Google in 2006 and receives millions of hist each week. it is a rapidly expanding phenomonan. Any ebid ads created for yourtube will continue to advertise ebid long after the competition has finished. win, win and win!

[HannaHolly]

Hi guys. could you briefly summarise your proposals on this thread- and put one proposal per post please so it's easier for me to transfer them to a poll later.

You could use greenmasons thread to go into detail?

I was considering having multiple choices on the poll - e.g you can vote for up to three options.

[nykmedia]

Proposal: All of what I have already said summarized - make the most of all free advertising/marketing/promotional methods
Cost: Zero

[*artsbanquet*]

FREE £2.00 vouchers to spend on anything at Ebid - limited to new verified sign ups and one per household. £2000 divided by 2 is 1000 new sign-ups. Promotional code in AAL needed.

[*artsbanquet*]

Prize-Draw entry for new verified sign-ups to Ebid are put into a competition to win £500, £250 and 5x£50 prizes.

Total cost = £1000

[*artsbanquet*]

Prize-Draw entry for signing up to Ebid's newsletter mailing list to win £500, £250 and 5x£50 prizes. (In order to sign up for the mailing list, I believe you have to register as a member first)

Total cost = £1000

[HannaHolly]

Can i make a quick plea!

To keep this thread managable can any questions or debates about proposals be made on the ideas thread. Once G & M give us a steer on timescales we'll add a poll to this thread and everyone will be able to vote for the ideas they like.

[nykmedia]

My first proposal is still PRESS RELEASES