Intro to Challenge Marketing
Challenge marketing is a new term for a tried and true way of interacting with an audience – asking questions and collecting answers. But while traditional methods of going about challenge marketing include surveys, polls & assessments, newer, more modern and engaging methods are available. Challenge marketing leverages interactive content by asking users a question and then enabling them to state their preferences. After engaging, users are presented with a personalized and highly relevant call to action that drives the user to the next logical step in the customer journey. Because users are asked for input they are highly likely to engage, driving up engagement, click through rates, interactions and time spent engaging, while providing the marketer with valuable sentiment and data.
The psychology of challenge marketing
Challenge marketing leverages many core principles of psychology that influence choice, preferences and human behavior. This is the underlying reason why challenge marketing works: it enables users to state preferences in a low-risk manner.
IDEA: History of polling
IDEA: Preferences & choice
IDEA: highly debatable subject matter and people feel compelled to engage
we can talk about how sports is challenge but the format works for any medium and topic
Any issue, question or debate, no matter how serious or frivolous, has been or probably soon will be bracketized and played out until a champion emerges. Some of them, such as that battle of the saints, are decided by public vote. Others, like the TV drama competition, are judged by the bracketmakers themselves. But they all follow the essential NCAA tournament format: matching up pairs of contestants and winnowing the field down until a champion emerges.
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Maybe that’s the secret of March Madness. Could it be that the real draw is not so much the hoops as the system? There is something appealingly neat and orderly about breaking down a big question into a series of little ones, like eliminating suspects on the way to solving a mystery. There is also a reassuring certainty to a bracket; a debate can go on forever, but feed it into that familiar honeycomb-like format, and though you still may not agree on who’s right, at least there will be no question about who won. “People are competitive by nature, and they also like to have their opinions out there, and brackets enable them to do that,” says Craig Zingerline, 34, who with his partner Patrick Mahoney founded bracketeers.com, a site that enables users to create their own brackets on any subject. “It’s a low-profile way to weigh in on whatever you’re interested in or passionate about.”
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Zembula uses:
- Curiosity: What you don’t know won’t kill you. Or will it?
- Fear of Missing Out: The 21st century angst that rules our lives.
- The Ikea Effect: How Scandinavian products make us feel better.
- Near Miss Theory: Almost wins are massive motivation & they’ll keep trying to win.
- Endowment Effect: Give fans ownership and they’ll value the experience.
- Operant Conditioning: Train and reward your fans for repeated success.
Use terms for “competition content” and “competition surveys” as well as “conversations”
stuff like “2-way conversations” and “direct to customer conversations”