Do "ugliest web design" contests get you more work?

[cwilde]

Hello,

I run a web design /SEO business, and I'm thinking about running an ugliest website design contest in my area.

My goal is to get leads and general exposure to my business.

Here are a few questions for those who have ran or participated in a ugliest website contest before:

1. Was the contest profitable for you? I know it costs money to publicize, then create the site itself, but in the end, did you get any real customers resulting from the publicity?

2. Did you attract customers that became actually wanted to but services from you, or were they all people lookig for freebies?

3. How long did you run it and how many entries did you get?

4. Do you have any other tips on making sure the contest is successful?

Any other tips or advice you have would be much appreciated!

Thank you in advance!
Clint

[vangogh]

I've never run a contest like this and have a hard time thinking how it would get you clients. I can understand the angle that it gets people to visit your site, but I would think it would be for all the wrong reasons. You'd be associating your brand with ugly websites. When people thinking of you a year from now guess what they'll think?

Contests like these are more gimmick than anything else. If you can pull it off well you can probably drive some quick and temporary traffic to your site, but I doubt it would lead to anything meaningful long term. I think there are better ways to generate leads and clients.

As far as running contests in general, it'll help if you've built up a network of people who can help you promote. If you don't have that kind of network in place you'll want to reach out to people with good sized audiences and figure out how you can get them interested to promote it. You might need good prizes to get people to enter too.

Is the idea with the contest to help jump start your business? If so I'm sure we can come up with other ideas to help. If you can give us an idea where you are with your business and what you've done so far to promote it, I'm sure people here will have plenty of ideas. I don't mean to put a damper on the contest idea, but I do think there are better ways to promote your business.

[Wozcreative]

Have you ever heard of Regretsy.com? It is a website that takes hand-made pieces of art from Etsy.com and defaces them for the purpose of everyone else's humor. The owner of the product, does eventually sell the product, but not because it is liked, but because it has become an "ugly" icon. That website, regretsy, gets a lot of slack from the designers/artists of these defaced products and there are a lot of negative comments flying Regretsy's way. Most businesses don't want to be thought of as negative.

Half of these "ugly" websites are due to no real budgets. How about driving down the road and telling someone their car, something they worked hard for, is a piece of crap? The ONLY time you can do that, and will be accepted is if you offer to give the person a free car because they "won an ugly contest", so their prize for winning this, is an awesome car they can show off to people—a-la-pimp my ride.

So my question is, are you REALLY expecting people to come to you because you are defaming them and they want you to fix their website for $$? By the way, some of the top ugliest websites are Google, and Craigslist.... but do you think they care? ;)

I'm all for helping a business grow and improve their image, but not when you don't know "why" their website is really bad. Their daughter may have designed it for a school project and the owner wants to keep it.

[Freelancier]

Bottom line question: are the people who would think this contest was a great idea or the people who would enter this contest your best prospective clients? Are they the ones that will pay you the most money for doing something you really love to do? If so, then go for it!

But if you're really not sure, then odds are that you need to first figure out who your best prospective clients are and then figure out how to attract their attention in a way that makes them want to contact you and contract with you.

[Harold Mansfield]

I would probably approach it differently. Maybe as a promotion offering a website "make over", and use the opportunity to promote your work, before and after.
But even that won't do too much for you unless you can get your target demographic to notice.

I'd ask a few questions myself:

1. Do you have a base of readers, or a mailing list to promote it?
2. If not, how do you propose to get it seen? How much are you willing to spend?
3. Would that money be better spent on just normal advertising?
4. What's the desired outcome? To build a mailing list? Exposure?
5. How many entries do you get now with your other marketing endeavors? How many people subscribe to your blog? Are Facebook fans on your business page? How many Linked In Connections do you have? Sign up for your mailing list?

If none of these things are gangbusters, I'd probably work on those first, before trying to market something that will need to be seen by a lot of people to get any response at all. Build your own base in which to market to.

People don't normally run contests just for the possible temporary boost in traffic. They usually want something in return, and that's usually to build a list for something.
If that is your goal, do you need to run a contest of just advertise? Are there rules that you need to follow to keep it legal in all states?

I agree with Steve, it does sound more like a gimmick than a thought out marketing campaign. Not that I'm against gimmicks, but I am against ones that are a lot of work, without any beneficial payoff.

If your problem is that you need more traffic and exposuer (and who doesn't?) , merely coming up with ideas that also need exposuer still presents you with the same problem. How do I get them seen? If you keep running the rat wheel of, "This is going to be such a great idea that people will just come", you'll never get off of it and you'll just keep wasting one great idea after another, when the real problem is your overall marketing and traffic generation.

Take it from experience. I ran that wheel for a long time.

[billbenson]

Walking a slippery slope, I think. You could post the entries and review of why it's on the bad list on your site for the education of your customers and prospects on your site. Of course everyone is going to want a backlink and they are all designers / developers.
The other side is if you are not clear, people may think these are examples of good sites. The text on the page needs to be very clear it was a bad site example and why.

While it would be fun and give you some useful info, I'd be very careful as to how you execute this.