How should I promote my contest?

Foundations of Amateur Radio

The act of telling someone about something is promoting it, not in a marketing sense, just an awareness sense. The act of not telling someone is keeping a secret.

Radio amateurs, and I have no doubt, people who are not, like to plan things. They set-up contests, on-air activities, organise swap-meets, build websites, write articles, invent things, build stuff, and all manner of other amazing activities. Some amateurs talk about what they've been up to, but most just sit quietly, hoping that their brilliance will be discovered by someone.

Of course that rarely happens.

Let's imagine a contest. It's an activity that you'd ideally want other amateurs to participate in, talking to yourself, on your own is like being a broadcaster and I can tell you, that's a tough gig. A contest is about making contacts between different participating people.

So, your contest, it's going to have rules, a planned outcome, say more QRP activity on 40m, and it's going to run at a particular time. I've lost count of the times where that's the sum-total of effort put into organising a contest. Of course the contest flops, since no-one knew about it, and often that's the end of it.

So, what can you do to actually get a head start in making this contest work?

For starters, you should figure out who the audience for this contest is. If you set it up on 160m and aim for beginners you'll have a problem, since they're not allowed on that band. So, the audience is based on the rules of the contest and of course one influences the other.

Once you've got a defined audience, and no, all the amateurs on the planet is not a valid audience, since by that metric you could also say all the taxi-drivers in New York city, and while that is a defined group, it's unlikely that you'll find much in the way of participation in your amateur radio contest. That's not to say that there isn't a New York cabbie who isn't also an amateur - hi - but their amateur status is not the same as their taxi-driver status, so pick an actual defined audience. The more defined, the better.

Let's say for a moment that your audience is amateurs who've been in the hobby less than a year who live within 1000 km of you.

Now your task is to figure out how you're going to talk to them, what you're going to say and how you're going to encourage them to be part of this wonderful contest.

You could target the local amateur schools, and ask them to send out an email on your behalf to promote your contest, or you could approach the local radio clubs and ask them to promote your thing to their new members. You could seek out local radio nets that cater for new amateurs, you could write articles for the local radio magazine, or you could post comments on your favourite social media outlet.

None of these things are particularly difficult, onerous or complex, but not doing them means that your contest is doomed before it starts.

So, now you have an audience and some outlets for communication. What do you say?

I've seen contest promotions that list the frequencies and link to the rules. That's it. Not very inspiring. I've seen promotions that state that they're aimed at a particular audience, but the rules indicate that you'll need to have a particular license in order to participate because the bands or modes exclude the audience. All these messages achieve is the opposite of promotion. People know to avoid this contest, rather than feel inspiration to participate.

So what should your message be?

First of all, it should be written one-on-one. You're listening to me right now. The fact that there are other people also listening is not relevant to you. Every communication is like this. Everyone experiences communication as a message to themselves, to their needs, emotions, desires, motivation, just me and you, talking. Of course there are messages intended for a stage, but this is not one of them. We're not in Wembley stadium and I'm not on stage encouraging everyone to wave their hands in the air right now.

So, write your message to a single person. The better you can imagine that person, the better the message works.

The information in the message needs to be heard, so you need to find a way to relate to the person listening, it needs to resonate in some way. You need to be able to elicit a "Noooo", or a "Yes!" from the person listening.

There's a contest that encourages you to set up a Jolly Roger and speak like a pirate on air, simply to find something that makes it stand out and be memorable.

Your message needs to do that, stand-out and be memorable.

The first place to look is inside yourself. What would make you want to do this contest, what would motivate you, how would you benefit from this contest, what would you gain?

So, find an audience, figure out how to talk to them, determine what you want to say and then do it. Of course, this doesn't just apply to a contest, it applies to courses, to radio clubs, to swap-meets, to technical talks, anything you want to have people come and play.

What are you waiting for! Amateur radio promotion isn't hard, but you have to actually do it.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB