Small businesses face an uphill struggle in promoting themselves. Effective marketing requires time, manpower and, more often than not, a budget – three resources that a small operation often struggles to afford.
One way the businesses can promote themselves is through their achievements – awards and success stories are a great PR tool, but even then it can cost time and money to flag
up the news of a recent accolade. A business could win an award, but may not be able to afford to shout about it.
Recognising this problem facing small businesses, T-Mobile stepped in with a solution that would not only help small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to promote themselves, but would also help establish the brand as a friend to local entrepreneurs and businesses.
Share your success was a website built by T-Mobile as part of a competition to find the country’s most popular successful business. Firms could register their details at shareyoursuccess.sk, and list their business successes. They could customise their listing with images and logos. Any Slovak company could submit their business success in any field or category.
Companies were encouraged to promote the T-Mobile competition site on their own websites, in newsletters and social media channels. Some companies even bought banners and PPC ads – effectively purchasing media space for T-Mobile. Facebook like buttons became the voting tool. Visitors to the site voted for their favourite success stories, with the best company winning 30 billboards on which they could share their success in the real world.
Results
Almost 1,000 companies in Slovakia joined the competition, with 160,056 unique visitors in its first four weeks of operation
In the same timeframe, the voting micro-site scored 74,700 views
The winning company was JozefPis Studio
The top 10 companies received 44,000 likes via the Facebook like buttons, which T-Mobile used as the voting tool