Generate Leads and Acquire Customers

We begin with one of the most widely employed strategies for online advertising—generating leads or building lists of prospects. Sometimes the execution is straightforward, but the best stories we encountered had a creative insight that enhanced the advertising’s overall effectiveness. Our cases, the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway and a recruitment campaign for the U.S. Air Force, demonstrate new ways to acquire customers by leveraging capabilities that are unique to online advertising.

HGTV Dream Home Giveaway: Partnering for Qualified Leads

Who can resist a gorgeous home built with the finest materials, featuring great rooms and outside spaces, spectacular views, and state-of-the-art kitchens dripping with amenities, all for free just by entering a sweepstakes form? That’s HGTV’s Dream Home Giveaway, the biggest online sweepstakes around—36 million entries in 2006. (See Figure 4.1.)

Figure 4.1. HGTV Dream Home Giveaway entrants are encouraged to tour the home, providing branding opportunities for sponsors from the outset.
Source: HGTV.com.

A Scripps property, HGTV promotes the Dream Home Giveaway across Scripps’ collection of old and new media—cable channels, magazines, websites, and email newsletters; runs display ads in affinity sections on MSN, AOL, and Yahoo!; and airs TV specials. The aim: drive traffic to the HGTV.com registration page. ...

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