By this point, you’ve heard everything there is to hear about “how to survive and thrive in the Internet Age.” Yes, professional web design and website development are incredibly important to your online marketing success. Yes, you do need to take a diversified approach, incorporating everything from an e mail marketing service to social media into your advertising campaign, but where are the novel approaches? Where are the digital strategy consulting firms to tell you to take a chance with something unique?

YouTube and other popular video streaming services now generate more than 50 billion views per month, according to a study by Search Engine Watch. Subsequently, more and more businesses are creating marketing channels to help spread the word about and sell their content. However, sometimes just making videos isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to get creative and let your YouTube followers get involved. A contest, as the New York State Lottery found, can often be just the thing to reinvigorate a stale marketing campaign.

How a New York State Lottery YouTube Competition Generated Buzz
Last year, the NYS Lottery pulled in over $8 million in revenue. Hoping to be able to grow that number and pocket more profits after expenses, the folks at the NYS Lottery realized they had to get creative. The solution? Hold a statewide YouTube competition for covers of the famous theme from the classic TV show “Golden Girls,” “Thank you for being a friend.” As WHEC Channel 10 News reports, School of the Arts, a well-known arts-focused high school in Rochester, New York, won the competition for their acapella cover, receiving the $5,000 reward for their efforts. The school won by receiving the most votes for their video on YouTube. Of course, the NYS Lottery is the real winner here, as news outlets all over the state are now running stories praising the competition.

YouTube Competitions Combine the Best of Web Marketing
The NYS Lottery isn’t the first company to find success through such a marketing gimmick, and it doubtlessly won’t be the last. Why are YouTube competitions so successful? As any digital strategy consulting firm can tell you, YouTube competitions combine the best of multiple powerful marketing utilities.

• Web users love to be social. That’s why, according to Statistic Brain, more than two-billion people regularly use Facebook, Twitter, and other popular services. Holding a social competition like this harnesses our need to be social.
• Even though the competition was a clear ploy to bring good PR to the Lottery, the efforts still generated overwhelmingly positive attention to the state-run competition service. After all, they gave money to a high school.
• YouTube covers are extremely popular. In 2011, YouTuber Tiffany Alvord covered Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jaeger,” receiving more than five million views on her video.

As you can see, taking to YouTube is not a traditional approach to online marketing. However, with the help of a digital strategy consulting firm, you can get the formula right, opening your business to the same levels of success the NYS Lottery now revels in. Learn more at this link.