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Ideally, which comes first — the mechanics of the promotion or the prize?
In a dream scenario, you're handed the prize first and then you make a judgement based on what the audience is willing to do to win that specific prize.
If you have an exceptional grand prize — and by that I mean cash, cars, a trip, front row tickets with backstage passes to a sold-out concert — then you can always ask the consumer to do something else.
For example, you can ask them to listen at 7:15 to find out what the song of the day is, and then listen for when you play the song back sometime that day. You can ask them to jump through those hoops and then run to the phone and call, but if you've just got a pair of tickets to the truck-pull then you've basically got to ask them to go to the phone and call now to win tickets.
Most Christian stations have small (or no) budgets for contest prizes. With that in mind, what types of prizes make sense?
Inevitably, the prize you cannot buy still works. It's one thing to give someone tickets to a concert. But if you can give them backstage passes, if you can give them limousine service, if you can give them an autographed CD cover, if you can give them a private performance in their home, then it becomes a grand prize.
The prize that you cannot buy is something that only the radio station can bring to you. Only the radio station has that relationship with the artist, and only that same radio station brings you the music from that artist.
This is particularly important in Christian broadcasting because some of this music gets no airplay anyplace else. We are the only people that can put you into a face–to-face meet-and-greet with the artists backstage before the concert.
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