To contest or not to contest...

Filed in archive Bootstrapping Thoughts on June 28, 2010

© tequilamike

At our local Chamber of Commerce, it seems like there is always some contest or other designed to entire small business owners to sign up and try to win something that is usually just an extravagant marketing package of some sort. There are also more legitimate contests, "Small Business of the Year" and so on, that are provided by the promoter as a venue for the small businesses to market themselves. Most are pitched as some combination of the two, like this Office Depot contest.

Either way, it seems to me that these contests take up a lot of time and put some constraints on your business... yeah, it's "no purchase necessary" but the expectation is that you're going to start shopping at Office Depot more frequently.

My question is, do you see the value in these, or do you just think they are a waste of time? So far I have been on the time-wasting side of the question, but they remain pretty popular (probably, I'm guessing, for the same reasons lottery tickets are still big sellers) so maybe I am missing something.