While mass marketers often run games and contests on a nationwide scale, small business can't afford this kind of promotion. But what we lack in money, we can make up for in moxie. Let's examine some other industries to discover what they have done. Hopefully, this will trigger some ideas for you.

Holding Contests

Texas is the birthplace of a lot of big ideas. The first Living Legends Classic, an annual bodybuilding competition, was held in Warton, Texas. What an ideal contest for a gym to sponsor. And you might know a Texas bank, TransFirst, came up with a sweepstakes idea to encourage customers to use its Moneymaker automatic teller machines (ATMs). A joint promotion with a local radio station and 7-Eleven stores, where the machines were placed, made the costs affordable. Sweepstake numbers appeared on each Moneymaker ATM transaction slip. A whopping 2.5 million entries resulted.

On a smaller scale, one Halloween a market placed a giant pumpkin in its window and offered cash prizes to the person who guessed closest to the number of seeds inside the pumpkin. The contest drew thousands of entries