If you are reading this blog, you are likely interested in Kit Contests and their results. I have written this blog to serve as a case study to take you through the results of our most recent contests. It will show you how Kit contests have generated wins for the community and the influencers we’ve worked with.
*Also make sure to check out Kit’s Comprehensive Contest Guide for a full detailing of the benefits of running a contest and the process of creating and running a successful contest.
We kickstarted Kit contests alongside three fantastic influencers. You may have seen two recent Kit Contests with chef extraordinaire Justin Khanna and Producer Jeven Dovey in the previous months as well as our newest contest alongside education expert Al Thomas of EduCopilot.
After completing the most recent contest with Jeven, we were blown away by the whirlwind of wins not only on our side but also for the influencers, sponsors, and the community. This ‘whirlwind of wins,’ is the cumulative pros or ‘wins’ generated from the collaborative effort that is a Kit Contest. However, it’s not easy to uncover all the positive effects that a Kit contest will have from its inception, so I’ll discuss some of the major wins that Kit Contests have generated and how they came about. First, I’ll discuss the wins we generated for the community, followed by the wins for the creators we worked with, and finally, the benefits the creators saw because they ran their contests on Kit.
Benefits and Wins for the Community
At Kit, one of the core pillars is to benefit our community and nurture it to be a place where creators can thrive and bring each other up. Contests have been a great way to work with influencers to do this.
Giving back to the community and showing appreciation for his fan base was a dominant goal in Justin’s contest. His “What’s in my Knife Bag 2020” Kit contest launched alongside a sequel in his yearly “Knife Bag” series, in which he presented the essential cooking gear in his knife bag and demonstrated the importance of each item. By doing this, not only did he create a piece of interesting content that received increased views and engagement. He also showed his audience the gear he’s passionate about so that they could get it for themselves and up their cooking game.
Jeven had similar goals for his community and created a video where he detailed what was in his ‘500k Camera Kit‘, and showed off the gear that got him to 500k subscribers on YouTube. At the end of each video, the influencers launched their Kit Contest while detailing some of the rules and prizes. In Justin’s case, we provided him with the resources to handpick three Japanese-made chef’s knives as prizes for entrants. In Jeven’s contest, the winners were awarded three prize packs, including three different cameras, tripods, and awesome software to help entrants kickstart their YouTube channels. In both contests, we were excited to see substantial engagement both from followers of the influencers and people new to their brand.
The serious contenders delivered Kits that demonstrated careful thought, passion, and comprehension of the contest’s goals. In the second contest with Jeven, we ran a live stream to announce the winners and saw 2.2k viewers, with viewership staying strong even as we passed the hour mark. Throughout the stream, fans were raving in the chat and asking a myriad of questions to both Jeven and Jesse Lakes, the CEO of Kit, who joined in on the fun. At the end of the live stream, the champions were incredibly grateful for our interactions with them. It was apparent that we had created lifelong connections between the creators and their fans!
The winner of Jeven’s contest had been filming all of their content on their phone camera at the time. Once we got a Canon M50 in their hands, they gained the power to take their channel to the next level. Check out the winner of the Jevens contest’s channel, The Veggie Nerd!
Benefits and Wins for the Creator
We also work hard to help those who create the content that viewers love and grow. We’ve seen significant wins for the creators we have worked with as well!
Increased engagement and growth
Throughout our contests, we’ve seen increased engagement and accelerated growth. Justin Khanna saw a 30% increase in subscriber growth during the contest. He also saw increased audience retention, which he noted as “super good.” Another significant win was that the contest video had an enhanced “subscribed to not subscribed” ratio, boasting 53.7% subscribed to 46.3% not subscribed, as seen in the image below. This means a larger percentage of new viewers watched the video, which ultimately led to more opportunities for Justin to gain new subscribers.
In my contest debrief with Jeven Dovey after his contest winners live stream, he told me that, “My concurrent viewers were almost double than normal, and many stayed longer.” and noted that, “This was a good giveaway that had a ton of community involvement.”
Nurturing relationships with sponsors
Furthermore, as we work together hand in hand through the contest process and decide on prizes, we greatly encourage sponsors’ addition to the contest. We have had the honor of alongside sponsors such as Adobe, Epidemic Sound, Geniuslink, Insta360, Switchpod, and others through our partnerships with influencers. These companies provided sponsored prizes for the contests, and, in turn, we included their branding in the contest blog.
Benefits of Running a Contest on Kit
Now that you have seen some of the major wins Kit Contests have generated, you may wonder how these came about and why these influencers chose to run their contests on Kit. Kit’s unique model offers distinct advantages that other platforms cannot, the major of which are outlined below.
A collaborative rules creation process that positioned them to meet their goals
When designing the contests, we worked with these influencers to decide which rules suited their goals. We offered the freedom to grow whatever metrics provided the most advantages, which resulted in high engagement and a goal-oriented contest.
For example, in Justin’s Knife Bag 2020 contest, a requirement of entry for one of the prizes was to comment on his video with a link to the entrant’s Kit. As a result, we saw more than five times the regular number of comments on his videos. Justin also saw a 13% jump in growth to his email newsletter subscriptions during his contest due to a requirement of subscribing to his newsletter for one of the prizes.
More freedom than other platforms
A major advantage of running a contest on Kit instead of YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter is that we allow you to require engagement both on Kit and other sites. Kit functions as an excellent contest platform because it gives you more freedom to pursue your goals and mitigates risks that would arise from other platforms’ TOS. Contests held on other platforms have more stringent rules, which can pigeonhole a contest and make the creation process more difficult. With Kit, you’ll be interacting with our team directly to build and run your contest. Check out Kit’s Comprehensive Contest Guide for more information navigating various platforms TOS.
Earning affiliate commissions from Kit contests
Additionally, all Kits on Kit.co have the feature of automatic affiliation built into them. This means all entrants’ Kits can earn commissions when people click on them during or after the contest. If an entrant creates a high-quality Kit that the Kit algorithm like and it becomes the top Kit for that niche, it will get significantly increased views, which will result in clicks, and if they’ve added affiliate IDs into their affiliate dashboard, then they’ll earn a commission each time someone purchases a product after clicking on one of the products in their Kit.
And when the influencers created their example Kit for the contest, entrants and interested readers looked to their Kit for inspiration in creating their own. So when they clicked the influencers’ affiliated product links in the Kit, they earned commissions too.
In both Jeven and Justin’s contest, their example Kit rose to the number one spot on the Kit homepage and saw a large increase in views due to their contests. As you can see below, Jeven’s example Kit, “My Youtube Gear List,” has hit ~140k views on Kit. And this isn’t even his most viewed Kit! Justin Khanna’s “What’s in my Knife Bag 2020 Kit” was boosted as well to hit ~50k views.
Wrapping up
As you can see, Kit Contests provide many advantages and boundless potential. By reaching out to the Kit team and getting started, you can throw your own Kit contest. We will handle the contest blog and promotion to our network for running the contest free of charge. By encouraging people to share the gear they love and showing appreciation for the people who build us up, we generate a whirlwind of wins and create value for our influencers, sponsors, and community. We hope to work with you on a Kit contest of your own, so please let us know if you are interested! Contact the Kit Contests team at jl@kit.co to get started!