How niche ballots can help you reach new advertisers, audiences

Battles of the bands. Favorite cupcakes. High school football. Weddings.

No matter the theme, niche ballots are by nature incredibly focused. It is this focus that makes niche ballots the perfect promotion type to help you reach new advertisers and new audiences.

Niche ballots help you reach new advertisers.

Niche ballots can increase your revenue and even open up new revenue streams by helping you reach advertisers you haven't worked with in the past – particularly small local businesses who don't believe they have the budget for traditional media advertising.

Consider a niche ballot focused on the local arts scene, with categories like Best Local Art Event, Best Gallery, Best Photographer, and so on. Local galleries are usually unlikely to purchase traditional media advertising, because they have small budgets.

However, if the ballot theme is relevant to their industry, they know that the audience they will reach with category ads, expanded listings, and even traditional media advertising will be highly desirable for their business.

Here are a few other ideas for niche ballot themes, along with the advertisers they'll appeal to:

• High School Football Awards: sporting good retailers
• Best of Weddings: relevant vendors like venues, bakeries, florists and more
• Battle of the Bands: music stores
• Best Places to Eat: local restaurants (but this could also be even more specific – consider targeting only local pizzerias for a Best Pizza ballot!)
• Top Doctors: hospitals and medical groups
• Best Local Events: real estate agents

By running niche ballots, you are enabling your company to work more closely with small local businesses you may not have reached otherwise.

Niche ballots also help you reach new audiences.

Certain demographics that don't traditionally engage with local media can be pulled in with a niche ballot promotion focused on a topic they are interested in.

Think about young students voting in a High School Football Awards ballot, or local musicians promoting a Battle of the Bands ballot on their Facebook Pages. Younger audiences who may not read the newspaper or watch the news on a regular basis are more likely to pay attention to a promotion relevant to them, and when they do you have the opportunity to capture their email addresses with an opt-in and continue to market to them in the future.

Furthermore, advertisers featured on a ballot are likely to reach out to their own client bases to promote (especially if you encourage them by providing merchant marketing materials), and when advertisers involved in a targeted niche ballot do so, it will help you reach an audience you may not have had access to before.

So how are you going to employ niche ballots in your market?

Matt Coen is the president and co-founder of Second Street, a leading provider of private-label online promotions platforms and partner success services for media companies based in St. Louis, Mo. He can be reached at (314) 880-4902 or matt@secondstreet.com.