Business Gateway helps online competition business win a bigger audience

About the business

The competition website provides online users with the opportunity to enter a variety of free and paid competitions, starting from as little as 59p. Offering weekly prizes from Friday night take away meals to foreign holidays whilst utilising live, filmed and online draws.

Business Gateway was really helpful from the start in helping identify weaknesses in the business and providing excellent marketing support. This led us to develop the ‘Plum Chum Community’ group and encouraged interaction amongst already established customers. We additionally introduced a loyalty scheme for anyone that hadn’t been blessed with a win over £50, launching the “Second Chance Club".

Lee Palmer, Founder of Plum Competitions Ltd

How Business Gateway has helped

Like many other businesses in the online industry, Plum Competitions faced challenges with technical difficulties and teething problems. Lee found himself isolated and concerned about how to keep his business operations physically visible to potential customers and ensure the smooth running of Plum Competitions and therefore approached Business Gateway for help and support.

Business Gateway supported Lee with a range of start-up services, including one-to-one support from a dedicated business adviser. With this guidance, Lee underwent a strategic review to develop his business plan and implement strategies to expand his services and update his website.

Business Gateway support helped Lee to assess the technical troubles Plum Competitions was having. Lee successfully worked with digital media specialists in Stirling who helped resolve the website’s technical difficulties and at no cost, ensuring a user-friendly website.

Lee also benefited from attending Business Gateway’s marketing sessions in Stirling and was able to implement acceptable online marketing with more traditional methods of marketing. This helped Lee get his business in front of local participants in Stirling.

Since approaching Business Gateway, Plum Competitions has created a more interactive user experience rather than only focusing on simple draws. This includes offering a variety of competitions with different levels of demand, some being high-demand, while others can be low-demand, catering to a broader audience.

Over the past six months, Plum Competitions has raffled off 4-star holidays to Krakow's Christmas Markets, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Nice and Turkey, with tickets on sale for as low as 24 pence."

Lee Palmer, Founder of Plum Competitions said: “Having an online business and being able to have access to Business Gateway’s digital media specialists was immensely helpful in making Plum Competitions more ‘physically’ visible to potential customers. It also lends comfort to know that support is there when needed.”