Do you ever enter
competitions in the UK using the Internet? If you do you’ll have realised that there are a good many websites devoted to that very activity. The other thing you’ll have observed is that generally speaking you’re being offered the opportunity to win prizes just for completing questionnaires relating to your shopping habits and your tastes. You don’t really have to do anything more than that.
When you look at the value of most of the prizes that are up for grabs just for doing something so simple you can see that the information you’re being asked to supply is very valuable to the companies on whose behalf the competitions are run. This should come as no surprise, after all we all know there’s no such thing as a free lunch and you’re not being charged anything to enter. You may not have been aware of how important your tastes and opinions are!
So, if these
UK competitions are just part of a scheme to extract information from you should you be entering them at all? Well the answer to that is most emphatically, “Yes”. When you think about it rationally, it costs you nothing to enter. The information you’re being asked for is hardly of a sensitive nature is it? If you ever come across a question you’re not comfortable with there’s always the option to give a noncommittal answer or even none at all. It’s not a tax return! That’s a point. When did the Inland Revenue or whatever it’s called now, ever offer you a valuable prize in return for filling in their far more complicated forms? Their questions get a lot more personal too!
That’s the thing you see. With the
UK based competitions that you enter it doesn’t really matter how useful your answers may be to the sponsors, they’re of no great consequence to you personally. So if someone’s prepared to put up a really valuable prize that you might win you might just as well have a go. Your entry stands as much chance of winning as anyone else’s.
The Internet is the most convenient way to enter competitions of course because the sites that carry them make it so easy for you. You’d probably be sitting at the computer doing something online anyway.
There is another angle from which you might look at this business of entering competitions in the UK. As we’ve seen, all this information that’s being gathered in this way is going to be used to help the companies concerned plan their marketing strategies and campaigns. You might say, ”Well, let ‘em get on with it they don’t need my help,” but hold on a minute. Might you not be missing something here?
Look at it this way. If you simply filling in some simple questionnaires and thereby entering some competitions helps the companies to aim their marketing campaigns at people who are likely to be interested rather than a scatter gun approach, isn’t that a good thing? If it reduces the amount of junk mail received by people who have no reason to be remotely interested in a company’s products or services because they have a better idea who will be interested then surely that benefits everyone, including yourself.
Now it’s great to know that by entering these competitions you’ll be performing a public service but lets not forget why you decided to enter in the first place. You stand as good a chance as any entrant of winning a fabulous prize and it’s free to enter. Go for it, and the very best of luck!
Author Bio
Emma Paterson is the founder of Plum Prizes. Plumprizes is a UK site and unless otherwise stated all prize draws offered are open to UK residents aged 18 or over, except for employees of TMN plc, their families and anyone else who is professionally associated with the draw. You can visit the website at
competitions at
www.plum-prizes.com
