How to Create a Challenge

Playbook now offers the capability to build and run Challenges.

Challenges allow you to:

Say goodbye to boring programs. And welcome fun and engaging challenges into your content strategy!

Challenges are great for encouraging accountability and engagement with your users. A great way to motivate users to stick with a challenge is by offering a prize for a winner (or winners) of the challenge. What you can do within Playbook is use the promotions tab on the dashboard to create a discount on your annual plan or a free code of one of your other OTPs as a prize for your challenge. Otherwise, you might consider reaching out to any of your brand partnerships to see if they would be interested in partnering with you to provide a sponsored prize. When in doubt, offering cash as a prize can always be an option, too.

We suggest making it clear to your audience in both the app and on social media, as you promote the challenge, exactly what users have to do in order to be entered into the challenge giveaway. Example: You must purchase the challenge, submit a before photo of yourself, complete all 4 weeks of the challenge, and submit an after photo in order to be entered into the $500 giveaway for this challenge.

If you don't need a submission to run your challenge, you can just publish an OTP or program and call it a "challenge".

Playbook now allows our creators to build and manage Challenges for any type of program right inside our app!

To set this up, head to the dashboard and create a “Program” in either your subscription or as a One Time Purchase program. Once the program is created, you will see the tab titled “Challenges”. Click on that tab and click on “+ New Challenge” to add the Challenge functionality to the program.

Once you add the Challenge functionality, a form will open up prompting you to add the details of the challenge to the program.

You can title the Challenge (most of the time, it will be the same as the program).

The Registration Start and End Date and the Completion Start and End date allow you to define when signups and “Before” photo submissions can take place, as well as when “After” photo submissions can be submitted. This encourages users to register and submit a Before photo within a particular window, complete the program along with everyone else participating in the challenge, and submit an After photo, all within defined windows. The dates are adjustable on the Dashboard up until the moment that the challenge ends. If any changes are made, the consumer app will update when the user reopens the challenge.

You can also define which other options are required of your challenge participants, like highlighting their own goal or adding their Instagram profile. If you do not want photo submission to be an option for users, you can toggle off the show photos section.

Finally, a field exists for issuing instructions to the challenge participant so that photos submitted are of a similar nature. This is a great place to reiterate a description of what the photo should look like. Markdown formatting is accepted in this field. See here, for example, for a quick way to understand how to make text Bold with Markdown, as well as many other formatting options.

OR, feel free to copy and paste this example in the “Photo Guidelines” field below:

- Wear something fitted that shows your physique. Ideally, fully covered bikini bottom or shorts and a bralette or a sports bra for women, or shorts for men.

- Take your photos in good, natural lighting, preferably during the day.

- Stand in front of a plain background so the focus stays on YOU.

- Take three angles: one from the front, one from the side, and one from the back.

- Stand tall and keep your posture natural.

- Use the same clothing if possible, lighting, and angles for your after photos to really highlight your progress.

Also, make sure to save your photos somewhere safe so you can look back and see how far you’ve come. Remember, this is YOUR journey, and these pictures are a powerful reminder of your hard work.

Don’t forget to share your results at the end of the challenge, also — I can’t wait to celebrate with you! Let’s do this!

Users will be able to submit short videos, as well, but there is no explicit callout or restriction for this. All a user needs to do is select the video from their library.
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Templates are a great area to add any images that users may need to assist in their completion of the Challenge. For example, a habit tracker or Meal Planner guide. This has to be designed outside of Playbook, but you are welcome to upload it to the Template Section, and your user will have the opportunity to download it. The supported file formats are .jpg and .png.

Where Users can view the templates you add:

Once a Challenge is set up and the program is published, it’s driven by the dates that have been appended. When the Registration Start date passes, the program will show its normal content, as well as a register button. Only users who have paid for the program (or have access via their subscription) will be able to register.

From here, the Calls to Action for the user on that program will progress along with the Challenge, reminding them to submit photos, continue the program, etc., along the way.

User Submission Flow
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Example of what User first sees when they open up the challenge. They are prompted to "Register Now"

Example of what "Before" registration flow can look like for your user

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Example of what "After" registration flow can look like for your user

​Rules to be mindful of:

You can view all submitted photos/videos within the Dashboard at any point during the challenge. Once the challenge is live, you can click on “View Submissions” to see more information.

You are able to sort through your submissions by filtering based on the criteria selected at the top. Your users are prompted to answer whether or not they would like to give permission for their submission to be reposted by you. That can be filtered out by the tab of “repostable”.

If you are adding a Challenge as part of your subscription, you will want to add the program block to your landing page to highlight it. When on your landing page builder on the dashboard, click on the “Plus” icon between your content blocks. You’ll then be prompted to “Add new section”. Choose to add a “Featured Program” block to your landing page.

We suggest making the criteria clear on your landing page of what users can expect if they join the challenge. This is a great place to call out the need to submit photos in order to be entered into your giveaway for any members who choose to participate in the challenge. For a full overview of building out your landing page on playbook, check out this article here.

If you are offering your challenge as a One Time Purchase, the landing page will already be devoted to just the challenge. When on your landing page builder on the Dashboard, Click on the “Plus” icon in between your content blocks. You’ll then be prompted to “Add new section”. Choose to add a “Headline + text” block to your landing page. For OTP landing page, see this article here.

We recommend adding a section to talk about the criteria the user needs to know in order to join the challenge. This is a great place to call out the need to submit photos in order to be entered into your giveaway for any members who choose to participate in the challenge.

Remember, you can grab the direct checkout link for your challenge as well. The checkout page link will direct users (i.e., from an IG Story post) straight to the checkout page. After checking out, they will land on the Program associated with the challenge.

The Checkout page being live or not isn’t dependent on the challenge date. This way, you can have a One Time Purchase and market it because there’s a challenge you’re doing, but allow people to purchase before/during/after the challenge. Same for Subscription.
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Below you can see some examples of Challenge Landing Pages:
​Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4

We recommend opening up your sign-ups for the challenge 7-14 days before the start date. Once the challenge has begun, we would suggest keeping the signups open for at least 1 week after it starts. (This will help pull in the stragglers!)

To promote your challenge, make sure to tell your current user base when the challenge will start/end and what the prize and participation requirements will be. Make sure to leverage any email marketing that you have in place by sending information on the challenge along with previous testimonials or reviews from users.

Don’t be shy when promoting your challenge on social media. Your audience wants to hear how exciting and engaging the challenge will be! Include screenshots and screen recordings of the signup process and challenge layout, and post to your followers. Don’t forget to update your social following with the progress of your challenge process along the way. This will help your users stay engaged and will encourage future users to join the next challenge.