The Wheel Wasn’t the Point
How a simple promotion became a useful lesson in AI, branding, and visibility
A few days ago, I had one of those “what if I tried this?” ideas.
June is my birthday month, and I wanted to do something fun for my community. I didn’t want to send a plain discount email. I didn’t want to create a big campaign that would take days to set up.
Something that gave people a reason to engage and helped grow my Your Visibility Edge subscriber list at the same time.
That’s how the Visibility Adventure Wheel started.
And here’s the part to pay attention to: I went from brainstorming ideas to a live AI-built promotion in about 3 to 4 hours.
Was every part perfect? No.
Did I get stuck on the tech? Yes. More on that in a minute.
But the promotion got built, branded, customized, and launched. That’s the useful part if you’ve been thinking about running a small campaign of your own and keep making it bigger than it needs to be.
Start with one clear reason
Before I opened WooBox or asked AI for ideas, I had to answer one question:
Why am I doing this?
For me, the reason was simple. I wanted to grow my newsletter audience and give people a fun way to interact with me during my birthday month.
Your reason might be different.
Maybe you want to:
grow your email list
bring attention to one offer
re-engage people who haven’t heard from you in a bit
promote a workshop
get people to try a paid newsletter
create a fun reason to reconnect with past clients
This is where a lot of promotions go sideways. The tool becomes the focus too soon. The wheel, quiz, giveaway, or landing page gets all your attention before you’ve decided what the promotion is supposed to do.
For me, the wheel was only the format. The real goal was list growth and engagement.
That made the next decisions easier.
The first idea probably won’t be the best idea
Most spin wheels look and feel generic.
Discounts. Coupons. Freebies. A basic spin-to-win setup.
Nothing wrong with that. But it could belong to almost anyone.
So, I discussed it with ChatGPT.
I explained the goal, the audience, the birthday-month angle, and the fact that I wanted the promotion to feel connected to my brand. I wanted it to be playful, but still useful. I wanted it to feel like me, not like a random promo template.
This is where you can use AI well.
Don’t ask it to “write a promotion.”
Ask it to help you think.
Give it your rough idea. Tell it what feels off. Tell it what you don’t want. Ask it to compare options. Ask it why one theme might work better than another.
That back-and-forth helped me land on the Visibility Adventure Wheel.
The theme made sense for my brand because I’ve used adventure language in my work for years. Once I had that idea, the wheel stopped feeling like a coupon dispenser and started feeling like a branded promotion.
That’s the shift you want in your own campaign.
Use a template, then make it yours
I did not build this from a blank page.
I started with a WooBox template.
That helped because the basic structure was already there. I didn’t have to figure out how to create a spin-to-win wheel from scratch. I could focus on the parts that mattered more: the names, prizes, branding, colors, copy, and flow.
Then I used the built-in WooBox AI builder (think vibe coding, like with Lovable) to customize the promotion.
That part surprised me a little. The built-in AI helped speed up the setup inside the tool, and ChatGPT helped me evaluate the bigger brand and content decisions outside the tool.
That combination worked well.
WooBox AI helped with the build.
ChatGPT helped with the thinking.
If you’re creating a promotion, that’s a useful distinction. Some AI tools are good at producing the thing inside the platform. ChatGPT is better for talking through the strategy, testing the idea, checking the copy, and deciding whether the promotion still sounds like you. You’ll also burn fewer AI tokens.
Your theme has to do some work
Once I had the Visibility Adventure Wheel idea, I needed each slice to feel connected.
The slice names became:
Compass Point
Scenic Shortcut
Trail Map
Discovery Route
Adventure Map
Guide’s Insight
Summit Pass
Treasure Chest
The names are simple. That’s good. A confused person doesn’t sign up. A confused person clicks away.
Your theme should make the promotion easier to understand, not harder. It should give the campaign a little personality and help the pieces feel connected.
For your business, that theme might come from:
the language you already use
the way your clients talk about the work
a repeatable framework you teach
a seasonal event
a milestone
a problem your audience wants to solve
a small result you can help them get
The theme doesn’t need to be brilliant. It needs to fit.
Choose prizes you can deliver
This is where I had to slow myself down.
A promotion can look fun on the front end and become a hassle on the back end.
At one point, I considered offering a custom visibility audit. It sounded useful. It also would have created too much manual work if several people won.
So I changed it.
The final prize list included things I already had, could deliver easily, or could create without turning the promotion into a second job:
Annual Your Visibility Edge subscription discounts
A free month of paid Your Visibility Edge
50% off The Visibility Loop
An AI Prompt Pack
A Visibility Adventure Map worksheet
Ask Denise One Question by Email
Entry into a Visibility Accelerator Package grand prize drawing
That mix gave people something real without creating a delivery problem for me.
Use that as your filter.
Before you add a prize, ask:
Would my audience care about this?
Does it connect to my business?
Can I deliver it easily?
Will this create follow-up work I don’t want?
Does it point people toward a next step?
A good promotion gives people value and protects your capacity.
Both matter.
Let AI help you make decisions
I used ChatGPT throughout the process, but not in a “write everything for me” way.
I used it to discuss and evaluate:
design choices
branding
prize names
copy
theme fit
whether an idea felt too generic
whether a prize created too much work
whether the promotion made sense for my audience
That’s the part I wish more solo business owners would try.
AI is useful when you need a first draft. But it may be even more useful when you need a thinking partner and you don’t have another person sitting next to you.
You can say:
“This feels too generic. Give me 5 stronger directions.”
Or:
“Which of these prizes creates too much manual work?”
Or:
“Does this promotion feel connected to my brand, or does it feel like a random giveaway?”
Or:
“Here’s my copy. Make it warmer and clearer without making it sound overdone.”
That kind of prompting saves time because you’re not staring at the same decision for 45 minutes.
The build took 3 to 4 hours
From brainstorming to live promotion, the whole thing took about 3 to 4 hours.
That included:
choosing the promotion idea
working through the theme
naming the slices
deciding on prizes
customizing the WooBox template
using the WooBox AI builder
reviewing copy in ChatGPT
adjusting the branding and design
testing the wheel
getting it live
That is the part I want you to sit with for a second.
This did not require a huge launch plan.
It did not require a designer.
It did not require a week of planning.
It did require decisions.
That’s usually where the time goes. The tech matters, but the bigger time drain is often deciding what the campaign is, who it is for, what it offers, and why anyone should care.
AI helped me move through those decisions faster.
The tech snag was Zapier
The hardest part was not the wheel.
The hardest part is (still) getting Zapier to send email addresses from WooBox to my MailerLite list.
That’s the unglamorous part of these projects. The idea is fun. The branding is fun. Watching the wheel work is fun.
Then you have to connect the tools.
This is where I’d give you one practical warning: before you spend too much time polishing the promotion, check the connection between your promo tool and your email platform.
Can you send new subscribers to the right list or group?
Can you tag them?
Can you test the form?
Can you confirm the email lands where it should?
That one step matters because the whole point of the promotion is to create a follow-up path. If the names and emails don’t go where they need to go, you have a pretty campaign with a broken handoff.
I still don’t have it working, but that part takes the most patience.
What I’d do differently next time
I’d test the email connection earlier.
That’s the big one.
Before I spent much time polishing the final copy, I’d make sure WooBox, Zapier, and MailerLite were talking to each other properly.
I’d also write the follow-up emails before launch. Not a long sequence. Just a few messages that welcome people, deliver the prize, and point them toward the next useful step.
The wheel gets people to enter.
The follow-up is where the relationship continues.
What this means for you
If you’ve been thinking about a small promotion, don’t start by asking, “What tool should I use?”
Start with:
What do I want people to do?
Then ask:
What would make that action feel easy, useful, and connected to my business?
That’s where the promotion starts to take shape.
You might not need a wheel. You might need a quiz, a giveaway, a short challenge, a coupon, a live session, or a simple email-only promotion.
The format can change.
The process stays pretty much the same:
choose the goal
pick the audience
create a simple theme
offer prizes or incentives you can deliver
use AI to test your ideas
build from a template when you can or create from scratch
check the tech connection early
launch before you overwork it
That’s the real lesson from my Visibility Adventure Wheel.
A small idea can become a live promotion faster than you think when you stop trying to figure out every piece alone.
The Visibility Adventure Wheel is live only during my birthday month. The process behind it is something I’ll use again, and it may be worth trying the next time you want to bring fresh attention to your work.
Maybe your next AI project isn’t a promo wheel.
Maybe it’s a simple app that helps your clients make a decision, complete a task, organize information, or get a useful result faster.
That’s what we’re working on inside the AI App Creation Lab. In 4 weeks, Ellen Britt and I will guide you through building a real app with AI, even if you don’t code and don’t have a finished idea yet.
You’ll get live weekly sessions, replays, support, and 3 custom GPTs to help you move from “I have an idea” to “I built this.”
The next small group cohort starts June 17.
