A-Z of Running a Contest for Your Small Business
If you’re marketing your small business online (and you definitely should be), adding a contest or two into your roadmap should be high on your list of priorities. It’s a great opportunity to get more eyes – and potential followers – on your business’ social pages, as well as engage with your current followers on another level. What’s more, it can even be fun!
Set a clear goal
Knowing what you want to achieve before you launch a contest is crucial. Are you looking to get more followers for your Facebook page? Are you trying to promote a new product? Would you like to get more eyes on your latest YouTube video? Once you’ve pinpointed your end goal, you can get to work on how to make it a reality.
Decide the best way to achieve that goal
If you answered “yes” to getting more followers on Facebook, you will probably want to host your contest off of your Facebook page.
If you have a bigger following on Instagram and think that your followers there will be more likely to get involved, Instagram will probably be the better option.
Finding the right balance and picking the platform that suits your end goal will help you win at your own contest.
Once you’ve chosen a home for your contest, you’ll need to do some online research. Different social channels have different rules and regulations about running contests on them, and you’ll want to be well-versed so you don’t get into hot water.
Write down all the rules
How long will it run? What will you offer? What will you offer when what you initially wanted to offer goes out of stock? Getting all the details down on paper gives your contest footing and helps to cover your backside should you have an unruly contestant.
Once you’ve dotted all the i’s and crossed every t, you’ll want to make sure this information is readily available and easy to find for your contestants. A link to a landing page with all the details will do.
Entice people with cool and relevant prizes
Offering up desirable prizes will get you some traction. However, if they’re not relevant to what your business does, you’re missing out on further promoting yourself.
Keep the prizes in line with your brand and you’ll avoid this potential snag. If you have a bakery, offer a cupcake tower or a baking class. If you have a surf shop, offer a new board or a waterproof GroPro. The examples go on, but the point is this: don’t offer up a prize that has nothing to do with your business.
With that said, do make sure to pick the most enticing prize that you can think of that fits within your budget.
Keep it simple
No one wants to work too hard to win something trivial. As it turns out, no one wants to work too hard to win something that’s even quite impressive, either. People aren’t looking to put in a lot of work via contests on social media and that’s why yours should be fun and easy to join. This will make for a bigger number of people getting involved and contribute largely to the success of your entire contest.
Test your idea by asking yourself, “If I saw this pop up in my newsfeed, would I join? Or would it be too much of a hassle?” Once you’ve answered that question with a clear “Heck yeah I would!” you’re in the clear.
Cross promote for more reach
If you choose Facebook as your main stage for your contest, you should of course promote it there. But if you have other active social channels and an email list, you should be letting people know on those channels, too. Think of it as letting the neighbours know that there’s a party over at your place and that they should all come on down and enjoy the free snacks.
But since you can’t walk up to each and every contact and tell them in person, email marketing can really come through in this area. One email to announce the contest, another to remind people to join and a potential final email to announce the winner or link to where that announcement is.
Learn from the results
You put time, effort and money into this contest. You can’t just walk away once it’s done. It’s important to measure the high points and low points, what was successful and what wasn’t, and so on, so that you can go into your next contest even better prepared.
Be sure to follow up with the contestants on your channels and thank everyone for participating too. It’s good internet manners.
SOURCE: Wix
