Digital World
Everyone loves getting something for free. In fact, one of the main reasons that people “Like” brands on Facebook is so that they can either obtain a discount or win something.
The rise of social media allows businesses to easily create their own contests and giveaways that can:
– Build links to your website (great for SEO), increase traffic and create social engagement.
This can lead to increased brand awareness and the sharing of your contest on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. So giving away something for free can result in free marketing.
The current estimated number of smartphone users in South Africa is around 16 million with it expected to reach 22 million by the end of 2021.
Facebook no longer allows contests based on likes, increasing followers is still one of the main motivations for organising giveaways.
64.8% of survey respondents list it as one of the greatest benefit of social media giveaways. The other popular benefits are increasing brand visibility (62.2%) and increasing social media engagement (58.7%). An average of over 34% of new customers are acquired through contests.
1. Give A Reason For People To Follow Your Brand.
Some people see your online ads but are not customers or followers of your brand. Sometimes ads are not enough to sway a potential customer. One way to motivate people to follow your brand is to host a social media contest. Select a great prize that will have everyone talking. Stand out from the competition that is not doing anything fun to draw new people to their products and services.
Create an ad campaign just for your contest. Write about it in your company blog. Post information about your social media contest on all of your company social media profiles. Make a video about your current contest.
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2. Determine the goal of the giveaway.
What is the primary purpose of the giveaway? Is your focus to increase social engagement to your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter pages? You might also be interested in using giveaways as a link building strategy?
The goal that you choose will determine the type of contest and entries that you will run. You also need to determine your budget for promoting the giveaway.
3. What will you be giving away, and how long will the contest run?
Based on the goal of the contest, your margins, and your audience, you can select a giveaway product that people will love.
4. Establish benchmarks.
Before you launch your Giveaway, create a document for yourself with your benchmarks. Here are a few that you can consider:
– Number of likes on Facebook, Number of Retweets to the page, Number of inbound links, Average monthly visitors and the Conversion Rate.
5. Create an email announcing the giveaway to your email subscribers.
Reaching out to your current customers and subscribers gives you an opportunity to “seed” the giveaway with existing fans. It also gives your customers an opportunity to engage with your brand.
6. Determine promotions budget & track your outreach.
It’s important to stay organised while you go through this process. There can be a lot of emails back and forth, each at different stages of the promotions process, that things can easily slip through the cracks.
7. Promote your giveaway regularly.
– Blog post and promote on social media.
8. Email the giveaway entrants to encourage them to come back.
Halfway through the contest, send an email to all of the entrants to encourage them to return to your site for more entries. By sending out an email, you may get some of the existing entrants to engage with your brand and generate more exposure.
9. Select your winner!
Continue to advertise your giveaway. You should have several hundred entries by the end of the 15-30 day period. Depending on how many entries you made available will determine the total number of entries. Follow the correct procedure when a winner is determined.
Notify the winner immediately and ask them for permission to use their picture in an email announcing the winner of the contest.
10. Upload emails to your email list.
If you included an email collector as an entry, or included in the Disclosure that entrants would be added to your mailing list. Send out an email to your list announcing the winner and thanking people for participating.
11. Mail out the prize.
Don’t send out the product in a boring box. Make it beautiful! Add a personalised letter or something that will make the winner feel special. Encourage the winner to share about winning the price, and to review your product on their site.
Recap
You can generate social engagement and buzz by having people view and follow you on your social media channels. Now that more people know about your business you have expanded your audience.