There is one thing that you may have definitely tried once in your lifetime and that is engaging in a social media contest. Facebook and Instagram give a great opportunity for the brands to increase engagement and traffic towards your page and website.
Indeed, a contest is one of the best strategies to attract the audience to your brand.
So, if you’re planning to launch a contest for the first time, here are a few steps you need to keep in mind while creating a contest.
Step 1: Goal Setting
While planning a social media contest, be clear about what you are expecting out of a contest. Your goal can range from increasing followers, engagement, brand awareness, driving traffic, etc. According to your goal, create a plan of action that includes budget, terms and conditions & giveaways.
Every brand has a different purpose to run a social media contest. So it is important to be clear about what you’re trying to achieve through the contest.
Step 2: Contest Type
Once you are clear about your goals. The next step is to identify what kind of contest would work best for your brand. Here comes the crucial part of planning a contest. Let’s understand it with the help of some examples.
If the goal is to increase profile visits, brand awareness, followers you can simply use – learn more contests popularly used on Instagram.
If your purpose is to generate leads and registration then sign up contests would be the best one for your brands.
In the same way, there are many types of contests for various platforms and brands. So, keep in mind the contest can be run on any social media platforms, depending upon your target audience and your goals.
Step 3: Set your budget and giveaways
It is very important to know what is the marketing budget to run the contest and accordingly set a giveaway to the audience.
If you’re planning to run it on a regular basis (once or twice a month), then set the budget accordingly for the promotion of ads, giveaways and plan everything in advance for the year.
Decide the type of giveaway you would like to give to your customer, it may be cash prizes, a gift hamper, or a product giveaway. Keep the giveaways relevant to your product/service for more engagement of relevant customers, that may get converted in the future.
Step 4: Understand your audience
The first thing that you need to do is to understand your audience, their interest, behaviours, where they are engaging, etc. You also need to keep an eye on which platform your customers are most active on. This will help you with which platforms you should mainly focus on.
After understanding your audience, you will get more understanding of planning your contest giveaways and choosing the right platform to start with.
Just for example a bookstore running a contest can run a campaign on book giveaway or gift vouchers. That would be beneficial for the general audience too.
Step 5: Mention terms and conditions
Make clear rules for the audience to understand what is being expected from them.
Mention each and every step in the contest so that the audience won’t miss out on any point and complete all the steps that are required to win the contest.
Keep it simple and to the point to avoid confusion.
Step 6: Run the contest
We are almost ready to run the contest, create a buzz around, announce the contest in the best way possible. Create an alert on your website and email newsletters for more converts.
Once the contest time is completed, look for participants who have participated in the contest, announce the results, and accordingly dispatch the giveaways to the winner.
Step 7: Measure the results
Once the contest is over, look into the results that you achieved from the contest.
Do the analysis of contests by going back to your goal and ask different questions, what were we trying to achieve, what was the impact of the contest on platforms, if goals are not achieved then what were the challenges, etc. Make a complete analysis of your contest with insights and takeaways. This will help you to plan a better contest in the future.
To run a successful contest or get expert advice on how to run a contest get in touch with us today!
