This article will explore the wider dimensions of effective social media contests. It will also analyze whether the relationship between them and increased revenue is more than a myth.
Benefits of social media contests
The important thing is that social media contests are only effective when they are designed meticulously. These contests only enable organizations to attract audiences when there is strategic planned involved.
So, why should one create a social media contest?
Publicity
For starters, you will be getting some much-wanted publicity for your brand, good or service. This is the perhaps the most fundamental yet vital step which eventually your business to expand. Although the contestants, or the target market, will take home the prizes, you too will benefit from it.
Consider this statistic:
The top three industries that use social media contests are entertainment, technology and music.
The fact that the three biggest industries in the world use social media contests is very telling. It just goes on to show how much people have come to rely on social media platforms. In addition to this, all major apps use social media contests to boost their campaigns. Here is another important statistic:
The number of entrants through mobile devices has increased by 8 times since 2012.
This trend indicates that mobile social networking is increasing social media activity. This goes on to show how beneficial social media contests can be if pitched properly.
As the number of people who engage with your brand increases so does your overall sales volume. This, in turn, would lead to an increase in revenue, promoting further business expansion. Social media giveaways do more than providing you with opportunities for engagement and lead conversion. They also help you develop long-lasting rapport and connections with your consumers.
Look at the following statistic:
One in every three entrants agrees to receive information about brands and partners.
This ensures long yet useful engagement of consumers. For example, they will become more aware of what an individual brand has to offer. This will increase the likelihood of purchasing the goods being delivered. This inevitably leads to higher profits and more opportunities for the business.
Greater engagement, greater profits
The more actively engaged your audiences, the greater your profits in the long-term. Keeping this simple rule in mind, social media contests become ever so compelling. Social networking sites like Facebook use algorithms to filter content that appears on users’ profiles. If your content has an extensive following, the algorithms will detect this and consider it worthy of suggesting to other users. Basically, the higher the activity on your page, the greater its chances of showing up on users’ profiles.
Thus, a larger number of people will become familiarized with your brand. This increases the chances of their buying your products. Increased sales will, of course, translate into increased revenue. Thus, social media contests are ideal for business as they give your firm the boost or kickstart it needs to stand out and expand further.
Keep track of your contestants
On average, one-third of the contestants willingly give their contact details so you can launch them when you launch new products or events. However, with social media contests, you can target the numbers who declined. You already have the contestants’ email addresses, which you can forward to your marketing department. This will make it easy to target a large number of people and increase the chances of converting them.
A social media contest is perhaps the easiest and fastest way to expand your target market’s email list. By emailing all contestants on a regular basis, you are bound to capture the attention of some, if not all of them. This is a great tactic as it fosters higher levels of engagement. Also, and perhaps more importantly, it increases your customer base.
As a result, your sales are likely to grow. This, in turn, will have a positive impact on your company as a whole.
In short, social media contests provide a way to keep track of the people most likely to buy your products. This can be very helpful when conducting effective future advertising campaigns. That is because your campaign can be tailored in a way that appeals to the age, gender, ethnicity or other factors most dominant in your contestants’ list.
Be a trendsetter
In this fast-paced and media-centric era, it is often easier to just sit back and follow where other companies lead. You may, for example, adapt their production methods and marketing gimmicks simply because it is simpler and less risky than running with your original ideas.
Social media contests, however, bring an entirely new and unique dimension to marketing and business ideology. If you are sufficiently creative yet practical with your contest, it could be a mega-hit. Its success could even make your company viral. Once you have achieved this, the world would quite literally be at your feet. You will be the one in control. You decide how the market ought to perceive your product. There will no longer be any need to copy other entrepreneurs’ ideas. With the success of your social media contest, you can quickly transform other people’s perceptions of your brand and products.
A change in perception would give you greater freedom to experiment and innovate. This way, new and exciting ways of marketing and advertising will emerge, which would seek to further the growth of your business. You can also utilize this elevated position to bring about a positive change in the world.
Since you are now truly in control of your company and the course it takes, you can invest in things that are likely to have a greater positive impact on your organization.
How do you go viral?
Beyond dispute, this is easier said than done, but it is by no means impossible. There is no particular pattern or rule you can follow which would guarantee a successful social media contest. However, there are a few general guidelines which will help you attain that ultimate goal:
Innovation
First and foremost, you must be innovative. An aesthetically appealing social media contest will attract more attention. Be creative and invest an appropriate budget in planning and designing your social media contest. The more creative your layout and presentation, the greater its appeal among audiences. A well-planned and meticulously thought-out campaign certainly brings in the numbers.
You could decide a theme that complements your business ideology or conforms with your marketing message. In essence, anything that is different and stands out will give you a better chance of attracting more people.
In addition to this, if users are allowed to create their original content, you might be able to engage more people. Once you get a decent number of contestants, do not hesitate to ask them to share the content. You want as many shares as possible to make your social media contest go viral. This is what will ultimately increase your revenues and bring in expansion opportunities.
An underlying goal
Make sure to have a goal in mind when running a social media contest. This will give you a sense of direction, keeping you on a proper course without getting sidetracked. It will also enable you to choose the right content to use in your contest. The goal or objective can differ from one business to another. Common goals include increasing social media following, boosting social media engagement, increasing social media leads and expanding social media business.
Whatever the underlying object may be, one thing is for certain. It will certainly benefit your overall company and provide you with the much-needed sense of purpose. This feeling of purpose will then, to a great extent, assist you in determining the contest’s content. This is a task which would otherwise take you much longer and waste valuable time.
Social following directly increases exposure for your brand and products, which ultimately translates into greater profits. Thus, this could be your central objective, and you could use the others as side goals or secondary priorities.
Choosing the type of contest
As part of planning a social media contest, you will need to decide which type of contest to run. You could opt for a real old photo contest. If you want to be little more daring, go for an essay contest. Remember your choice should ultimately be appealing to your target market. The bigger your customer base, the more your profits.
Why use the WordPress Raffle plugin?
This is one of the best plugins to use when running giveaways and contests. If you want to create the right type of hype for your brand, this plugin is your friend!
This social WordPress giveaway plugin allows you to set up appealing contests and giveaways on your website in just minutes. Here’s what it offers:
- The chance to run viral giveaways
- Multiple entries
- The ability to track the number of participants
- Integrating entries with platforms like MailChimp
- Exporting the list of participants after the giveaway ends
Using this plugin, you can run social media contests that go viral and create positive publicity for your brand.
In a nutshell, therefore, it can be said that social media contests are beneficial as they lead to greater engagement, more customers, and ultimately, higher profits.
This is a guest post by Swati Gole.