Being present on social media is not a matter of choice anymore, but a requirement of the market.
Social media penetration into the lives of the worldwide public has reached 42%, with 3.4 billion people using various social media channels. Furthermore, statistics show that 95% of businesses worldwide use Facebook to connect with their customers.
Still, not every company is making the same impact on social media. Brands which gain the most attention know how to engage with their prospects and forge a bond which is not so easy to break. One of the strategies they gladly use is social media contests. Here are a few reasons why running a social media contest can be beneficial for your brand as well, and why you should make it a part of your marketing plans.
Build a community
Organizing a social media contest is a great way to attract new followers and include them in your online community. If you run it effectively, chances are your contestants are going to talk about it with their friends and families, as well as share their experience on their own social media profiles.
Is there a better way to reach new prospects?
Research shows that 49% of consumers turn to an influencer when making a decision about buying, and by entering your contest, participants become influencers among their friends, showing their positive attitude towards your company, your services, or products. Having them promote your brand in this subtle and non-intrusive manner can help you increase the number of your followers and expand your reach.
Boost the engagement
Even though the number of your followers or page likes can be indicators of your brand’s popularity, it’s not the only thing that counts. What matters most is how engaged your followers are with the content you are providing, as well as how useful and valuable they find it. When going through your own social posts, you can see how engaging your content is by checking the number of shares, comments, follows, and retweets.
Engagement plays a crucial role in helping social media algorithms to rank your profile, so it determines whether your post will be visible on other peoples’ newsfeeds or not. Social media contents are a proved method of getting good engagement, as it is in their nature to offer something valuable and useful as a reward.
They also bring about the competitive hype to the contest itself as well as to the company organizing it. Many brands use contests to promote the launch of a new brand of service, counting on this buzz to be the perfect marketing hook and spread the word about their latest offer.
Tap into the power of word of mouth
Although word of mouth is an old marketing concept, its power has significantly grown over the last decade with the rise of social media. People are very likely to share their positive social experience with a brand and give their recommendations if they are given a good push. By engaging in your contests, your followers will spread the news about your brand through social shares, and this will help your message to reach the newsfeeds of your potential customers. Even if your sales don’t rise immediately, you will make people become aware of your brand, which is extremely important for your company’s online presence.
Make sure you are following the rules of each social media channel when planning a contest. Facebook, for example, forbids that you make people share your content in order to enter the contest, so get to know the rules before you launch it.
They’re cost-effective
Organizing a social media contest can be very cost-effective, as the cost itself can be whatever prize you are willing to give. It can be a romantic dinner for two, a new iPad, or anything that matches your budget and the needs or interests of your prospects. No matter what your idea of a prize is, make sure it is something your prospects would desire or make good use of.
There are many affordable promotional items you can give away which can come in handy to your prospects who would be glad to use those because of your logo on them. In exchange, you’ll get their basic info and generate new, quality leads which you can nurture into becoming your paying customers.
The trend nowadays is to increase the number of prizes, as such contents have a significant number of participants. People love freebies, and they are more likely to take part in a contest if the chances for winning are higher, so they can even get more excited over a branded mug than a random cell phone.
Generate leads
Another use of social media contests is to help you get in touch with your prospects, gather their personal information and get a better insight into their demographics and behavior. By entering your contests, people are showing that your brand is somehow relevant to them, and these are the people who have the potential to be high-quality leads. To get your prospects’ e-mail addresses, which you can use later on for your marketing purposes, you can promote your contest using social media ads and create a signup process for entering it – which means that you can score numerous e-mail addresses from the people interested in taking part in your contest.
These addresses can be used for email marketing campaigns, which is another great way to nurture your leads and keep them engaged. Be sure to use the info you have about your participants in the best possible way – to increase your knowledge of your buyer personas, their habits, values and needs, and provide them with useful and relevant content.
Even though it may not result in an immediate rise in purchases, a well-organized social media contest will definitely have a positive impact on your sales, as well as on your brand visibility and awareness. Since you will get a bunch of new, quality leads and a better insight into your prospects’ needs and interests, you can use this data to better tailor your content and nurture the leads you have all the way through conversion.