social media competitions
Stop. Competition time.
If you are a business - a sweet way to build a following, email list and brand exposure is running a good ol’ competition. Run a promotion and possible sales + customer acquisition will follow too.
Don’t believe they work? Take beauty company Kohl’s, who ran a contest on Twitter, where users had to retweet their ad for a chance to win a $20 gift card. Kohl’s gave out 1,000 $20 gift cards ($20k total), but the ad got 10,812 retweets. According to an estimate from the data analytics company SumAll, the value of a branded retweet is $20.37. So for a cost of $20k, Kohl’s got roughly $220k in value — about 10x its investment.
This is called user-generated content aka getting your followers to do your marketing for you. And by offering some kind of prize through social media, brands are able to nab free advertising.
So how do you run a successful comp? Of course, with all marketing, you need a strategy. So work out:
* why you’re running your competition
* what you want to achieve - sales? brand exposure? growing an email list?
* who you want as entrants - hot tip: your target audience means you’re going to build yourself an email list or followers who are more likely to buy from you and not just disappear when they’re not announced as the lucky winner.
* what you’re going to say in your messaging - this is the most important bit. Tell your followers why you are running a comp. example: to celebrate the launch of our new season kid’s hat’s we are giving away a $50 voucher
* how much you’re going to spend
* what you’re giving away - give away your own product / service or join forces with another brand for more exposure.
* how/where people can enter
* how you are going to market it - a landing/entry page, emailing your list, promoting regularly on social media, blogging about your comp and again - partnering up with like minded buzz’s for cross promotion.
Neon Moose is an Adelaide based creative with over 15+ years of experience in social media, marketing, PR and copywriting.
