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Posts Tagged ‘business promotions’

Posted on May 18, 2010 - by Kwame

How Competitions Can Build Your Online Business

We all love competitions and winning prizes don’t we? We certainly do. The businesses who organize these competitions and sweepstakes also love giving out their prizes.

That is why they spend money easily to organize these events. Hmm, I guess I have to explain more.

There are tons of benefits of organizing your own competitions and sweepstakes. I will be sharing the benefits your business can derive from organizing such events and also share some ideas on contests and sweepstakes with you.

First, let’s look at the difference between contests and sweepstakes:

A contest is an event in which individuals with required skill sets submit their work for judgment. For example, an art contest will require good art skills.

A sweepstake is an event which requires no skill at all to enter to win a prize. With sweepstakes, winners are chosen through random picking in the style of a lottery.

With those two words defined, let’s look at the benefits of organizing them.

Sweepstakes and contests can:

Drive traffic to your website or social media profile

Build brand awareness

Increase your social media following or fan base

Make people (who may or may not be your customer) feel connected to your brand.

Help you build some sort of collaborative bond between your brand and people. For example, let’s say you have a site with an API that you want people to develop into apps, one of the best ways you can do that is by hosting a competition or sweepstake to get people to start building an App community around your website.

These and many other benefits can be derived from hosting a sweepstakes or contest.

I want us to also look at how you can organize your own and also what criteria you can (or should) follow.

First, you must set rules for your competition.

Rules of the Competition:

The rules of your contest or sweepstakes must cover:

1. How to Enter:

State how people can enter; basically, the requirements and non-requirements.

2. Number of Entries:

You will need to state how many times participants are allowed to enter.

3. Prizes:

You will need to tell the participants about what they will win if they are chosen.

4. Disclaimer:

If you are going to use the winner’s name or photos in an advertisement or infomercial after they have won, you may need to ask them to sign a waiver that will confirm their agreement.

5. Liability Clause:

You may also need to state in a clause that your company will not be responsible for any injuries or damages that participants may incur as a result of entering the competition.

6. Other Rules:

You may also need to state other rules and guidelines you will want participants to adhere to.

You may need to advertise your competition so that more people will see it and participate.

You can buy advertisement or you can use free forms of advertising that may be available to your business.

If you don’t have any online influence (on Facebook, Twitter, your business blog’s RSS or email list), then you should consider paying for advertisement to get exposure for your competition. On the other hand, if you have online influence, you can use that influence to promote your competition.

I got the chance to get Maya Grinberg, Community Manager and Product Evangelist at WildfireApps to answer two questions about online competitions and this is what she had to say:

KWAME: Where do most businesses go wrong when they organize competitions and sweepstakes?

MAYA: Organizing competitions and sweepstakes is an excellent way to drive user engagement, increase awareness of your brand or product, and build up your fan base. Creating great, engaging, and fun promotions like these to accomplish your social media strategy goals is one thing though– there is another key step to the equation that sometimes gets left out.

Creating a promotion and sitting back to “hope for the best” will not lead to success. Unless you’re one of the lucky multi-national companies who seem to have infinite brand awareness and tons of fans who send news on its merry viral way instantly, you’re going to have to kickstart the spread yourself a bit.

We wrote a blog post previously about some of our favorite advertising strategies that will help companies do that…and the good news is, many of these wont cost a single penny! Feel free to read that post at http://blog.wildfireapp.com/2010/03/25/7-strategies-for-marketing-your-facebook-fan-page-promotions/

KWAME: What makes a successful competition or sweepstakes event?

MAYA: A successful contest or sweepstakes depends very much on how relatable, engaging, entertaining, and interactive it is for your users. This is a relative thing– depending on what your brand or company does, your users may appreciate different things, like gardening tips for home improvement enthusiasts or pictures of babies for parenting communities.

The key is to listen to your audience, capture some of their interactions with your brand, and use that knowledge to create compelling promotions. For example, fan pages for products related to raising toddlers can almost always feel secure in creating user generated photo contests relating to cute babies. Parents just love to take photos of their kids, and the only thing they love more than that is sharing them.

If you know things like this about your audience, use them to your advantage. Have a dental office that needs a social media strategy? Consider a sweepstakes that rewards the winner with a free teeth whitening. Have a bakery? Put up a coupon for a dozen free cookies with any other purchase. The most important thing to increasing your odds at running a successful promotion is to try to understand your audience, and cater your promotion to their interests.

Thanks to Maya for providing this wealth of information. Anyways, you can follow Maya on Twitter @papayamaya

WildfireApps is an excellent service that can help you promote your competitions online if you don’t want to do it alone or if you need help.

You can share your thoughts or experience with contests and sweepstakes in the comment box below.