Blogs > Effective Marketing With Contests
May 5, 2015 Jesse Bickerton
Adding contests into your brand’s marketing mix can provide many benefits, both short and long term, if properly organized and executed. An engaging, valuable contest provides you and your brand with many benefits, ranging from increasing your subscribers or social followers, to building brand awareness and goodwill.
You may be asking though, how does contest marketing compliment existing marketing programs? What can contest marketing do for you? Simply put, contests can assist all aspects of your business or organization.
Contest Marketing and Coupons
Contest marketing, combined with coupon marketing is really an effective one-two punch for all brands. Running a contest, paired with a coupon, provides all entrants with an opportunity to browse your products or services. Providing people a second reason for entering doesn’t hurt either. Read more about coupons and Social Style Incentives here. Coupons are a great way to interest prospects, while encouraging past clients to purchase.
Contest Marketing and Content
Contests and content, another set of tools best used together. A well-organized, valuable contest, paired with interesting and engaging content will build brand awareness, gain favourable impressions and drive traffic. Funny, timely or interesting content is a necessity for any brand – good content produces engagement, while great content creates an impression, ensuring brand awareness. Check out why Content Marketing and SEO are a Heavenly Match.
Contest Marketing and Social
As mentioned time and time again, contests and social are best if utilized together. Social networks are based around easy sharing, and a great contest will be an easy share. There’s many reasons why something will get shared on Facebook or retweeted on Twitter – but what they have in common is that it’s engaging. Encourage sharing as part of the prize structure, and suddenly there’s a reason for everyone to share. There’s many reasons to include contest marketing with social. For a list of must haves, check out Components of a Social Media Contest.
Contest Marketing and Email
Finally, contest marketing and email work hand in hand. Regardless of your business or organization, email is still a primary part of day-to-day life. Making sure you combine email and contests into your marketing mix is essential. Email is still effective at reaching, informing and driving customers to you. Contests are an easy, effective way to build your email list and ensure those subscribers are engaged. For more reasons, check out why you should Build Email Using Contest Marketing here, and see why email and contest marketing are an effective team.
Overall, contest marketing works. No other marketing tool can provide so many opportunities, while complementing various other tools. Contest marketing works well with coupons, contest, social and email. So why aren’t you running a contest? Contest marketing is the best way to engage and interact with your community. Find out why we at Raven5 are #ContestMarketing.
Jesse Bickerton, Raven5, May 2015