Ten Great Reasons to Run a Contest

You know we are always looking for an excuse to run a contest, and not just any old contest but a GREAT or AWESOME contest.

Recently we ran a little contest “Twelve working days of Christmas” and the results were awesome, really awesome. Over 800 NEW Facebook LIKES and 17,000 email opt-ins. Pretty amazing by any standard, yet, it ran over 2 weekends, as such we had 16 days of social posting, two email deployments and under $200 in paid Facebook advertising boosting a post.

RevSquare published a blog written by Maia Kapahi and given this recent success I thought I’d share it with you. Titled “10 Great Reasons to run an online contest”, here is my insight to these very good ideas.

1. Contests engage your customers with your brand (yup).

2. Contests help you grow your email database (Bick says your primary communications tool, that’s right email).

3. Contests are easy to promote and can go viral (hmmm, Bick says yes, easy to promote, social posting, email deployments, and paid ads on social all work well. We suggest you take VIRAL out of your vocab, it rarely goes and when it does it’s usually unexplained, you can’t plan on viral).

4. Contests are an easy way to collect customer’s information (yes, it’s all about the DATA).

5. Contests’ promotional reach and results are measurable (as is everything we do digital, it’s not news).

6. Contests increase the conversation around your brand (hey, great offers, great prizes get everyone talking about your product or service).

7. Contests are easy to setup (certainly if you hire Raven5 as your contest marketing agency, it can’t get any easier, doing it yourself may prove to be a touch more complicated).

8. Contests are flexible and malleable (that’s right, we can work towards a result, what result are you hoping to achieve?)

9. Contests can be a source of creative content (photo contest showing your brand in use are a perfect example).

10. Contests can be inexpensive (and contests can and should be a large part of your marketing budget).

As you can see, lots of considerations, yet I think we all agree. Contests are great (we say FUN), they provide leads (email & social), gather data, download coupons, build awareness, drive in store visits. Contests are the perfect marketing vehicle, and did I mention the favourable impressions with consumers? Everybody likes to WIN FREE stuff.

So get your contest on, we suggest using a professional agency to ensure you plan and implement a contest that meets your business goals. Get your game on, it’s always a good time to start a contest.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5 Ltd. December 2014

 

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