Why Should you be Running a Sweepstakes?

Have you ever wondered what companies are trying to accomplish by running a sweepstakes or contest? Well, it’s a great question to ask, contests, promotions, and sweepstakes are a great way to identify new customers, engage current customers, to increase sales, increase brand awareness, and for ‘sweepers’ to have the chance to win great prizes. Here are six reasons why it’s a great idea to run a sweepstakes and why you should be running one for your business.

Being experts in contest marketing, at Raven5 we know exactly what to do to generate a buzz. It’s not that far fetched to believe, when someone shares a contest on Facebook you are most likely to share and enter yourself. You want to think about things that will garner someone’s attention instantly, like email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and newsletters. Running a contest or a sweepstakes to encourage new and current customers to talk about the company, which spreads the word about your products or services. Raven5 is the contest agency that can help you generate a buzz about your product of service through developing a custom contest tailored to your line of business.

Sweepstakes also encourage people to visit your website. Your website is the ‘hub’ of your business, once people have entered your site they are likely to hang out for a bit and explore to see what you have to offer. Make sure you are including links to your website or microsite in all your social postings and drive traffic there. This is just another area where Raven5 can help you connect with your audience. We build custom landing pages to complement your contest and help guide visitors to the ‘thank you’ page. We primarily use email and social media to drive traffic to your landing page.

Another reason why it is great to run a contest is because it helps businesses build their email lists. This is your chance to keep the conversation moving even when the contest is over. A customer giving their email to you is like the Holy Grail in marketing, once you have an email it’s easy to keep in touch with your customers and inform them of new promotions.

Contests allow for your brand to generate advertising content at a reasonable cost. Contests where people can submit or share a photo, recipes or essays about your products can be free advertising.

Holding a sweepstakes can also provide you with valuable market research. When you are entering a sweepstakes, while you are filling out the form you will notice that some of the questions on there are optional or required. Why is it that they are set up that way? Doing this gets some sponsors some insight about their potential customers and how they think, go about their days, or use the company’s products around the house so on and so forth. This will help them focus more on advertising and zero in on a particular area that is useful for consumers

Giveaways (believe it or not) are key to building a strong relationship between your company and your customers. These giveaways build a fun interaction between customer and business by entertaining people while informing them about what the company has to offer and at then same time giving the customers a benefit for interacting with them.

In conclusion, we also have to learn that sweepstakes only work when sponsors and sweepers work together. Prize promotions are an effective way of helping marketers engage and interact with their consumers.

For more information on contests please click here.

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