Nothing helps boost brand attention and lead generation quite like contest marketing. With the right contest, you can have your prospects and customers logging into your site daily to view results and to see if they’ve won. With a little imagination, a little insight into the behaviors and personalities of your primary audience and with a little contest marketing know-how, you can have that major boost you’ve always dreamed of. The following tips will help you revamp your contest marketing campaign so that you can propel your business past the competition this quarter.
Lower Barriers
No matter what type of contest you’re holding, make it easy to enter and participate. Lose the long forms and stick to smaller, simpler forms that only ask for crucial information (i.e. name and email address). If you want one piece of advice to use when attempting to revamp your contest marketing campaign, it’s to keep everything simple.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
An excellent way to connect with your audience and get them to participate in your contest marketing idea at the same time is to encourage user-generated content or UGC. These are videos, photos and other content that are generated by your audience. This allows your audience to show off their good looks or skills in unique ways that encourages even more attention from outsiders. The end result is more investment in your brand by your primary audience and even more valuable content to offer new prospects and customers.
Don’t Miss an Opportunity to Learn More
If you can manage to spice up your campaign with some great prizes, your audience will have no problem divulging important information to you in the hopes of winning said prizes. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to learn more about the very individuals you’re marketing to. You might ask how they heard about the promotion or which product of yours they like best. You’ll also want to monitor the chatter that surrounds your contest on social media, forums and anywhere else your participants might congregate.
Make Your Audience Market for You
Using social media and targeting several marketing channels, a great contest should have your audience doing your marketing for you. Another way to improve your contest marketing campaign is to include sharable content and make sure your logo is on everything. The more your materials get passed around, the more brand attention you’ll receive and the more possible new leads you might pick up.
A good way to get friends and family involved is to have a user generated voting contest. The participants enter an item that will be voted on, say a photo or essay, and people can then vote on the one they think is best. Most people send the message out to friends and family on social media to vote on their item. This appeals to the competitive nature in people and it’s great marketing done for you.
Ideas for Prizes
Your contest marketing idea should include prizes that will appeal to your audience. Through your extensive market research, experience and interactions you’ve had with your audience, you should be able to come up with a few prizes to offer.
A great idea to help you afford prizes that may be out of your price range is to ask for donations. See if you can work out a deal whereby you will both gain increased exposure and the participants will get some great prizes in return. You don’t have to offer new iPads for people to get excited. Even T-shirts or hats with something cool printed on them will get people excited under the right circumstances.
Video Marketing
Video marketing and contest marketing go hand-in-hand. Not only is video a great way to announce your contest, but video is also a great way to ask for user-generated content. Most mobile phones come with at least some type of camera and most people have mobile phones. In fact, a news headline yesterday said that a word study showed that more people have mobile phones than have access to toilets. The point is, video is quick, easy and handy for coming up with creative ways to revamp your contest marketing campaign.
Social Media
You can’t get around it, the world has gone social. Your contest marketing campaign should include heavy doses of social media (and popular forums) at every turn. Encourage your audience to participate, gather data as you do, gather some great prizes to offer and encourage some user-generated content. With all of these ideas to revamp your contest marketing campaign, you should have no trouble driving more attention, leads and sales in the coming months.
