For as long as there have been businesses, there have been contests to attract customers. Contests have spanned the entire spectrum in terms of how the contest is run and the prizes that are won. There is a lot more that goes into a contest than meets the eye to the average participant.
Social media has brought a whole new edge to the art of contest creation. It brings much more ease into the process as far as advertising as well as well ability for your reach to expand as far across the globe as you would like. Heavy competition dominates the social media industry due to the ease of use and limited resources needed for creating a presence on a multitude of platforms.
There are 3 essential qualities to social media contests that enable a business to chalk one up in the success column:
Establish a Goal
This may be easy at first glance, "Get more customers!" or "Sell more units!" Of course, these would be great things to happen to a business, but these goals as stated would be hard to measure.
Another goal may be to gain a certain amount of followers to the Facebook Fan Page. This goal is not the right way to go about establishing a goal because a gain in followers may simply be an interest in the contest, not the brand itself.
Measuring ROI is a critical part to discovering whether or not the contest is translating to more revenue being brought in, thus the goal of making more money. Contests are also a good way to do some research on your customers or potential customers. Contests can be geared towards a specific demographic to pinpoint where exactly the large chunks of your business are coming from. Demographics not affiliated with your current client base can be targeted with the goal of generating new leads and new areas of customers that were never previously thought of.
Ease of Entry
A contest needs a large amount of participants to really be successful, however there will always be a small number of entries if the entrance requirements are too time consuming or difficult. Many times when it takes too much time to fill out a form, or something similar, people will give up or rather not even attempt to enter the contest at all. Unless, of course, the prize is so unbelievable that any amount of time would be worth winning, yet a prize like that would not be advantageous to your bottom line.
Social media is very instrumental into the ease of entering different contests. Whether the contest requires a message written on the Facebook Timeline, a retweet on Twitter, or a check-in on Foursquare, a few seconds is all the participant needs to be entered to win. There are thousands of ways to run contests, so these are just a few of the ways people can join in on the promotions.
Prize Selection
Prize selection can be a tricky game to win. The notion is to have a great prize that people will want to win, but there is more to it than that.
A prize has to be something that people will be interested in, but not such an amazing prize that customers are solely interested in the prize and not the business itself. Winning a million dollars would be great, but who cares who gives it to you right? This can occur with the selection of a third party prize.
Third party prizes can get pricey, so a prize from the business itself can be a much cheaper option. Another bright side of this sort of prize would be the brand recognition that it creates when the winner uses the prize. Depending on the type of prize it can be constant advertising as well.
Prizes that don't cost a dime can be highly successful also. A common prize in this category would be getting your name in a magazine or on the wall of a restaurant. What about winning the opportunity to be the CEO for the day?
The possibilities for contests are endless and the more creative the contest can be the better. People like refreshing things that leap out of the ordinary cycle of everyday life. Creative contests also bring a likelihood of becoming viral on the Internet, thus giving your business even more of an opportunity for brand awareness.