Business First Family Business, Accounting, Finance, Investing, Marketing And Management
Online sweepstakes are a highly effective viral marketing tool to generate leads and gain e-newsletter subscribers. But if they are not done right, it can wind up costing your business precious resources without providing any sort of tangible return. If you own a small business, you are going to want to know these marketing tips to help you pull off a successful online sweepstakes for promotion.
Make It Good
Make sure that the sweepstakes prize you are promising is a good one. Not many people will enter a sweepstakes if the prize is something they could easily buy themselves. New electronics and paid-for travel are two great options to consider. But really, the best prize will reflect your business in some way. If your online sweepstakes campaign does not actually entice that many people to sign up, you should probably reconsider what sweepstakes prizes you offer in the future. Otherwise, it will prove to be one of the least effective lead generation tools you have ever used.
Promote The Contest
Promote your business sweepstakes online by emailing a direct link to the entry form to sweepstakes directories websites. These contest directories list all of the best online giveaways and promotions in one easy to navigate location. The sweepstakes lists give your campaign a ton of exposure. This will help you drive more traffic to your online sweepstakes. If that is the goal of your sweepstakes campaign, be sure to keep this tip in mind.
Use Social Media & SEO
If you are not advertising your sweepstakes on social media, you are doing it wrong. Utilize social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to generate more engagement. You may even want to consider hosting an entire social media sweepstakes that only allows entries on a specific platform. These advertising strategies for social media giveaways make it easy to enter with a comment, like, follow or all three. That makes it much easier to get people to enter in. This will give your business’s online presence a huge boost and help you build brand recognition.
Additionally, you should be promoting your online sweepstakes in the search engines. Create a blog post of specific page dedicated to your sweepstakes. This way, when people search for relevant online contests, yours will show up in the results. Of course, as more people find out about the sweepstakes, earning links will improve rankings too. Other influencers and customers will link, share and comment on your contest page, helping your entire site overall.
Hammer Out The Details
You do not want to host a sweepstakes without having all the fine print in place before launch. You need to make sure all the legal contest details are nailed down before you ever post the sweepstakes entry form. Online contests are legally binding agreements. Sweepstakes entrants will want to know all of the contest rules and entry requirements before they sign up. This is especially true for those rules regarding the winner selection process. Make sure all of these important contest details are arranged before you ever post sweepstakes online.
Know What You Want
Using giveaways and sweepstakes as promotional tools is only effective if you establish the desired outcomes you are seeking prior to launching the contest. Online sweepstakes can be tailored to help you reach a variety of marketing goals like increasing new product awareness or increasing social media exposure and engagement. Once you define the marketing goals you hope to reach with your online contests, you will be better able to set them up in a way that makes them easy to attain. Keep this in mind for any and all marketing ideas for small businesses that you anticipate using. Otherwise, even the best ideas will be ineffective.
Small business owners in particular can greatly benefit from hosting an online sweepstakes for business marketing purposes. These online contests can help you generate leads, increase sales and generate customer referrals. These are just a few of the many ways these online marketing strategies can greatly improve your marketing success. Use the online sweepstakes tips mentioned above to help you create an online contest that offers a huge return on investment for your company.
Photo from http://raven5.com/blog/sweepstakes-marketing-package/
