As of December 2019, there are over 2.5 billion monthly active users on Facebook. This shows an 8% increase yearly. For a brand, it means the effort to earn the attention of users is doubled.
Digital marketers need to use relevant, interactive content to maintain engagement amidst the chaos. A Facebook contest is a great way to do this. Facebook updated the News Feed to help with engagement baiting.
It is cheap and easy to run. You can achieve measurable results in your Facebook marketing goals. Though a lot of means- from intolerable to illegal- exist to run these contests, brands should avoid them and must be careful about how their content is shared and promoted.
The benefits of running a well-planned Facebook contest are mainly to grow your business- increase engagement and sharing with existing audiences, increase brand awareness, bring in new leads and prove your return on investment (ROI).
The Rules
Facebook updates its contest rules regularly, it is advised to stay informed or check in regularly. The most recent updates are in three parts:
- You are responsible for ensuring that you comply with all laws associated with running your contest.
- You are responsible for obtaining information on contestants and an acknowledgment that Facebook is not in association with your contest.
- Using people, their timelines and friend connections to participate is prohibited.
If you must ask people to like your page, find a less suspect method.
How to Run a Facebook Contest
You need to know how to run a contest before you get to it. To begin running a contest, you need to set up your business page (you can learn how to create one here). Here are a few tips.
Define your Goals
If you are going to take out the time to plan a contest, make it worthwhile. It should support the goals of your Facebook marketing strategy. As we have mentioned some earlier in the form of benefits, some objectives to choose from are.
- Increase brand awareness by growing impressions
- Increase customer relationship by increasing engagement
- Drive traffic to your website through click-throughs to your landing page
- Collect user-generated content naturally for marketing in the future
- Collect feedback on products or services from your audience
- Identify and qualify leads by collecting email addresses
Defining your goals makes it easier to choose what kind of contest you want to know and how to go about it.
Get to know your audience
You are setting up a contest to attract people and get them to like your brand. Reality is contests are planned to reach out to everyone. You need to know what people like.
Start with choosing a prize people will be drawn to. Your product or service is often a great choice. Yes, they might prefer your product when it’s free, everyone loves freebies. But once they think about winning it, they’ll appreciate it more, it will be as an earned value.
At the same time, the prize should be valuable enough that people will pause all other activities and take the time to enter your contest.
Do some research on why people care about your brand. What values do they identify with? And what lifestyle are they pursuing?
You can consider geo-targeting your posts so that you don’t annoy fans who live in ineligible places.
Make it Simple
The majority of Facebook users access the platform with their mobile phones. The design for your contest should suit different devices and operating systems for an exquisite experience. Carry out tests before you send it out to your audience.
If your contest requires a landing page, where users need to fill a form, keep it as easy as possible. Don’t be greedy with your form asking for irrelevant information that will not really inform your decision such as zip codes, salary ranges, and a family member’s phone number. Users will be very encouraged to drop out of your contest.
Make it Hard Only if you Need To
You can make things a bit hard if you intend to filter out low-quality leads or content. Your entry can involve more than two clicks. This will worry the average user.
- If you aim to gather user-generated content (UGC), including higher entries to filter out low-quality leads or information
- If you are looking to filter out low-quality leads or content, you can make the prize exceptional. Asking people to write a review, take a photo, or make a video is useful.
- If your goal is to gather exceptional leads, make the task extremely relevant to the demographic you are targeting. This will require research.
Promote your Contest
You can create one and when you do, promote it. To help your contest gain the audience required, it needs to reach a lot of people. You should leverage other marketing channels you have for this.
Either your contest is for Facebook alone, or is running simultaneously on your other social platforms, make sure to create uniformity across all channels.
Be sure to Follow-up
The last thing you do for your Facebook contest is to promote it. Some people use an app that picks a winner at random. It sends an email alert to let all contestants know it has ended.
Announce your winner on all social media channels. You need to show evidence to all who have entered your contest that a winner was chosen, and the prize has been given. You don’t want to seem dishonest.
Don’t stop engaging with the people who have provided personal information during your contest. You can turn leads into paying customers with this.
Time to Emulate
Remember, the goal is to attract people and get them to like your brand. To achieve this and your marketing goals, you need to know what good Facebook contests look like as well.
Some contests are well capable of pulling in more weight and can focus on one or more goals. Whatever the case is, be sure to understand the different types of contests and pick out which supports your goals.
Giveaways & sweepstakes
The simplest contest to run is a giveaway. Some tips to help you get it right are:
- There is usually a low entry barrier, so, your prize needs to be related to your brand. It is easy to filter the entrants to those only interested in your brand and the prize.
- Make your visuals attractive. Your prize, brand logo, anything to be added to the design. Your giveaway page must be clean, colorful, and professional. This influences the number of entrants.
- You can consider various prizes for winners over multiple days.
- Set your giveaway to coincide with a holiday or special event. Always think of what people are thinking about
Brainy contests
People love feeling smart in these times we are living in. Skill testing questions, quizzes, trivia, and puzzles to satisfy people for a short time. Adding a prize to make people feel they have accomplished will ensure your content is highly engaged.
Sometimes, you can decide to skip the prize, so it would be that you are engaging your audience for the thrill.
Photo Contests
These boost activity on your Facebook Page. It is an organic source of user-generated content (UGC) to help your marketing calendar.
Crowdsourcing
This is sometimes overlooked by brands. It can be used to gather insight on your business goals. Simply ask your users for feedback on a new product name or ideas for improvement. Asking your audience to think creatively will always be exciting
“Refer a friend” Promotions
This campaign is one of the most effective marketing strategies. Referrers test your product or service and tell their family and friends. This automatically builds trust for your brand amongst multiple customers.
If you do not still find it easy to run a Facebook contest, you can get help from digital marketing experts and maximize your investments in digital marketing.