Chances are you’ve seen or been involved in some sort of Facebook contest.
They are fun for the participants, but why do businesses host them?
Not only are they great for branding, but they can also be an integral part of your social media strategy.
Step 1: Determine your goals
Before you make any other moves, you will want to figure out what you hope to get from the contest. Are you hoping to get more likes? Make sales? Improve engagement levels? Gather content for future use? Depending on the goals you set for yourself you will want to approach the setup of the contest differently:
More likes:
Ensure contest participants like your page for their entry to be valid. You can also make a play on this by having participants like your page and tag their friends in hopes of them also liking your page.
Make sales:
Generally speaking, just by putting out active and engaging material on Facebook you will be encouraging people to purchase your product. The idea is to drive people to your website to buy your product. A great option for this is to create your contest form using Survey Gizmo. After participants complete the form, you can set it to send these potential customers directly to your website. You’ll be surprised how many people end up purchasing! Alternatively, if they don’t purchase right then, you can use one of Facebook’s pixels in your survey to create an audience of these participants for future retargeting ads.
Improved engagement levels:
Engagement levels improve the more people click and interact with your social content. A contest is the perfect medium to engage with your customers and increase your engagement. Bonus engagement points if your contest involves commenting on your post as part of their entry.
Free content:
Contests are the perfect way to get user-generated content. Think photos of your customers with your product, customer testimonials, and blog posts. A contest is the perfect incentive for customers to send in their content for you to use in the future on your site and social.
Step 2: Think of a Theme
Try to be as creative as you can. Customers, followers and potential customers will be more likely to interact with your contest if it has a unique and creative theme. Tie the prize into the theme of the contest.
For example, our latest HostGator contest was a video game-themed contest. Our creative and copy were video game-themed and our prize was a HostGator branded xBox One. Contests are not only more fun and engaging this way, but they are easier to keep track of.
Step 3: Choose your prize
When deciding on a prize determine how much work a participant must do to enter. A good rule of thumb is the larger the prize, the more work you should expect them to do.
A good place to start is by giving away one of your business’ products or services. This creates a great gateway for new potential customers to fall in love with your business.
[bctt tweet=”Rule of thumb for contests: the larger the prize, the more work you can expect participants to do.” username=”hostgator”]
Step 4: Advertise
Facebook ads are the perfect place to start the advertising for your Facebook contest.
If you’re planning on advertising your contest or boosting it in any sort of monetary way, you will want to make sure it’s running for at least two weeks. This gives ample time for the ads to reach their target audience and gives your participants time to participate.
Step 5: Analyze your results
Facebook has a lot of really great tools in their 'Insights' section that can tell you information like post engagement, page clicks, and page likes. You can also see your top posts based on engagement level, date or reach.
These are great ways to determine the success of your Facebook contest, but you’re not limited to just these factors. Check your survey to see how many people entered. Was the content they submitted good? Take a look at the Facebook ads you ran in Ads Manager and see how many sales were a result of the contest. Determine if the cost of the prize and the ads is worth the likes, engagement, or sales.
If the contest resulted in more revenue than money spent the decision is obvious. Other times you have to put a value on likes and engagement and weigh it against the money you spent on the contest.
There you have it – your five step guide to running a successful Facebook contest. To participate in future HostGator contests, be sure to follow us on Facebook!
What are your tips for running a Facebook contest? Please share in the comments!