Steps to Create a Social Media Contest That Drives Sales

Nowadays, social media is used in a lot of ways. Not only does the platform offer us to let our minds and thoughts be heard, but it is also where we can watch videos, connect with friends, share pictures and even read the news. However, that isn’t all. Social media is an excellent tool for many businesses to hold fun contests that can help drive your sales, leads, and clients up! You can always get the help of social media marketer that offers services that can properly guide you to boost your business regardless of how big or small it is.

Some entrepreneurs may think that this is a waste of time, but it’s actually a simple yet outstanding way to strengthen your bond with your customers.

Whether you’re a local or international company, you must have a firm plan in place for running promotions on your page.

Contests encourage incentivized engagement, which can help you drive traffic to your site, create new leads, and make sales (if you have a well-thought-out marketing strategy).

Fortunately, you don’t need to look far because we can teach you how to create the best social media content strategy to achieve the best results! There’s no need to worry about mistakes or miscalculations since we took the time to interview the best marketing strategist in Malaysia and gathered all the data below. So, go forth and read on!

Step 1: Determine Your Goal For This Social Media Contest

Before you can develop a good social media content plan, you first need to determine your target market and your goals, so you don’t get lost along the way. You must remember, to run a fruitful contest, you need to know your goals. Having a goal will significantly help you strive harder and give more effort since you want to achieve something compared to when you don’t bother making one.

Goals are practical because they direct attention toward achieving desired outcomes. Profitability is one intended outcome in a contest. Your contest targets should be clear, measurable, realistic, and timely, whether they are used to guide the company’s direction to rise up.

Here is some example of goals that would be good to have:

• Increase the number of visits to your page and website.

• Boost the awareness of your brand or new product launch.

• Establish new customer relationships and deliver value to consumers.

• Increase your sales immediately.

• Boost engagement levels on your social media page.

You also need to know who you need to enter your contests. You can achieve this by adequately defining your target market with the help of:

• Demographics

• Social media usage

• Geographic location

Step 2: Pick Out Your Contest Prize and Concept 

Once you’ve established a good goal and determined your target market, the next step is to pick out a contest prize and concept. This is an essential part of planning your Business contest strategy since this will determine the possibility of success your plan possesses. There are actually a lot of content types you can choose from, and we have listed the top ones below:

• Photo Contest – This type of contest is really engaging and fun. You can ask your consumers to take a picture of their favorite product in your company and explain why this is so.

• Writing Contest – If you want to bring in some creativity and style, a writing contest would be great. You may ask the participants to share their experience with your product, and you can choose those that highlight your company the most.

• Video Contest – Although this is asking for a bit more effort towards the participant, it’s actually a fun contest to do. You can be creative and ask your participants to give a short insight into your product or their story about why they started using your product.

Step 4: Pick Out a Concept 

The concept includes your contest’s details and the prize that you’ll be giving off to the participants. It would be best that you do some crowd-sourcing and ask your customers what they would like to have as a prize, so you can get more ideas.

When it comes to your contest details, you need to include the contests’ start and end date, the rules of the contest, where you’ll host it (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) and the entry method. On the other hand, you must choose a prize that would really spark your target market’s interest. Product giveaways, coupons, and gadgets are some of the standard prizes businesses offer.

Step 4: Get a Team To Assist The Flow of Your Contest 

Among the things that you must consider when hosting a contest is having a reliable team who can guide the participants and establish a smooth flow of events. Your team must be skilled and knowledgeable enough to put the plan into action and make your ideas into reality. The team you choose to have several responsibilities, and this can be:

• Prepare the announcement of your contest

• Establish a visual aid that shows the rules and details of the contest.

• Entertain customers and answer their questions about the contest.

• Frequently post updates of the contest right before the launch.

• List down the name of the participants along with their contact info.

A social media team has many responsibilities, but they are essential to ensure your contest won’t encounter issues that can sabotage the entire plan. Pour a good amount of consideration when picking the members for your team and guarantee that they are qualified enough to work under pressure.

Step 5: Promote Your Contest on Social Media

In order to ensure that many people will know about the event, it’s good that you establish a good promotion strategy for your contest. Doing so will help increase awareness and even boost the chances of people entering the contest. Market it across your social media page and be sure that you’ve always heard. Here are a few examples of how you can successfully market your contest:

Send Out Emails – Emails are great to inform people about announcements. You can compost a short message and send it to all your customers.

Post It on Your Social Media Page – People are frequently on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, so if you have a company page on these mentioned platforms, you can post your contest announcement there and reach as many audience as possible.

Create Promotional Ads – Facebook is an excellent way to promote your contest, and if you want the announcement to reach people who aren’t aware of your brand, you can pay for promotional ads. This is quite an effective method!

Step 5: Keep Track of The Result

When finally launching your contest, be sure you track everything that’s happening, so you can ensure that the event is going smoothly. You can keep track of your contest in real-time so that you can boost it and your real-time marketing. Be sure to keep track of your metrics, too, to achieve meaningful results and demonstrate your return on investment.

Conclusion

Hosting contests can be a bit of a heavy job, but it’s undoubtedly worth it if you do it right since you’ll be able to see a significant increase in your sales and customers. Furthermore, it’ll also give your brand a stronger relationship with its consumers, making you a step further among other competitors.