What if you could use an affordable tactic to increase your company’s sales? Why not promote your business using contests and giveaways?
As a business owner, you’ve already got a lot of expenses on your plate.
From employee payroll costs, inventory rollover, and even your electricity bill… it can be hard to find the funds needed to promote your business to the world.
Fortunately, there are a few crafty ways that you, as a business owner, can promote your business and its products or services for free while also engaging and interacting with your target audience.
Below, we’re looking at how to promote your business using contests.
Using Contests to Giveaway Your Best-Selling Products or Services
It’s essential to realize that there are many ways to run contests on social media.
However, one of the best ways to attract people is by running a free giveaway of your best-selling product or service.
To make your giveaway contest more engaging for your followers and more effective for your business, you’ll need to establish some contest rules.
These can be as simple as informing your followers that they will need to follow your page and like and share the contest post to enter. Or, it can be more complex and involve filling out an entry form.
Either way, even for those who aren’t necessarily super interested in your brand, when they hear about a free giveaway, it’s usually enough to incite some interest, providing you with some much-needed brand exposure.
User-Generated Content
Instead of a brand’s self-promoting content, they say that user-generated content is roughly 10x more effective at building consumer trust.
Therefore, an excellent way to promote your business is to run a contest or giveaway, where contestants enter by posting images or videos of themselves using your products or services.
We also recommend that you take the time to share your followers’ user-generated content on your social media accounts, on your contest landing pages, and your website.
Contest Hashtags
Another great way to run contests and generate some hype for your business is to create trendy contest hashtags.
One great example of this is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that virtually everyone has heard about, which influencers used to generate awareness and raise money for ALS research.
Essentially, the challenge encouraged its participants to film themselves or be filmed having a large bucket of sub-zero ice water dumped onto their heads before nominating and challenging their friends to do the same.
When social media users posted the videos online, participants were asked to include the hashtag #icebucketchallenge in their posts.
As a result, the videos of people doing the ice bucket challenge went viral. It managed to significantly increase ALS research funding, collaborations, researchers funded, and dollars leveraged to help in the fight against the disease.
Similarly, you can use branded contest hashtags to help raise awareness and generate hype about your products or services.
Buy-To-Enter Giveaways
Finally, one of the best ways to run a profitable contest for your business is to run a buy-to-enter giveaway.
With this contest model, participants need first to purchase a product or service to enter into the contest or giveaway. Then, after a predetermined amount of time or by a set date, you can draw to pick a giveaway winner.
This contest model is one of the most profitable since people will need to buy something first.
Whether you own a brick-and-mortar store or a website store, this type of contest is great for generating traffic while also attracting contestants and prospective customers via the giveaway.
Why Not Promote Your Business Using Contests & Giveaways?
In today’s world, people are tired of being bombarded with ads, no matter how well-targeted they may be.
That said, contests are a much better way to generate some hype about your business while also engaging and interacting with your current and prospective customers.
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