Hosting contests and giveaways are a
great way to announce a new product,
create excitement around your brand, give
back to your customers and increase your
following. But even with the very best
incentives, a contest or giveaway can
totally flop if some key ingredients
aren't included in the campaign. In this
video I'm going to share with you four
key ingredients that you must have in
any contest or giveaway campaign that
you run. Plus I have a free PDF worksheet
available below this video. It's filled
with ideas for contests and giveaways
that are sure to excite and delight your
customers. Before doing any work on your
contest or giveaway, the very first step
is to determine the purpose. Are you
hosting the contest to grow your mailing
list, reach new customers, grow your
following on social media, promote a new
product, give back to your customers or
maybe get feedback from them? The purpose
is going to determine every other aspect
of your campaign so it's really
important to figure that out first. If
you can select just one primary purpose,
your campaign will be more successful. So
once you've decided the purpose, you can
move on to step 2. Select the method of
entry. Now this step may seem really
obvious to you, but it's often where
business owners get tripped up and what
causes their campaign to not yield the
results that they hoped for. The key to
this is selecting the method of entry
based on the purpose of the campaign. So
let's take a look at a couple examples.
Let's say the purpose of your campaign
is to grow your Instagram following. You
could do this simply by promoting the
campaign to your mailing list and your
followers on other social media networks.
The method of entry would be to follow
your Instagram account. Simple enough. But
maybe now you're realizing increasing
your Instagram following isn't the
primary purpose of your campaign. You
really want to reach new customers.
This changes everything.
Instagram can still be the
vehicle for the campaign, but the method
of entry is going to be completely
different. The method of entry would now
be following your Instagram account and
tagging a friend in the comments. Now you
have your existing followers referring
your business to their friends and
you're reaching new potential customers.
Lastly, keep your method of entry as
simple and straightforward as possible.
Having multiple or complex steps will
confuse people and you will have fewer
entries. Also the level of effort
required to enter is directly related to
how many people will enter the contest.
Hitting a follow button is going to gain
you a lot more entries than if the
method of entry is subscribing to a
mailing list. Or if you're requiring
customers to send in photos of themselves
using your products that takes a lot of
effort and you're going to have fewer
entries by comparison. Now it might be
worth the trade-off if your goal for the
campaign is to gain photos of your
customers using your products. Step 3 is
to set the rules. Every social media
network, country and state has their own
laws for contests and giveaways so make
sure you do your research so that you
can include those laws in the fine print
of your campaign. Specify things like
requirements of entrants age and
location, length of the contest, when and
how the winner will be selected and
notified and how the winner is to redeem
the prize. With your purpose selected
your method of entry determined and your
rules set, you're now ready to create the
images and copy to promote your campaign.
Yes, just like launching a new product,
promotion is key for a successful
campaign. So step four is to promote the
campaign. The obvious places to share
your campaign are to post it on all of
your social media accounts, email your
mailing list and post it on your website.
But if you have a
small following you may not get the
results that you are hoping for by those
three steps alone. Contests and giveaways
are a great opportunity to team up with
other businesses. You'll essentially be
swapping followers so it's imperative
that the business you team up with has a
similar target customer as you. You can
often get free advertising by contacting
websites, blogs and influencers and
asking them to share the giveaway or
contest with their followers. They'll be
more likely to share this type of
campaign rather than advertising a
product for you for free. Once again make
sure the influencer's followers are the
same as your target customer. And third and
very smart option is to invest some of
your advertising budget to promote the
campaign on social media. There you go--
four steps to hosting a hugely
successful contest or giveaway. Now I
would love to hear from you. Share with
me in the comments when you have hosted
a campaign that was successful or maybe
one that completely flopped. And be sure
to download my list of ideas for
contests and giveaways
that will delight and excite your
customers. It's available below this
video. And if you liked this video please
hit the like button and share it with
your friends. For more tips and resources
for growing your product-based business,
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