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Every business is different, but every business should have marketing goals. These are outcomes you wish to achieve from the various marketing efforts you may use for your business. Competitions are an incredibly effective way to smash goals, with easily trackable results and clearly calculable return on investment.
We’ve put together 7 ways you can use social media competitions to smash your marketing goals.
1. To increase brand awareness.
Why would you choose this goal?
If your business is new and you want to spread the word that you’ve launched, you have a new product or service to tell your audience about or you want to educate them on a particular subject.
Types of competitions to run:
Run a like our page or follow us to win campaign increasing the chances your target audience will see future updates from you. Make sure your competition posts and social media pages are heavily branded and tell them exactly how you can help them.
2. To grow your reach.
Why would you choose this goal?
It’s all well and good having an army of followers and likers, but with social media’s temperamental algorithms, your followers won’t necessarily always see your posts, so it’s important to keep track of just how many people your marketing messages reach.
Types of competition to run:
Refer a friend competitions ask current customers to refer similar customers. Awarding them extra entries for sharing your competition means your brand gets seen by a bigger audience, expanding reach.
3. To boost your followers.
Why would you choose this goal?
Once you know your message is getting through to your audience, it’s time to expand that audience. This means more people aware of your business, what you do and how you can help them.
Types of competition to run:
This one’s easy – run a follow us or like our page to win style competition on social media. Target those who are already familiar with your brand, as they are more likely to follow you – for example, encourage your newsletter subscribers to follow you on social media or your Facebook fans to subscribe to your YouTube channel.
4. To engage your audience.
Why would you choose this goal?
Gaining followers on social media is only half the battle, you then need to engage them to keep them interested in what you do and how it benefits them.
Types of competition to run:
Comment to win, an opinion poll, or submit a photo to win competition are great ways to up engagement.
5. To collect user-generated content.
Why would you choose this goal?
User-generated content is a great way to collect marketing material and social proof that comes from your customers’ peers is the most powerful marketing material of all.
Types of competition to run:
Photos speak louder than words and reviews and testimonials shout even louder! Encourage your audience to take photos of your product or review your service, incentivising them to post on social media with a tempting prize.
6. To collect email addresses.
Why would you choose this goal?
Email addresses are more valuable than followers or likes as you are not at the mercy of algorithm changes and accidentally blocked or deleted accounts.
Types of competition to run:
Encourage your audience to hand over their email address in exchange for a chance to win. This could be a form on your social media page using a plugin, or it could be a form on a dedicated landing page on your website.
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7. To generate sales.
Why would you choose this goal?
If you need to me to explain this one then marketing goals are the least of your worries…
Types of competition to run:
Offering an entry into a competition after purchase is a great way to generate sales. Another tactic is to offer a discount code to your entrants once the competition is over. Using a special code, entrants can enjoy an exclusive discount and you can help offset the cost of the competition with the new purchases!
Whatever your business or marketing goals, competitions are an excellent, short-term, measurable and effective way to achieve them.
If you want to find out more about how you can use competitions to smash marketing goals in your business, take advantage of our free strategy sessions!
