Contests, Challenges, & Giveaways
This week I want to talk to you guys about contests, challenges, and giveaways. If you’re trying to grow a business and gain more interest in your company, one of these might be a good idea to try. All over social media, specifically Instagram and Facebook, I see and get tagged in these giveaway posts. A close friend of mine loves these because it takes just two minutes out of your day, no hassle, no money, to enter or participate and you could win something or gain more reach for your own account. Say you are a truck enthusiast, you have a small truck project, and a truck company does a giveaway and/or their prize is a light bar, or a radio, or seat covers, or a free detail. You would jump on that. “Oh yeah I have a chance to win this, make my truck better for free if I just share and tag? I’m down” Bam, all the people that follow you now know about this company.
With contests, the idea is people are competing to gain a prize. You could have a contest where people have to vote on something. Need a new background for your page? Have an art contest. Contestants must come up with something that embodies your company culture, your mission statement, what your company is all about, etc. and you will choose a winner in two weeks. This is a win-win for you. Your company cut your costs by not having to hire someone and you followers get attention and reach. Or if that’s not enough, they could win a gift card or something else equal to payment for their efforts. Someone who loves art and is trying to market their art business would greatly benefit from this. Both sides have to give a little, but both could also benefit from this. It’s a partnership in a way.
With challenges, you have a similar idea. Challenges are more like trends that everyone hops on the bandwagon with. If you were on social media several years ago and remember ‘the ice bucket challenge’ where you dumped a gallon of ice water on your head, nominated a few other people, and this organization would donate a dollar to help research for a certain disease. That went viral and got A LOT of traction. That’s the goal. The goal is for your challenge to be catchy and irresistible. Challenges are a little challenging though to come up with something, not already done, that will promote your business, be catchy, and everyone wants to participate for no other compensation other than going along with a trend. To make this more attractive, you could share each person who participates. If you’re company has a large following already, for sure share your favorites. Keep in mind if a challenge catches on, there’s really no time frame and it could potentially go on for weeks, months, who knows.
Lastly, giveaways. This is easily the most popular of these three I see on social media. With a giveaway, a company will post the item or service they’re giving away to a lucky follower. Rule generally go something like “Must be following our account, share this post and tag three friends for a chance to win our product or service. In two weeks, we’ll randomly select a name from the pile and tag you in our winner post.” They’ll go through with this and then DM the winner to arrange for them to get their prize. If you have extra product or can afford to give a big discount to someone, this is a great way to get your businesses out there. Everyone loves free stuff right?
The important thing to remember with all three of these is the amount of business you will have after these, might just outweigh the cost to do a contest, challenge, or giveaway. And that’s really the goal: to gain more traction and reach more people who might not otherwise know your businesses is out there. For a service business, you could give away a coupon or discount, a free service, a gift certificate, and so on. For a product business, the obvious prize would be a free product. Maybe your best-selling product since everyone wants it, a product you have excess of, or a small product just to get people through the door. For both types of business, gift cards to places are a great default. Amazon is always a go-to. Or maybe you partner with another company and want to give a gift card to them. Possibilities are endless or what you’re willing to let go in order to gain more business.
Hopefully this sparks some ideas for your business or helped you out. If you enjoyed this blog, let us know and stay tuned to our page for more blogs like this in the future. If you have any questions or are interested in our marketing services, please reach out to us and visit our website at datatechis.com. Have a great day!
