Good Reasons To Host Social Media Contests For Your Customers

  When it comes to attracting and maintaining customers’ loyalty and creating a special relationship with them, hosting a social media contest is the right move. These contests can serve as a good advertising campaign for you, and make your customers become a part of your brand.

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The winners do not only get to win awesome prizes, but they also get honourable mentions and are featured by your brand on billboards and banners, and on their website and social media handles. Contests do not have to have big prizes attached to them. The prizes could be smaller items, promo codes, bonuses, gift cards, or even any amount of money. As a market tool, contests motivate your customers and they are encouraged to get involved with your brand by sharing links with other people. Organizing a social media contest online can be quite simple, and the following are the reasons for launching a contest campaign:

1. Holidays/Festivals: Hosting a contest around the time of a popular holiday or festival will attract a great deal of attention from people. Holiday-themed contests made at the appropriate time will encourage the spirit of sharing amongst your customers. You may create posts (graphics, GIFs, videos) about the contest you want to do, and make the prize and entry method themed. You could ask the participants to send in holiday-themed photos or share a recipe with a branded hashtag to enter the contest. Also, you could partner with a local newspaper, radio station, television company or other media outlets to help you with free promotion.

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2. Branding your Business: Your brand has a lot to do with the image of the business you portray, and not all about your products and services. If you host impressive contests, people are going to recognize your business as having a unique identity. They are going to see the contest posts on their social media feeds and they are going to remember your business from the contests you host. This exposure is all you need to grow your brand because when next they are in need of something you offer, your business will come up in their minds.
3. Introducing a New Product: If you wish to create a buzz when launching a new product on social media, you should try hosting a contest. Giving away a few of your newly launched products as prizes will promote and increase the sense of demand for it. The contest would help you get the word out about your products or the services you offer.
4. E-mail Marketing: You can grow your e-mail list for your marketing strategies if you attach a little prize to it. You could start a “Sign up and win” contest to have people subscribe to your newsletter or email list.
5. Survey: Oftentimes, brands are saddled with the task of getting honest feedbacks about their services from customers and how best to do the task. But as a brand manager, you could create survey questions and attach them with small prizes so that your customers are given a chance to be rewarded for their feedbacks. This way, you get valuable data and in exchange for it, your customers are cheerful.

In conclusion, creating a large customer base, brand awareness, and a cost-effective method of marketing a new product/service are not mainly the reasons for organising a social media contest. The beauty there is in the way you have gone past the tedium of traditional marketing and have established a special relationship between your brand and your customers.

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• How Should Social Media Fit into the Broader Context of ICT?
• How Does Social Media Fit Into Your Growth Plan?
• How Does Social Media fit Into the Buying Journey?
• How Do Companies Make Money from Social Media?

This article was first published on 31st December 2021

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