I’ve helped run many successful photo contest marketing campaigns and if it’s done correctly a photo contest can be one of the best tools in your social media marketing tool kit. Below I’ve written some tips on running a successful social media marketing contest.
Have a strategy
‘Build and they will come’ doesn’t work for photo contests and if you don’t have a planned out strategy then it’s likely the outcome of your contest results will suffer. You need to ask questions like how am I going to start the viral loop? Why would leads want to enter the contest? How am I going to share the contest?
Market the actual Contest
It’s important to think about how you will get the viral loop started and how you’re going to get those initial entries. Some examples:
- Use your existing database and customers
- Promote it on your website
- Promote it thought social channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
- Don’t be afraid to use PPC (Google AdWords & Facebook Ads) , it can give your contest that extra little boost it needs. Facebook and Google Ads allow for great geo-targeting which is especially good for local business’s
Encourage Social Sharing
It’s important to setup your contest so that users are highly encouraged to share and virally send the contest over their social networks. There’s two main methods to do this 1) Have the contests workflow encourage the user and make it very easy 2) Have a sweetener for sharing eg offer them a second chance draw for every friend that signs up.
Give prizes
Sometimes people need a little extra to get them over the line, prizes are great little sweeteners. Sponsors are a good idea because they can help cover some costs by offering prizes.
It’s about the Email/Lead Database
It’s all about the database, the idea is to capture as many email addresses and contact details in your contest, as this allows you to implement either Email Marketing or direct mail if you’ve got their address’s.
Email Marketing and Direct Mail are still some of the most successful marketing strategies of today.
Have a ‘Call To Action’/End Goal
In the end you’re here to build your business and it’s important to set out your end goals and have an action plan on how you’re going to convert those lead into paying customers.
Lead Nurturing/Content Marketing
The world has changed people are tired of being interrupted and nobody is responding to it anymore. Now it’s about building trust and credibility. Business’s have to change the way they do business. The future of marketing is about about earned media and not paid media, it’s about inbound marketing.
Lead Nurturing while it’s not exactly directly connected to running a photo contest it’s still an amazing form of marketing.
There’s two basic types of Lead Nurturing
a) The primary function of lead nurturing is to slowly educate your customers and build a trusted relationship with your customer, so your slowly warming your lead into a sales ready lead.
b) It’s about touching leads in a very light manner( eg through good content) so you leave an imprint on them and you’re the first in mind when they come to buy
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