Whilst consumers gradually choose brands on Facebook as trusted sources of information, new opportunities arise for businesses to build unique brand awareness and viral marketing platforms (Holzner, 2008). Social media marketing provides businesses a whole new dimension to marketing as it offers interactivity to the users, particularly on Facebook (Logan, Bright, & Gangadharbatla, 2012).With over 1.44 billion monthly active users Facebook is one of the fastest growing and most popular social networks ever to be launched. The sheer scale of it forces you to at least consider including it into your marketing strategy!
So do you want to get tons of likes, comments and shares for your brands Facebook page? Whether you are running a photo upload contest or a simple sweepstakes, Facebook competitions are a excellent way to generate more buzz and produce brand awareness. They create virality and build your email list and although Facebook has made it slightly difficult to create a contest, the potential benefits far outweigh the difficulties. In this blog I will be talking about the different types of competitions and the do’s and don’ts of running a competition on Facebook.
First of all you need to decide what type of Facebook competition you want to run. Choosing the right type of competition for your brand can be a challenge so to help narrow down your options and find the most fitting contest that will work best to achieve your goals, here are several examples of Facebook competitions that you can run on Facebook:
Sweepstake competitions – Sweepstake competitions are a great way for your brand to gain Facebook fans. A brand will offer a prize and to win users need to participate in the contest usually by providing their email and name.
Limited edition t-shirt maker Qwertee
Voting contest – These are similar to sweepstakes however users vote for something with the chance of winning for example ‘Vote for your favourite pair of jeans with the chance of winning a £100 gift card!’
Photo/ video upload contest – These type of competitions are user generated and require some work on the participants side in order for them to be considered, usually in the form of uploading a picture/video relevant to the competition
Like to win – Like to win competitions only require fans to like a post and then they have a chance of winning.
Comment to win – Same as like to win but comment instead of like.
Facebook coupon – Brands can offer users discounts which they can redeem
Good examples
Dove’s real beauty should be shared contest
Why it worked? They didn’t offer an irrelevant prize, the winner was to be the next face of Dove and the brand became much more personal and real.
Fashion retailer Lilly Pulitzer diary giveaway
Why it worked? They encouragement to share visually appealing images worked well and supporting mobile for your contest is key, 22% of all entries were through a mobile phone!
Bad examples
Burger Kings unfriend 10 people and receive a coupon for a free Whopper. Why it failed? Facebook is about connecting and sharing plus it violated Facebook’s terms so Facebook pulled the plug on their campaign!
Strip club chain Spearmint Rhino thought it would be entertaining to have Facebook users guess which performer’s baby picture was shared on Facebook. Result? Users discovered through the date on the VHS that the dancer was currently only 14!
Marketers often believe that running Facebook competitions will generate great results and fast! In doing so a lot of people set their expectations too high and assume the best but their promotions end up falling short of what they expected. To avoid this happening here are some common reasons why your campaign may fail and what you can do to increase the likelihood of you running a successful Facebook competition
- Long signup process. People generally hate sign up forms and a large form can be off putting to even the most interested person, don’t add anything in that doesn’t need to be there make sure its 100% necessary!
- Poor promotion. Only 16% of your Fans see each post you make, so if you make one post about your competition 84% of your fans will never know about your contest! To avoid this promote your contest by forming a blog post, regularly posting links on social media and on your website and if your budget allows you use promoted ads/tweets. But remember don’t overdo it with the promotions otherwise it looks like spam!
- Duration. Choosing the correct start and end dates for your contest can have a huge impact on the success of your contest. Generally speaking 2-4 weeks is a good period of time for a competition to run. You have enough time for your marketing to kick in and for people to enter but at the same time your contest won’t drag!
- Prize. Brands often give away prizes that are unrelated to their product/service which results in people entering simply for the prize, not in your business or the things you sell. Instead offer a gift card, this will make sure entrants are interested in your products and create the largest possible target audience for contest entrants.
- FOLLOW FACEBOOK’S GUIDELINES! Many contests are shut down because they don’t follow Facebook’s rules on how to run a competition so before running one have a look at Facebook’s terms and conditions.
Final Tips:
- Set goals first, know what your’e trying to accomplish
- Use a third party app to make your contest easier to manage
- Congratulate the winner and follow up the contest
- Analyze your results to help you think about what you can do differently the next time round
References
Dehghani, M., & Tumer, M. (2015). A research on effectiveness of Facebook advertising on enhancing purchase intention of consumers. Computers in Human Behavior, 49, 597-600.
Holzner, S. (2008). Facebook marketing: leverage social media to grow your business. Pearson Education.
Levy, J. R., & Carter, B. (2012). Facebook marketing.
Logan, K., Bright, L. F., & Gangadharbatla, H. (2012). Facebook versus television: Advertising value perceptions among females. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 6(3), 164–179.