Using Contests and Sweepstakes to Drive Engagement

August 19, 2019 Bianca Altomare

Being a marketer, you’re always striving for ways to broaden your audience while generating leads, and essentially converting those leads into real, devoted customers. There are endless opportunities to develop your brand, it is imperative that you know your audience and choose meaningful ways to interact with them. Using contests, sweepstakes and incentivized promotions to drive engagement are an underrated and successful method to do so.

Gaining your prospect’s or customer’s attention would be the first objective. How will you do that you might ask? You should have an idea of what interests they have based on the products and/or services you offer.

If you hope your contest or sweepstakes will circulate quickly, handpicking a prize your audience will want to share is critical. Knowing what your end objective is and understanding your target persona will help with selecting the ideal prize that your audience will be inclined to share. Here are some options:

Your Product – Offering your own branded product(s) in return for contest or sweepstakes engagement will show loyalty to pre-existing customers, boost recognition and increase sales. Though this may be a bit more difficult to maximize reach to others that haven’t experienced your brand as it’s a narrower approach. However, it also provides you with a prospect list of people that maybe have never tried your product before but show an interest in it.
An unrelated, but HOT item – This option may be the best when your main objective is reaching as large of an audience as possible. This is when you can use Amazon’s Best Sellers to assist with choosing a product. Amazon Best Sellers suggests products that are hot on the market – if a product makes it to the list, it indicates that there is a large audience that finds value in that specific product. If you’re utilizing a product found on Amazon Best Sellers, you’re more likely to find success if you can somehow correlate it with your brand’s image or tie it in to the theme of a campaign.
Money – Would doesn’t like free cash? Though this may seem like a safe option, it could attract the wrong audience. Those that are here for only the contest or sweepstakes, and don’t want to actually associate with the brand.
An experience – Presenting an experience may push people to sign up as it could be something they wouldn’t usually do on their own. This is a great option to win over loyal clients and give your customers a reason to talk about your brand – experiencing something great and for free will have the winner on cloud nine and wanting to promote your brand.

There are considerations as it relates to prizing, for example prize fulfilment and the cost of fulfilment is something you need keep in mind. Depending on the prize or the number of prizes, fulfilment can be a lengthy process.

Note that heavy, weight based products have costs associated with fulfilment and shipping, whereas digital gift cards have very little cost. That being said, we recommend that prizing fit the overall offering of your company. If you’re looking into running a contest or sweepstakes soon, here are a few things to consider regarding fulfilment.

Essentially, prize selection is crucial in reference to the return you hope for when hosting a contest or sweepstakes. For other tips on arranging a contest check out this useful blog post put together by one of our clients!

Using Contests and Sweepstakes to Drive Engagement

Other Helpful Links:

Plan Your Next Sweepstakes