Organizing contests is a great way to generate some attention and to reach out to new customers. This article is filled with useful tips on organizing contests.
Your contests should be legal. Take the time to write detailed rules and to explain the selection process. Do more research on regulations and get help from a professional if necessary. The rules of your contest should be easy to find and to understand, but provide your visitors with a quicker version so they do not have to read through everything. Explain your contest in a few lines and add pictures of your prizes. Entering your contest should be quick and simple. Plan your contest so that you will have plenty of opportunities to share information about your products: you should place links to your product pages in the description of the contest and give more information about the products you are giving away when you announce the winners. People who did not win the contest might decide to buy the product you were giving away: perhaps you could give out discounts to anyone who entered the contest.
Select prizes your target audience will be interested in. You could for instance give out some of your products, or a product you are about to release. Organizing contests is also good way to measure the level of interest of your public for a product you are thinking about selling. You could also give out gift cards if you want to get more people interested in your contest. If you can afford to, give out trips or other major prizes related to your products: this could be a good way to reach out to new customers.
You need to create a new page on your website or blog with all the details of your contest along with an entry form. Advertise your contest with a banner on the homepage of your site and use your mailing list and social media campaign to let people know about this contest. Announce your contest in advance and give people up to a month to enter so you have time to reach out to many potential customers. Remind people you have a contest going on and keep posting updates about the selection process once the contest is over. Build up some anticipation before you announce who won.
Use social networks to organize contests to reach out to the friends of your customers. You could for instance ask people to tag you in a picture or a status update to enter the contest so that their friends see this in their newsfeed and consider entering the contest too or at least visiting your site. You could ask people to take a picture or a video of themselves using your product, design a new logo for you or come up with a witty product idea. The best entries should be used on your site and on social networks: people will share this content if it is entertaining enough.
Do more research on contests and plan yours ahead of time so you can get properly organized. Keep things fun and do not hesitate to organize contest more regularly if your audience responds well to them.