Marketing with Facebook Contests

Facebook recently updated their Page Terms and revamped the rules for holding contests on Business Pages. Its new guidelines for contests and promotions now make it significantly easier to create and administer promotions through your business’s Facebook page. Businesses are now allowed to run their contests directly on their own Facebook pages rather than use only the previously required third-party apps. Now businesses can:

• Collect competition entries by users posting on the Page or comment and/or liking a Page post


• Collect entries through users messaging the Page


• Use likes as a voting mechanism

Now that Facebook has made a huge shift in how they allow contests to be run, here are a few tips for you to get started on marketing with Facebook contests:

Set your goals. Think about what you hope to accomplish with the contest and set applicable goals. Perhaps you want to increase engagement, to grow your fan base, or to promote brand awareness. Setting some simple goals will help you to stay within your budget, identify your target audience and, choose your contest activities.

Select your prize wisely. Make use of your own branding and products to appeal to your target audience. This keeps the motivation to enter related to your business. You’ll attract targeted participants (ie, potential future customers) who are interested in your products/services – not just people who ‘like’ your business for your contest prize.

Promote your contest. Of course you’ll want to promote your contest on Facebook, but also cross-promote the contest on your other social channels like Twittler and Google+. You should post about your contest at least once a day on all your channels. Also add links and banners about the contest to your website and include information on it in your customer newsletters and blog.

Measure your results and learn. Take note of how well the contest contributed to your predefined goals. Check your business page’s Facebook Insights to see how many people visited your contest, how many more likes you received during the contest period, and how your reach was affected during the contest. Understand what contributed to the success of your contest and start thinking about what you can do differently the next time around for even greater success.

Have you run a Facebook contest recently since the rules have been redefined? What was your experience and what other tips would you add to our list?

 

 

 

Marketing with Facebook Contests