If you are an online marketer, you would hate Facebook for its numerous policies and restrictions, but would still be in love with it for the numerous fan engagement possibilities. One of the most effective ways to engage your fans on Facebook is by running promotional campaigns and contests. Such social media engagement programs helps to create a sense of involvement for those within the fan community and also attracts new members to the fan community, while rewarding them for their involvement. If you are new to the world of social media contests, here’s an overview of the 3 basic types of contests commonly used by marketers on Facebook.
3 Basic types of Facebook contests
1. Sweepstakes
A sweepstake is a promotional scheme where the winners are selected only by chance or in random from the entries received. Typically, visitors are asked to complete a simple form with their name and email address and the winners are picked at random on a set date.
What makes sweepstakes a great tactic for lead generation is its low barrier to entry. Take for example a ‘Like to Win’ campaign where all that a participant needs to do is to click LIKE on the Facebook post to qualify for the sweepstake. This probably would be the most simple and common form of sweepstake campaign used in Facebook. Here are a few others- Enter your email address and tell us your experience with the brand, hit like and tell us why you should win, complete the sentence, fill in the blanks and various others of this sort.
If you are using a Like based campaign, the catch here is that- once a visitor “Like” your posts, it will appear in their news feeds, leading to greater exposure and traffic. However, going one step ahead and making the visitor share their email address is important, as it provides a more personal and direct channel to reach to your prospects in the future.
2. Contests
Unlike the chance-based sweepstakes, contests are skill-based promotional schemes which require the brand followers to have their certain skills to participate in the contest. The method of determining the winner is also different from that of sweepstake which is based on random selection. In contests, the skills of the participant is evaluated by the public through a voting mechanism or by a selected group based on certain criteria.
The most common type of Facebook contest is photo contest, where the participants are asked to share their photo of visiting a store, dining in a restaurant, participating in an event or while availing a brand services. Such contests are popular even in product based promotions, where the contestants share photos of product purchase, selfies with the product or video demonstrations on how to use the product. While entrants feel proud to share the content they created on social media channels, it ultimately leads to greater brand interactions and loyalty.
Apart from photo and video contests, Facebook is a great platform for text based contest such as caption contest, photo comment contest, essay or story contest where the entrants share stories of their brand experiences. Though participation in social media contest demands an extra effort from the user, brands often witness high success rate due to the fact that- users love to share user-generated content to their friends, thereby increasing the overall reach of the contest.
3. Quizzes and Polls
Social media quiz is a fun way to inform fans about a product launch or educate them about a product feature, while rewarding them for their product knowledge. It provides a medium to engage in conversation with customers, ultimately leading to better product knowledge and brand loyalty.
Marketers often use Facebook quizzes when adding a new feature to an existing product, introducing a new product into the market or while launching a new version of an existing product. For example, a restaurant who has added a new item to its menu can run a quiz – “We have introduced a new item to our menu last week. Get it right and grab a $50 dinner voucher for this weekend.” This can have many variants depending upon the product and service promoted.
Apart from quizzes, organisations and brands use polls to evaluate customer experience. Such polls are important as it provides candid feedback on existing products and also for planned product releases.
