Social media marketing is all about being creative. No matter how creative you are with your marketing efforts across social networking platforms, it’s not enough. You kn…
Social media marketing is all about being creative. No matter how creative you are with your marketing efforts across social networking platforms, it’s not enough. You know your competitors will come up with a new idea and beat you big time in getting more followers, customers and fans on their side. One of the most successfully prevailing social media marketing solutions is contests. Businesses now run contests on their social networking pages to get the attention of their audience and make them a part of these contests. If you have ever seen a YouTube video where you were asked to like the video to get a smartphone, tablet or a t-shirt as a reward, you were a part of a contest. This is how social media contests are so good for businesses.
Increase the Community Size
When you have significant online presence through social media, you actually end up forming a community with your fans and followers. The more they follow you the bigger your reach. Social media marketing contests are great ways for you to increase the size of your followers and fans. People who might not be your customers or followers before will start watching and reading your content to become a part of the contest. They don’t even feel that you are selling something to them because whatever they get as part of the contest is free for them. The good thing is that these contests are equally powerful irrespective of which social network you run them on.
Make Loyal Customers
Contests help you make loyal customers. There is a difference between a customer and a loyal customer. A customer buys a product from you but can buy the same product from another brand because there is no emotional connection. As for a loyal customer, he/she will not buy the same product from another brand because of the emotional connection they have with you. A good example of loyal customers is the users of Android and iOS. Android users will usually not move to iOS no matter how much you try to convince them and vice versa. When you reward your customers with valuable and relatable items, this gives rise to a strong connection.
Do Free Marketing
The best thing about running social media marketing contests is that you can do free marketing through them. Contests might not be free marketing per se as you need to make the merchandize that you will reward your contestants through. However, if you are distributing t-shirts as a reward and your t-shirt has a big logo of your company on it, this is going to serve as free marketing for you. As more and more people wear your t-shirts, free marketing will become a thing for you. Not to mention, if one of your customers is a big YouTuber or blogger, they can have a huge influence on their followers and subscribers.
Engage with Customers
Contests help you engage with your customers and target audience. Engagement is an important part of social media marketing. A video that has many views but no comments under it loses its credibility, and no matter how famous it becomes, the absent comments from customers make it look like a lost land. With contests, you get a huge chance of engaging with your customers. They might ask your questions about the contest and you will get a chance to answer them. Customers even love to share their experiences of past contests and this just compels more people to talk. However, you have to be very careful when you engage with customers. Keep your mind open for criticism and do not engage in any controversial conversation with any customers.