Contests and giveaways can be a great tool to use in your digital marketing strategy. You must have seen a lot of giveaways on YouTube, contests on Twitter and Instagram. There is no exception to Facebook too.
Actually, Facebook is one of the best platforms to run a contest and giveaways. So, whether you run a company or personal brand, you can get great results from running contest and giveaways on Facebook too.
Why should you run a Facebook contest?
All marketers LOVE running contests. Why social media marketers like to run contests and giveaways so much? Because it’s cheap and effective.
Facebook page likes, general brand awareness and engagement that you get from a contest will always justify all the necessary expenses related to your contest. Well, mainly because the only expense that you have is the prize that you offer. Usually that prize is your product or service, so it costs you even less than the market price.
There are many different forms of Facebook contests. There can be photo contests, giveaways & sweepstakes, brainy contests, etc. It doesn’t matter which form of contest you choose to use, there are 7 tips that will help you to run Facebook contest successfully and you’ll get better results.
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1. Follow Facebook’s guidelines for contests
Other than Twitter, Instagram or YouTube, Facebook has clearly written guidelines which you should read and understand before organizing any contest or giveaway. You can find full guidelines following this link: Facebook guidelines.
Third paragraph is the most important for contest organizers. Find the picture below.
Facebook says that you can’t ask users to do anything that involves their timeline or friends. It means that you can’t ask users to share giveaway on their timeline (they can share it just on their own will), can’t ask to share giveaway with their friends or to tag a friend.
What you can do is: ask them to like your Facebook page or Facebook post, leave a comment on a post, etc.
Having these guidelines in mind you should understand that you can’t organize a “Share to win” or “Tag a friend to win” contest but you are able to run a “Comment to win” contest.
2. Set target goal and understand what do you want to achieve
Have a clear goal in your mind and understand what do you want to achieve by running a contest or giveaway.
Do you want to get more Facebook page likes, increase engagement, brand awareness, or get more sales? You need to have a clear objective because you will then be able to track a performance of your campaign. Also, different objectives would mean different contest type and different rules.
For example, if your objective is to get more Facebook page likes, then you would need to run a “Like page to win” contest. If your objective is to increase brand awareness, then you could run a “Comment to win” contest where, for example, people would need to write a funny comment related to your brand’s name.
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3. Set clear Facebook contest rules
Keep it easy to enter your contest. Keep in mind that people don’t like to participate in a contest which has a lot of rules. The more simpler and clearer your contest rules are, the more contestants you will attract.
Try to write a step-by-step rules with an example what you expect from your participants. Don’t just write that users need to like your page to participate in the giveaway. Clearly mention that they need to visit your Facebook page (leave them a link so they could just click on it) and click on “Like page” button.
Just think of your participants as new to Facebook. Your rules should be clear enough even for a new Facebook user.
4. Choose a prize
There is only one thing that attracts users to join your contest or giveaway. It is a prize that they will be competing for. Make your prize relevant and worthy their time. The more valuable or interesting the prize is, the more participants you will gather.
Prize can make or break your whole contest campaign. If nobody is interested in the prize you are offering, then you will get zero contestants.
Also, prize should be relevant to your niche. The best option would be to offer one of your brand’s products/services if you think it would attract users to participate. Consequently, it would reduce your expenses a little and increase your brand’s product/service awareness.
5. Use eye-catching visuals
When you publish a contest or giveaway post on Facebook, you want users to stop scrolling through their timeline and notice your post. You would increase your chances to do that by using attractive visuals.
Try to use brighter color image, take some appealing pictures of your prize, even announce your contest in large capital letters in the image itself. Make sure to do everything that it would be high quality eye-attracting visual that instantly catch people’s attention.
6. Promote your contest
Remember that if you won’t run Facebook ads, then your only expense will be the prize. It means that your costs are fixed, it doesn’t matter if there will be 1 or 100 participants, you will have the same expenses. That means to get the best ROI (return on investment) you should promote your contest as much as possible.
The more people will see your contest, more participants there will be. Consequently, you will get more Facebook page likes, engagement and brand awareness. So, promote and share your contest with everyone that is likely to be interested in it.
Even try to promote your contest outside of Facebook. You can start by promoting it on your other social media accounts. If you have e-mail subscribers list, consider including information about your Facebook contest in the upcoming newsletter too.
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7. Measure performance of your Facebook contest
After contest has finished prize to the winner has been issued, don’t forget to measure contest’s performance. Was it a success or failure? Have you reached your goals and objectives which we talked about in the beginning of this article?
Consider what worked well and what didn’t. You will be able to use that information to your benefit in your next contest and even get better results.
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Here were 7 tips to run a successful Facebook contest and get great results. Do you have other suggestions? Leave a comment in the comments’ section below.
