An Online Contest can be the right way to increase your audience engagement, brand awareness, and lead generation. Due to widespread use of social media and digital marketing, Online Contests have become a great way for promoting products and services. However, since there’s so many competitions taking place online, how do you ensure your Online Contest is effective and stands out?
In this blog, you’ll understand the correct steps in order to run a successful Online Contest that will help you reach your goals, be it increasing engagement, generating traffic or sales. Well then, let us jump right ahead and find out how to create a buzz and make your Online Contest a success.
Table of Content:
- 10 Things to consider when making Online Contests
- Step by step: How to run on Online Contest that drives results
- Online Contests: A surefire way to engage
10 Things to consider when making Online Contests
Let’s face it, everyone loves the thrill of a contest! But, in order to reap the maximum benefits of interactive contests, marketers need to be careful to avoid a few pitfalls. To ensure that your Online Contest is a hit, don’t forget to consider these 10 helpful tips. By keeping these tips in mind, you’ll be able to increase customer satisfaction and give your company an extra boost.
1. Making Online Contests worth customers’ time
When it comes to Online Contests, you need a valuable experience to draw customers in. To do that you have to offer enough value for the customers to devote time and effort.
With that mind here are some pointers for giving your customers value using Online Contests:
- Prize value: Ensure that the prize of your contest is worth the time your audience is going to spend on it.
- Experience: Design a competition that will engage your audience and make them want to participate.
- Time spent: Avoid making a contest that is going to be time-consuming for people. Instead, try to create an enjoyable experience that your audience can complete within a short time.
- Winning chances: Customers are unlikely to join in the promotion unless they feel like they can win with a 50/50 chance. Reveal the odds and keep them fair.
- Consolidation prize: Your customers will enjoy receiving a little reward even if they don’t take home the big one. To encourage customer involvement and retention, you can present all participants with consolidation prizes.
2. Align Your Online Contest type with your campaign experience
While a classic raffle chooses winners at the end of the campaign, an instant-win contest awards new winners every day and encourages customers to come back to your website. Deciding on the number of prizes, when you want to award them, and how often someone may enter will all help steer you towards the most appropriate campaign experience for your contest.
For instance, an Interactive Quiz usually allows customers to answer the quiz only once for the related contest period. The essence would be choosing the type of experience that you feel will work best to engage your audience. Dot.vu has many great templates you can use on our online marketplace. If you are struggling to pick which experience could be best for your customers, then refer to our templates and examples of how we can assist you in choosing one.
3. Check contest legality
Depending on the nature of your location, there might be different sets of legal obligations to consider. This could be anything from marketing and contract and GDPR policies to cookie related. By having a complete terms and conditions page for your contest, you can show that you are acting in accordance with local and international laws. To ensure your campaign stays within the law, you need to look into the regulations for your country and see what types of prize giveaways are allowed or not.
4. Add a pre-signup page
Want to add more fire to your contest? Give a pre-signup landing page a shot! This will create anticipation and alertness before the launch of your contest. Then you can promote the landing page on your social media account to engage more customers. It’s a win-win! Just tell your customers how you will be using their information (continue to use it) in the future.
5. Send daily reminders
Keep your customers engaged even after they’ve signed up for the contest by sending them daily reminders throughout the duration of the campaign. You could send links of entering the contest several times a day with automated emails. This not only adds to brand recognition but also excites your customers over anything you have to offer. Send out those daily reminders, so your customers never miss a piece of the action and fun!
Related: How to automate targeted emails
6. Continuous promotion is key throughout the campaign
You will need a real strategy that looks not only at the days of the contest itself, but even more so before and after it runs. List out the best places to promote your campaign content like specific social media channels that can route new audiences through toward your Interactive Content. And you can further remarket the campaign using a paid post or ask followers to share or tag their own friends through social media. Here is where a little creativity can go a long way in building buzz and excitement about your brand.
7. Avoid duplicate lead forms
Help your customers participate in your Online Contest easily! No one wants to spend their precious time completing the same form numerous times. Asking customers to fill in one lead form itself will provide a better user experience. Keep the process of entering as straightforward and effortless as possible.
8. Consider future reactivation using collected data
With the help of these lead forms in your Online Contest, you can gather basic information about your customers and use this data to send customer-targeted promotional material in the near future. In addition, you can also spice up you’re your contest by adding questions on what your customers prefer or even have them pick a favorite product. This gives you insight into your consumers and allows you to fully customize future campaigns around it.
9. Add a valuable end-campaign CTA
Don’t miss the chance to use a Call to Action (CTA) in your Online Contest! This is a great tactic for building your email list and increasing conversions. You can also state what you want your customers to do at the end of the contest like visiting your website, following you on social media, or using a discount code. It enables you to reach your target audience easily while providing the best experience for your customers.
10. Integrate with analytics tools
Make sure to connect your Online Contest with the analytical tools you’re already using. This will provide you with valuable insights about the demographics of your visitors, their behavior, and the sources that lead to the most conversions on your site. Analyzing this data will help you create more targeted campaigns in the future, resulting in better engagement and higher conversion rates.
With these 10 tips in mind as part of your own plan, you are ready to go and host your very own Online Contest! We will address everything from brainstorming ideas and objectives to setting up your contest to executing it, promoting the contest results, and analyzing them to enhance future marketing campaigns.
Let’s jump in on how to conduct an Online Contest!
Step by step: How to run an Online Contest that drives results?
Step 1: Define your objective
The most important thing about online contest is your goals. If you do not know why you are running this contest, all your work to execute, promote and measure can be wasted. So, ask yourself – what do you hope to achieve with this competition? It could be increasing your following or something else but remember not to have too many. From this list, select 1 main and 1-2 secondary objectives:
- Grow your email list/generate opt-ins
- Increase brand awareness
- Boost social engagement
- Promote your products
- Get opinions/feedback
- Capture rich audience data & insights
Step 2: Pick an Online Contest
If you are looking for Online Contest ideas, there are loads of them available.
1. Basic Contest opt-in
Create Online Contests with fantastic prizes to collect contact information and bust through the noise with your audience, while also expanding your email list! Dot.vu’s Personality Test with Content Opt-in template is a great example of how you can engage with your audience and offer them a fun and Interactive Experience that also provides a chance to win a prize.
This is a great opportunity to expand your email list and generate leads while giving your audience something to remember. By connecting with potential customers, everyone wins – they get a chance to score big and you get to grow your business.
2. Quiz Contest
There’s also quiz contests where you can challenge your audience’s knowledge while also engaging with them. You can use this Quiz with Leaderboard contest template to create a unique and customizable quiz.
With the leaderboard feature, participants can compete against each other to win the prize that you’re offering. Adding this interactivity to your contest can help you promote your brand also educate your audience about your offerings.
3. Video Quiz Contest
We all know watching videos is very engaging so why not add a quiz contest to your next video? It’s a great way to incentive your audience and keep them engaged with your brand. Adding in a contest feature to your viewers can help you easily convert viewers into engaged customers.
4. Feedback Contest
Giving feedback can be boring especially when the feedback form is very long. But maybe… if you add in a reward at the end? You’ll be able to gather feedback from your audience and your audience will stand a chance to win something when they complete the feedback form.
5. Vote-to-Enter Contest
This type of contest keeps your audience involved because they have to vote for a product from a list to enter the contest. It is a great way to engage your audience and encourage them to interact with your brand or product.
6. Refer-a-Friend Contest
In this type of contest, you encourage your followers to share the contest with their friends, family, and colleagues. When their friends sign up for the contest, both the referrer and the referred participant are rewarded with a prize.
7. Extra Entry Points Contest
Give your audience extra points when they provide additional information, maybe like their phone number or their address. It’s a great way to gather valuable information about your participants, while also making the contest more exciting and rewarding for them.
8. Educational Quiz Contest
With this type of contest, you can create a fun and Interactive Quiz that not only tests your audience’s knowledge but also teaches them about your company, products, or area of expertise. And the best part? Each question is followed by immediate feedback, so participants can learn as they play. Your audience gets to learn something new, and you get to promote your brand in an engaging way. So why not give it a try?
Step 3: Select contest rewards
The reward or prize you provide is also vital for obtaining participants for your Online Contest. Therefore, the reward model you choose is important so select wisely.
1. Prize value
The amount of effort it takes to win/enter should correspond to your prize or giveaway. Never encourage people to waste their time or share personal details and then offer them a lousy prize, if any.
2. Number of winners
Decide whether you want to have one prize winner, many winners or guarantee every participant a prize.
3. Qualifying criteria
Be transparent on the criteria to qualify for the contest. What do they need to do to have a chance to win? Do they need to complete a quiz, share a post, or answer a question? Make sure your requirements are clear and easy to understand.
4. Prize ideas
When it comes to choosing a prize for your Online Contest, it’s important to select something that will motivate your audience to participate.
Here are some prize ideas you can consider:
- Offering your own products or services,
- Gift cards or vouchers,
- Discounts, or
- Free consultations or evaluations.
Step 4: Define legal rules and terms
To ensure a smooth and successful contest, it’s crucial to be transparent about the rules and terms of the game. While different countries have their unique set of regulations when it comes to contests, some of the most common ones that you must define include:
- Eligibility requirements
- The contest time frame
- The prize and return policy
- Judging criteria
- Winner notice details
- Winner response deadline
- Use of personal data
- Subscription to email and/or SMS list
Step 5: Promote Online Contest
Simply creating the contest isn’t enough because you will need to make sure that people know about it and want to participate. Here are some effective ways to promote your Online Contest and get the word out to your customers:
1. Your website or blog
Grab the attention of your website visitors with a banner or pop–up that leads directly to your contest landing page.
2. Email/SMS campaign
Send an email blast to your subscribers or use an SMS campaign to reach customers on their phones with a link to your contest page.
3. Employee signatures
Encourage your colleagues to add a banner linking to your contest under their email signature for the duration of the contest.
4. Your social media pages
Promote your contest on your social media pages and create a custom hashtag to encourage participants to share their entry.
5. Social media ads
Consider setting aside a budget for paid promotion on social media platforms like Facebook, which have low organic reach rates.
6. Influencers/brand advocates
Reach out to influencers and brand advocates in your industry to share your contest with their followers. Consider offering an incentive to increase participation.
7. Distributor partnerships
Collaborate with distributors to promote your contest through their channels, depending on your relationship and agreements with them.
Remember, a well-planned promotion strategy is key to boosting engagement and making your Online Contest a success.
Step 6: Measure Online Contest Launch
1. Pick and customize a template
Choose a template that fits your Online Contest and customize it to match your brand identity.
2. Prepare your content
Make sure to have all the necessary elements for your contest such as your logo, prize image and description, attention-grabbing title, contest introduction, opt-in form, content, and thank you message. Also, plan for follow-up emails or SMS.
3. Publish your contest landing page
Launch your contest after organizing your promotional content, imagery, and banners or videos.
4. Promote your contest
Plan and organize your promotional content, imagery, and banners or videos to promote your contest on various platforms.
5. Define and measure metrics
Choose the metrics that matter to you such as contest form completion rate, email contacts, amount of traffic to your contest landing page, etc.
6. Learn and repeat
Analyze your contest and measure the success. Consider what value your contest created, if it met your objective(s), yielded a good return-on-investment, and what aspects were successful. Identify what you would do differently next time and implement changes.
Creating an engaging Online Contest can be easy and fun if you follow these steps. Don’t forget to learn from each contest to make the next one even better!
Online Contests: A surefire way to engage
Looking to ramp up engagement and captivate your audience with your Online Contest? Look no further than Dot.vu’s contest management features! Nothing grabs attention quite like a good contest, and Dot.vu has everything you need to create, manage, and reward contests that keep your audience coming back for more. With traditional draws, instant-win options, and much more, our draw addon provides unparalleled flexibility for your contest needs.
Behold, here is a list of the incredible features that make Dot.vu the ultimate platform for Online Contests!
1. Contest management
Use the draw addon to easily manage your games, contests, and prizes on Dot.vu.
Related: How to setup a draw
2. Traditional contests
Create traditional contests with the draw addon where winners are drawn at the end of a predefined period.
3. Instant-win contests
By using the draw addon, you can instantly notify your customers whether they have won a prize or not.
Related: Creating an instant-win game
4. Standard draw
Create a standard draw on Dot.vu where participants can win one of many prizes.
5. Stepped draw
Use the stepped draw feature to offer consolation prizes to participants who don’t win the main prize.
6. Configure prize availability
Use the draw addon to configure prize availability and limit the amount of stock available for each prize.
Related: Configure prize amounts
7. Configure prize probabilities
Determine the probability of winning each prize on Dot.vu with the draw addon.
Related: Prize probabilities
8. Discount code management
Upload a list of discount codes and issue them automatically as prizes with the draw addon.
9. Limit participation
Choose how many times a visitor can participate in your contest with Dot.vu’s limit participation feature.
10. Contest time management
Preset the start and end times for your contest and use time zones for easy management on Dot.vu.
11. Automatic prize distribution
Automatically increase the probability of winning a prize to ensure all prizes are distributed during a specific period.
12. Exclusive contests
Create exclusive contests that can only be accessed with a code.
13. Intelligent lead form
Allow visitors from your CRM system to skip the lead form and participate directly with Dot.vu’s intelligent lead form feature.
Let the games begin!
Starting an Online Contest can be a great way for businesses to connect with their audience, increase brand awareness, and achieve their marketing objectives. The above-mentioned steps serve as a guide to businesses for building an effective Online Contest that can drive excitement and engagement while also collecting necessary data and insights.
With Dot.vu, you can easily create a custom Online Contest that perfectly suits your needs and objectives. And the best part? You can sign up for a free 14-Day Free Trial account with Dot.vu today and get started right away!
