How to Do a Facebook Contest

 

Running a Facebook contest can give your brand exposure to both old and new customers. Customers love free offers from their favorite businesses, so when they see your giveaway, they will be excited to enter. There are many ways to run a Facebook contest. Below we will be giving our best tips on how to have a Facebook contest!

1.) Determine The Goal Of The Contest

What is your goal? Is your goal to get customers in the door? To get engagement on social media? To gain awareness in the community and gain new customers? When you determine the goal of the contest, consider the target audience. These two need to be cohesive to have the most success. Make sure to select the type of content based on the goal of the contest. Keep reading to understand how to target your audience and types of Facebook contests that you can do.

2.) Target Your Audience 

Consider your target audience when thinking about your upcoming Facebook giveaway. Ask yourselves the following questions:

   

    Who do we want to engage in our giveaway?

    What are the demographics of the audience? Age? Gender? Likes? Type of work? 

    What time of day is your audience on social media? 

    What type of contest would the target audience be most prone to participating in? 

    What kind of prize would your audience be most interesting in winning?

 

Based on this information, you have all the key parts for your Facebook contest. You will know when to post, what to giveaway, and how to engage your audience. When you consider your audience, your contest will have more engagement than a cookie-cutter giveaway. 

 

3.) Type Of Contests

Like, Tag, Follow and Share to Win

This is the most common Facebook giveaway. To enter the contest, customers need to be following your business page and “like” the giveaway image. Then, have them tag a certain number of friends in the comments. This will bring new people to your page. Lastly, tell them they can share the post to their page or their story for bonus entries. For this contest, specify how many entries they will gain for each activity they do. For example, 1 entry per like or person tagged, or additional entries for someone who reposts the post on their page or story. Most of the time, following the businesses social media account is a requirement for contest entry.

 

Selfie/Lifestyle Contest

For this type of contest, have the customer take a picture with your product and have them send in their photos, or have them post the photos on their social media accounts and tag you and/or use a hashtag. This will give you photos to use for your own advertising and will give your brand publicity via all their followers seeing their posts. You can select your favorite or favorites to win whatever prize you have chosen.

 

Voting Contest

As a business, you can have people vote on their favorite of something. People vote by liking a comment or pictures that you post. For example, you could post two images and have your customers like or comment on one of those images. This can help you understand what your audience’s taste is. Another option is to have customers post photos with your product and see who gets the most likes on their image. Another way to do this is to have your customers comment on a specific photo of yours and then have people like their favorite comments. Whoever has the most likes on their comment by the end of the contest will win! There are many ways to do this type of contest, try out a few variations to see what works best for your company. 

 

Scavenger Hunt Contest

This contest gets people moving! Create a post featuring an item or items that will need to be found. Hide that item around your store or the store premises. Have your customers bring the item back to the store, and they will receive their prize. This kind of activity brings people to your store searching for the item you hid. Then, they can shop around afterward. Consider your audience when doing this type of contest. If you don’t have a storefront, you can hide coupon codes in your area and people can redeem them online.

 

Caption to Win

This contest is simple but effective. Post an image and have your audience comment on a caption to win. You can choose your favorite caption, or have other people vote for the winner by liking their favorite caption.

 

Information Gathering/Business Building  

In order for your customers to enter this contest, they have to sign up for your marketing emails. Rafflecopter is a giveaway entry system where you can have people enter in a variety of ways and it keeps track of each of their entries. For example, you could have to enter their email as an option, following on each of your social media platforms, and posting about it on a specific social media platform for a specific number of entries. On Rafflecopter, they have free options and paid options based on your giveaways. You also can select the winner randomly through their program.
 

4.) Selecting A Winner

You can select a winner randomly, or have a judge choose a winner. If it is a judge-based contest, select your favorite entry and let them know they’ve won. When selecting randomly, there are lots of websites that can do this for you. If you would like a random comment selector, use this website. If you have various ways of entering, track each entry with this website here. Whatever you choose, be sure to announce the winner of your contest publicly so everyone knows the contest has ended.

 

5.) How To Enter

Make sure your audience knows exactly how to enter your contest. Whether it’s liking, commenting, and following, using a hashtag, tagging their friends or tagging your business in a new post, make sure the rules are written out clearly. Writing this in steps will help your Facebook contest be more successful.

 

6.) Be Clear

Be very clear with your contest to help your audience engage with your post. The clearer you are, the more your audience will feel this is a real contest and not a scam. In order to be clear, specify the duration of the contest, the deadline and when you will announce the winner. Your customers will have to visit your page to see who will win, which helps with your page traffic. Lastly, if you have any restrictions for your contest, make sure to specify them in your first post so there are no misunderstandings. 

 

7.) Create Memorable Artwork

Creating artwork specifically for your Facebook contest is important. This is what your audience will see when they enter your contest. The artwork should represent your brand and should show the product that will be given away in your contest. The artwork should also be directed toward the audience that you originally selected to target. Make sure that you create not only the entry Facebook post but also reminder posts. These could be Facebook stories or a secondary reminder post. Create an ending post as well - this helps give closure to all the excited entrants who want to win. If you post announcements on your story, make sure to be clear about what time you will be posting. Create memorable graphics/images/artwork for this contest campaign in order to gain traction.

 

 

Above all, have fun! If you enjoy the process, it will be visible to your audience. Select a product your customers will love and create a contest your customers won’t want to miss. Follow these steps to create a memorable Facebook contest that will get your customers excited about your brand! Good luck!