The number one way to draw a crowd of users to your fan page and turn them into fans is to run promotions. Social media studies have repeatedly shown that the top reason users fan and follow brands online is to gain access to exclusive deals and discounts— so use your fan page to give users what they’re looking for. However, all promotions are not created equal. At Wildfire we have observed and assisted in the powering of thousands of campaigns where, over time, we have noted that there are specific strategies to follow when creating promotions that greatly increase the success of fan campaigns. Here is the complete 8-tip post detailing the top advice we’ve learned from observing the tens of thousands of promotions that have been run via the Wildfire social media marketing platform.
TIP # 1: CHOOSE YOUR PRIZE CAREFULLY
When you’re running a sweepstakes or a contest, the prize you choose plays a big role in the success of your campaign. Your prize does not need to be very expensive to attract users and fans to your promotion. Two things to consider:
- We have found that prizes that generate the most excitement are the ones that “money can’t buy,” — for example, tickets to a sold out concert, backstage passes, limited edition merchandise or the chance to be featured by a company on their website or in their stores. For example, Facebook is running a fun contest with us right now where the winner will have their artwork featured in the new Facebook office in India, which you can check out here.
- Be sure to choose a prize that is relevant to your brand so you can attract consumers who are genuinely interested in your company. For example, if you are a restaurant, give away free dinners or a gourmet food basket— an iPad giveaway is far less relevant to your brand, and may attract users who are interested in electronics, not your restaurant! Dunkin Donuts is currently running a contest, for example, in which the winner will get five years worth of free coffee. Only true DD coffee lovers will want to win this prize!
TIP # 2: RUN REGULAR CAMPAIGNS
One of the biggest mistakes we see companies make is putting a lot of effort and money into doing a 'big bang' launch campaign for their fan page, but then having no plan to keep their fans regularly engaged once their initial campaign is over. In our experience, companies that run regular promotions (e.g. "Fan appreciation days" or "Friday Flash Deal") are much more successful in building up an engaged and growing fan base than those that do not. For example, the fans of the Swell.com Facebook Fan Page rally around the surf clothing retailer’s weekly apparel giveaways, called “Win it Wednesdays”. Likewise, tying campaigns in with upcoming holidays (e.g. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Halloween) is a great way to provide regular, calendar- based engagement your fans can get excited about.
TIP # 3: MAKE BUYING FUN
Unlike with Google, consumers generally go to Facebook to engage with friends and have fun, not to buy products. To change this dynamic and encourage fans to actually make purchases, therefore, we've found that the best method is to make the buying process fun and social! For example, Haute Look, a “members-only” designer clothing retailer ran a campaign with Wildfire that offered up 'lucky coupons'. Consumers had to become fans in order to get a coupon, but they didn’t know whether they'd get a high value or a low value coupon until they filled out the entry form and claimed it. The coupons ranged in value from free shipping to 50% off high value items like designer jeans. The campaign resulted in a 5x ROI for Hautelook and 20% of buyers were first time purchasers. To see more great examples of how to make buying fun and drive sales with promotions, click here for more campaign examples: http://bit.ly/bkk1MO
TIP # 4: OPTMIZE YOUR FACEBOOK ADS TO SEED YOUR CAMPAIGN
Unless you have access to a large existing base of fans or newsletter subscribers, you’ll need to use Facebook ads to help drive users to your promotion. There are many things that you can do to dramatically improve the performance of your Facebook ads. Some of these relate to the actual design of your ad (see our 18 Super easy, highly effective tips to grow your fans via Facebook Ads. blog post to learn more) and others relate to the way you target your ad (see our 4 Tips to Nearly Double the Performance of your Facebook Ads blog post for highly targeted advice) but in both cases you can hugely influence the success of your ads if you follow our easy tips.
TIP # 5: MAKE IT SOCIAL
The power of Facebook and Twitter is that they enable users to share your brand with their friends. So to really make the most of Facebook and Twitter, you should look for ways to make your promotions inherently social. For example:
- If you’re running a user generated contest be sure to allow the public to vote. Entrants will contact all their friends to encourage them to vote and thus help spread the word about your brand.
- If you are running a sweepstakes, make it social by offering a Group Prize (e.g. "concert tickets for you and your 5 best friends") and ask entrants to invite the 5 friends they'd want to share the prize with or offer a Referral Prize (e.g. award a prize not only to the winner but also to the person who referred the winner).
TIP # 6: KEEP IT SIMPLE & EASY
In our experience, the simpler and easier you make it for consumers to engage with your promotion, the better your results will be. For example, if you’re running a sweepstakes, don’t ask for any more information from users than you need - the shorter the entry form or the less steps required to engage, the more people will enter. If you’re looking to collect user generated content, ask for things that consumers have readily available like vacation, pet, hobby or family photos. And if you run a video contest, be aware that these get far fewer entries than photo contests because of the effort required to create and upload a video. On the flip side, generating a few great video entries may serve your goals better than receiving hundreds or thousands of photo entries - especially if your goal is to create customer generated content that you can use in your marketing materials.
Pictures of a user making a funny face are easier to take and submit than creating a whole video.
TIP # 7: TAP INTO PASSIONATE COMMUNITIES
We've found that campaigns that tap into people's passions and interests play a greater role in determining the success of a campaign than do factors like the value of a prize or even, in many cases, the size of an advertising budget. Campaigns that involve pets, children, charities, hobbies (e.g. surfing), music, and other interests are consistently among the most successful we see. For example, we had a non-profit run a pet-related photo contest that got over 10,000 photo submissions in one week with no advertising budget and a tattoo parlor that got thousands of submissions to their 'best tattoo contest' with limited marketing. Target your ads to your specific demographic for best results.
TIP # 8: COMMUNICATE!
Once your promotion is up and running, don’t forget to publicize it to your existing fans, followers and newsletter subscribers on a regular basis. At a minimum, message your fans once when you launch the promotion, once during the middle of the promotion and once a few days before it ends. For highly successful tips to ensure that your fan updates get maximum exposure, click here: http://bit.ly/bOYnE8
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