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Contest and sweepstakes promotions work because they deliver viral traffic by engaging users with the chance to win a prize for free. That said, you will still have to do optimization in order to maximize your results.
With the right marketing stack, here are the 5 marketing goals that a sweepstakes or contest can help you achieve faster:
Article Contents
IN THIS ARTICLE:
- How to drive buzz for new products with sweepstakes and contests
- How to use automation to get to know sweepstakes participants
- Sweepstakes are scalable for unlimited traffic
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1. Increased Brand Awareness
Sweepstakes and contests let people know about your product or service. As a result, many companies use sweepstakes and contests to introduce new product lines. With sweepstakes and contests, established brands can also remind customers to think of them.
Brand awareness tends to lead to customers rewarding brands with increased traffic (due to word-of-mouth marketing), loyalty, and sales.
Contests are especially good for brands who are looking to pivot to a different audience or make a comeback after a hiatus.
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2. Grow Your Email List
Most people need a strong incentive to sign up for an email list. The chance to win a free prize is one of the most effective ways to get new signups.
Given that email marketing is still one of the most effective methods for reaching customers, it only makes sense to take advantage of a sweepstakes or contest to help you with:
- List Segmentation: How do your sweepstakes or contest participants compare to your existing customer list? Are there any demographic differences? This can help you to identify the holes in your current brand strategy.
- Boost Sales: Having a ready-made list of potential customers is a fast and easy means of boosting sales. Follow up with discounts, coupons, and special offers and watch your sweepstakes or contest participants convert to buyers.
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3. Sweepstakes Participants Are Also in Customer Loyalty Programs
Contest and sweepstakes participants who are already existing customers are more likely to be part of your brand loyalty program as well.
Use the sweepstakes or contest as an opportunity to poll your existing customers about your brand to improve retention for your loyalty program.
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4. Get to Know Your Customers Better
It’s not always about simply collecting participant data for market research. Also use a sweepstakes or contest to get to know your customers better on a more personalized level through personalization.
They are more likely to open up to you about their specific concerns so that you can create better products and promotional marketing campaigns in the future.
Here are a few ways to use marketing automation tools for sweepstakes personalization:
- Create funnels that reward participants with more entries.
- Create surveys, quizzes, and polls
- Email and SMS automation for followups
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5. Sweepstakes and Contests Are Scalable
The best part about sweepstakes and contests? They are easy to scale up. When you use a sweepstakes management company or contest administration to handle your promotion, you’ll easy be able to create a promotion that accommodates thousands of sweepstakes participants.
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The long term goal of any marketing campaign should be to overall improve brand visibility. Sweepstakes and contests immediate expose your brand to new audiences.
With viral sharing as a result of a free prize being up for grabs, participants will do the work for you in spreading your promotion across social media platforms and directly with their friends and family.
It doesn’t matter whether you want to increase your YouTube subscribers, get more engagement on Instagram or go viral on TikTok, a sweepstakes or contest can help you to achieve that goal in a mere number of days or weeks rather than years.
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Final Thoughts
To be clear, you should know that sweepstakes and contests work best when they are applied to an established brand marketing strategy. They can turn a good traffic campaign into a great one. But if you don’t already have that in place, consider working on the basics first.
Looking for a contest or sweepstakes marketing company to help you with your next promotion? Sweepsify helps you find top sweepstakes companies in seconds. Create your free Premium account now to get started.
