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If you are looking for new opportunities to grow your brand, try social media contests.
They are one of the most overlooked strategies for identifying new brand opportunities that you can virtually automate with the right martech stack.
Furthermore, they provide valuable access to networks that you might not have previously had access to.
Here’s how social media contests create new brand opportunities and why you should run one now.
IN THIS ARTICLE:
- What are brand opportunities?
- Why is a social media contest a good branding opportunity?
- What kind of new brand opportunities exist?
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What Are Brand Opportunities?
A brand opportunity is one that allows your brand to grow, stand out in the future, and develop new partnering opportunities.
For many brands, developing brand opportunities completely depends on in-house staff or it may be outsourced to an agency.
However, both of these scenarios are not hands-free, nor can the resources be repurposed such as in the case of social media contests which allow brands to reuse user-generated content (UGC) in many formats.
Brand opportunities that result from social media contests may fall into any of the following categories: brand positioning, brand extension, and partnerships.
All of these are a direct result of the connections gained thanks to the trust factor, social proof, and word of mouth marketing that are the hallmarks of social media contest marketing.
Some of the traditional examples of branding opportunities include:
These can actually all be incorporated into social media contests, which means that the benefits of your contest can mean going viral if fans love your brand!
Social media contests are one of the most lucrative branding opportunities for businesses that can attract new business opportunities.
Yet, they remain underutilized, or worse, poorly executed!
7 Top Benefits of Social Media Contests
Before we talk about new opportunities for your brand, first you need to consider how social media contests drive floods of viral traffic.
This in turn attracts participants and customers.
It can also attract potential influencers, vendors, and partners.
The benefits of social media contests and sweepstakes are enormous when it comes to helping your social media contest go viral. Here are some of the ways that your brand benefits from running social media contests:
1. Fan Engagement
Engagement is not simply looking at stats such as likes, shares, and comments. What matters now is the quality of these interactions.
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Are they coming from members of your target audience? Are you able convert them to website visitors and to sales?
A successful social media contest should be able to offer you all of those benefits.
2. Follow-up
Your relationship with your social media contest participants doesn’t end when your promotion is done. In fact, that is just the beginning.
You can continue to send them surveys, discounts, and special offers as you like. You’ll also have a built-in source of participants to tap into for your next promotion.
3. User-generated Content (UGC)
Photo-sharing contests, video contests, photo caption contests, and other promotions are popular among brands, especially CPG brands, when it comes to social media contests.
These contests provide brand assets that you can use again in future marketing and advertising campaigns. However, it is extremely important that you pay close attention to the restrictions regarding the use of UGC and consult a lawyer in designing your campaign. This is so that you have full access to legal compliance resources.
4. Multi-channel Marketing for Social Media Contests
While you might not be an active user on every top digital marketing channel, a social media contest can make that possible through contest marketing and the viral nature of social media.
As people share your social media contest, it essentially continues to spread as a result of several factors: you’re getting major media buzz, you have an awesome prize, there’s a well-known public figure or celebrity involved.
There are virtually any number of unique ways that people might find out about your social media contest. Only by running one will you know which marketing channels actually convert the best.
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5. Ongoing Social Media Contests: A Proven System for Identifying Business Opportunities
You want to make sure that all of your marketing efforts pay off for your brand. As a result, you need to make sure that your social media contest is properly designed in a way that increases brand awareness. Your social media contest should be well planned and make use of analytics tools, AI, and automation.
Get quotes for the martech tools you need to run a successful social media contest. By building and utilizing the right martech stack from the start, you’ll be able to ensure that your social media contests are perfectly formulated every time to deliver growth for your company.
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6. Social Media Contests Can Deliver a Truly Successful Rebranding?
Getting the word out about the new branding of your company after rebranding can be tricky.
A social media contest where you get feedback from your customers and potential new fans may be just what you need.
You’ll be able to get feedback directly from your new audience.
In addition, a new look may be the only thing needed to encourage an influencer, partner or organization to work with you.
7. Leverage and Grow Your Customer Base
Much like employees, the most satsified customers are usually the ones who jump first at the chance to be a part of your promotion.
In addition to your customers doing the work themselves to make sure that your brand is always personalized to their needs, social media contests helps you tap into new audiences you would probably have never considered before.
Want to take things to the next level? Ask participants to share your social media contest in exchange for bonus entries. You’ll be able to channel your happy customers’ vibes directly to a brand new business opportunity.
Next Steps
Ready to run a social media contest? Get quotes by registering for your free premium account.
Social Media Contests Help Maintain a Consistent Image Across Marketing Channels
As a final tip, It’s rare that a marketing method is able to simultaneously draw attention to all of your social media profiles at once.
As a result, running social media contests is one of the rare opportunities where you will get to reinforce your brand at all times and make your fans engage with it.
In the end, it’s the one of the few ways to reach your audience at all of the critical brand touchpoints.
If you want to run social media contests that attract big sponsors and lots of participants, keep these and other tips in mind as you obtain contest company quotes.
Looking for a contest marketing company to help you with your next promotion? Sweepsify helps you find top contest companies in seconds. Create your free Premium account now to get started.
