To stay relevant, brands must continue to engage their customers through ads, contests, and other marketing strategies.
But what is a Facebook contest? How it works? Why should I care?
Contests are a great way to get noticed and build brand awareness. They are excellent for getting more likes on your page and in your group or increasing traffic to your site. They also provide a fun opportunity to interact with your audience.
Contests on Facebook can involve posting a question or challenge, and then promoting it to engage your followers.
Rewards can include cash prizes, gifts, or even entry to exclusive events.
But before you get into the competition, there are a few things you should consider. To ensure the success of your competitors, check out these helpful tips.
1. What are the official Facebook rules?
Like most aspects of Facebook, there are official rules, including the rules for all competitions.
However, the Grammar They tend to change as new policies come out, so it’s important to check them out before the competition begins. The current list includes:
Set up your restrictions
When you create a contest, it’s the owner’s job of the Facebook page or group to make sure it works properly and legally.
This means that you must set up the eligibility conditions and requirements which include the age range of who can participate and the region for the contest.
So, for example, a brand could set guidelines that only allow people over the age of 18 in the United States to participate in the competition.
This also means that there must be clear standards for how competition is to be managed. Such as how and when participants will participate and receive rewards.
Transparency is crucial. It will ensure that everyone knows how the competition is going to work and your brand doesn’t get into any sticky situations with Facebook or the law.
Create a statement about Facebook
You will also need to indicate in a post or release that Facebook is not participating in the contest in any way. And that the brand itself is responsible for the competition.
Participants also need to agree to these terms. So, your job is to get participants to agree to these terms before participating.
Limits on where you can post about the campaign
Only official Facebook pages, groups or events can be used as platforms to promote the competition.
The Brand cannot encourage its team or other participants to promote, tag or share the competition on their personal timelines.
People might find this as an undesirable way to promote a contest anyway, so it shouldn’t affect your competition promotion.
Understand who is involved
Unfortunately, only you are responsible for running a campaign on Facebook. Therefore, Facebook cannot participate if problems arise; It is your job to manage any potential problems.
2. What goals do you want to achieve?
Now that you know the rules, it’s time to set your goals for the competition.
There are many goals you can set for a Facebook contest.
Some of them include:
- Increase likes or followers.
- Get traffic from other pages.
- Build engagement
- Promote a product or service.
If you want to increase the number of likes your posts receive and use a contest to help with that, you need to post regularly and engage with your users.
To build interaction, you should ask the participants questions and answer any responses they give.
Additionally, if you want to promote a product or service, you should use promotion tools such as Facebook Ads.
In general, the main goals of any Facebook contest are to increase engagement and gain followers.
If you want to achieve higher engagement rates, you need to create a contest where participants feel they have something to gain.
This could mean awarding prizes to select participants after encouraging them to share on your social media pages or directing them back to your website to sign up for your email subscription.
This helps you get more active leads while also increasing engagement.
Track your competition
As you set goals for your other social media campaigns, choosing specific and measurable goals is crucial. This way, you can track the success of the campaign.
Compiling two key performance indicators (KPIs) can help inform your promotional strategy for your Facebook contest.
It is also important to set a schedule to monitor Facebook promotion analytics regularly.
Promote your contest
In order for your competitors to gain traction, you need to boost your marketing efforts.
Whether your competition only operates on Facebook or you use it across multiple platforms, it is critical that you reach all the areas where your customers follow you.
Direct them back to Facebook to participate or be clear about how and where to participate in the competition on other platforms, such as your website.
Also, depending on your brand goals for the competition, it may be worth promoting it as a paid Facebook post.
You can also customize your campaign by creating unique hashtags. This will help participants link a post to your competition to remind them to participate if they haven’t already or re-excite them about potential prizes.
In addition, remember to set a specific schedule for when and how you will post about your competition for its duration.
Do you need an application for your competition?
Using a third-party app to run your competitors removes a lot of the headaches associated with running a promotion but it also has some drawbacks.
For example, they may not provide any additional functionality beyond what your team can manage.
Also, if you plan to promote through Facebook ads, you will need to pay separately for each campaign (which can be quite expensive).
Finally, these apps are not usually designed to work on mobile devices, so you won’t be able to access them easily from a smartphone or tablet.
3. Who is the audience you want to reach?
With your goals and rules in place, it’s time to decide who you want to take part in your competition. It is essential to tailor your competition to your target audience.
What do you think your target audience wants? Do you have a new product or product line coming out soon? Then maybe you can gift some of these products to some of the participants.
Or maybe there is a product that is sold out in general. Then two lucky winners could get their hands on this elusive good.
You can also create a limited edition product specifically for the competition. In this way, more people will be excited to participate, so as not to miss this one-time offer.
Finding out what your audience wants most can help improve the success of your competitors. Choose a prize that appeals to your ideal customers. You want the participants to feel excited when they finally get their gift.
Finally, think carefully about how you will reach your target audience.
Will they respond positively to how you plan to promote your competitors? Are you offering enough rewards for the type of followers you have on Facebook or across social media?
4. What kind of competition do you choose?
The Facebook contest requires a lot of planning. Before starting any Facebook competition, you need to decide how much effort and money you want to put into the competition.
Such as how much money you want to spend on Facebook ads and other promotional activities, as well as what prizes you want to give out and how many prizes you want to give. Then it will be easier to determine which type of competition is better.
Three traditional contests include giveaways, sweepstakes and contests. Each has different rules.
If you are planning to give away, you should consider limiting the number of products you are giving away. Usually, with a giveaway, a set number of people participating get the prize first.
A lottery is more of a lottery where you choose a certain number of participants from a drawing of participants who enter the competition over a period of time.
The competition will have more specific criteria that the participants need to follow, so the participant(s) who follow the criteria the best will win. Like a photo contest.
What is the duration of the competition?
If you want to run a competition on Facebook, you need to know how long the competition will last. Typical duration is one month.
However, some competitions may be open for a longer period if you have the budget and time or some long-term goals for that competition.
Some contests end when you reach a certain number of entries, while others last until a specific date.
5. How will you follow up with the participants?
It is necessary to communicate how to follow up with the participants to let them know the contest winner.
This way, you won’t create any unnecessary discomfort or miscommunicate about when the prizes will be handed out. You don’t want to waste all of your hard work by ending the competition on a bad note.
Here are some tips on how to follow up with participants after the contest ends:
- Announcing the end of the competition and thanking everyone for participating.
- Write down the names of the winners and send them a letter with information on how and when they will receive the prize.
- Finally, don’t forget to check back periodically to see what new messages or comments they leave.
Takeaway
Facebook contests are a fun way to promote your company, brand, product, service or cause.
It’s also a great way to build a community around your brand and get feedback from followers.
It’s free to enter, easy to set up, and fun to watch. So, if you want to build a community around your product or service, try creating a contest on Facebook.
More resources:
- Facebook Ads: Who’s Best to Earn Clicks and How It’s Done
- How do Facebook ads actually work? Here’s what you need to know
- How to Advertise on Facebook: A Beginner’s Guide
Featured image: Dean Drobot/Shutterstock
