Everything You Need to Know about Executing Promotions for Your Brand
When your business needs new ways to generate leads and improve brand engagement, promotions are a great way to get potential customers excited about your offerings. You know how a promotion can benefit your company – are you prepared to create one? Learn everything you need to know about successfully using promotions with tips and insights from a recent Northeast Digital Marketing Boot Camp Bites webinar from Advance Media New York, PA Media Group, and MassLive Media.
Choose the Right Promotion
To make the most of your effort, consider which type of promotion aligns with your goals. Do you want to generate the maximum number of leads? Or are you looking to share your brand’s message and shape public perception? Each type of promotion offers different benefits, including:
- Sweepstakes: With prizes awarded at random, sweepstakes are easy to enter and administer while potentially generating large numbers of leads.
- Contests: Make your promotion fun by asking entrants to contribute a photo, video, or written submission to be judged for a prize.
- Quizzes: Based on knowledge or personality, quizzes are highly engaging – you may not even need to offer a prize beyond the result, although we suggest you do.
- Brackets: Get participants to visit your social media platform or website each week to vote and keep engagement high.
Determine the Prize
Brands can be reluctant to use promotions due to the cost of prizes. Would it surprise you to learn that a successful promotion can offer prizes of no more than $100?
The success of your promotion isn’t dependent on the cost of a prize. Instead, it’s all about the value offered. That value can take several forms, from the fun of participating to a chance to win something entrants find meaningful. Simply focus on choosing prizes that make it worthwhile for entrants to share contact information.
Create a Contest Page
Your promotion requires an entry page so participants can provide their personal information. Along with brief information about the promotion, the page should provide a form that requests:
- Name
- Date of birth
- Email address
- Phone number
- Street address, county of residence, or zip code
You can host this page on your website or social media. In fact, Facebook makes it easy for brands to host promotions on their platform.
Build Promotion Materials and a Strategic Plan
It’s important to determine what you hope to accomplish and how you can make the promotion achieve these goals. You’ll need a distribution plan to attract the maximum number of entrants, which might include:
- Social media
- Your website
- Store signage
- Email newsletter
- Digital or video advertising
You also need compelling materials, including a logo, graphics, and more. This visual content helps brand your competition and encourages participation. Finally, determine how long the promotion will run. In most cases, three to four weeks is the ideal amount of time.
Create Promotion Rules
Clear rules ensure interested parties know how to join in and shield you from liability. In addition to a detailed description of the promotion, rules should include:
- Who may enter and who may not
- How to enter
- A description of the prize(s) and approximate retail value
- Privacy policy
- Limitation of liability
A link to these rules should be provided on the entry page so participants can read and understand them before submitting information.
Finalize the Promotion
When the promotion ends, be sure to announce the winner. Even those who didn’t get a prize will want to see that someone won. Just as importantly, you now have a wealth of new leads. This is an excellent time to draft customized email newsletters or contact entrants via phone to schedule consultations.
If running a promotion sounds complicated, keep in mind that working with a promotion partner is a great way to access tested experience, creative services, and more. For more information about promotions, visit our recent posts about the Northeast Digital Marketing Boot Camp Bites series: Using Sweepstakes and Promotion for Lead Generation and Which Promotions Are Right For Your Business. For upcoming webinars, please contact Advance Media New York or visit http://www.nebootcamps.com.
