Identifying the Right Promotions for Your Brand
If you checked out our recent post on the value of promotions for lead generation, you know how important this tool can be for identifying prospects and raising brand engagement. To make the most of promotions for marketing, you’ll need to decide which type is best suited to your needs. With insights from a recent Northeast Digital Marketing Boot Camp Bites webinar from Advance Media New York, PA Media Group, and MassLive Media, we’ll help determine which promotion will help generate leads, drive engagement, and share your brand message with your most valuable prospects.
Types of Promotions
There are many types of promotions for businesses, and you can experiment with different variations to see which is most appealing to your target audience. The most common include sweepstakes, contests, quizzes, and brackets.
Sweepstakes
Sweepstakes are popular for many reasons, but simplicity tops the list. Winners are chosen at random, and entrants do not need to complete any task for a chance to win. In general, all participants must do is provide the following:
- Name
- Address
- Phone number
- Email address
Contests
Unlike sweepstakes, contests are competitive. Entrants will be asked to submit something to be evaluated by a panel of pre-selected judges, such as:
- Photos
- Videos
- Written submissions, such as a recipe or a short essay
You can offer multiple prizes across multiple categories, or keep it simple and award a prize to the top entry.
Interactive Content
These promotions include intelligence quizzes that test subject knowledge and personality quizzes, which offer fun results such as which type of décor best suits your style. No prize is necessary, but offering one encourages participation. You can choose winners based on the number of correct answers or even at random.
Brackets
If you’ve ever participated in a bracket for college sports, you understand these promotions. This activity allows participants to vote for their favorite and keeps engagement high by asking entrants to join in week after week. Again, prizes are optional but recommended.
How to Make the Most of Your Promotion
No matter which type of promotion you choose, it’s important to maximize its benefit. First, make sure to require the information you’ll need to convert each entrant into a lead. At a minimum, you’ll want their name, all relevant contact details, and zip code. Asking a few survey questions as a condition of entry can help make this data more robust and segment it into functional categories, such as individuals living in your service area, age groups, and more. Remember not to ask too many questions – while most people are willing to answer one or two, many balk at a long list.
It’s also important to devise rules for promotions. Imagine your business provides landscaping services. If the contest winner doesn’t own a home, they won’t be able to accept the prize. At the same time, a winner located across the state or even across the country poses logistical problems.
Finally, choose a prize people want. This doesn’t require a large amount of money. Instead, aim for a prize that feels generous and valuable. In many cases, this could be as little as $100. Just remember, you’ll likely want to choose a prize valued at $4,999 or less. Rules governing promotions for $5,000 or more are subject to additional rules, adding legal headaches and hassle. Working with a promotion partner can help simplify rules and other requirements to reduce added labor for your team.
To learn how to run a promotion for your brand, visit our other posts related to the Northeast Digital Marketing Boot Camp Bites series: Using Sweepstakes and Promotions for Lead Generation and How to Successfully Execute Promotions. For upcoming webinars, please contact Advance Media New York or visit http://www.nebootcamps.com
