If you are anything like me, you’ve noticed a pattern that’s emerged on your Facebook newsfeed. The posts that I am referring to all start with something like;
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“Vote for me to win…”
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“Vote for my band to win a slot to play Bonnaroo,”
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“Vote for my baby because he / she is the cutest thing ever.”
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”Vote for my dog, cat, animal, etc…”.
Companies holding contests and utilizing the social media “crowd” is nothing new, but more and more companies are realizing the far stretching benefits of running a crowd-sourced contest.
The idea is to get people to try and win something from your company by getting their friends and contacts to vote for them.
Doritos has completely dominated this space in the previous years with their Crash the SuperbowlFacebook competition. This year was particularly cool for me to see because an old high school friend of mine, Ben Callner, won the competition with his “Goat 4 Sale” video which aired in the most recent Superbowl. Needless to say, for the entire voting period, my news feed was constantly filled with my buddies all voting for Ben and spreading the word for Doritos.
What this contest has done for Doritos is difficult for me to gauge without access to Doritos analytics, but the ramifications can be seen directly on my own Facebook news feed. For starters, an increase in brand awareness and loyalty, user generated recommendations, and social engagement. Not to mention that each time I watched Ben’s commercial I found myself craving some Doritos… The bottom line, however, is that Doritos sold more chips because of the campaign.
If you can incentivize your target market to compete to win something from your company by reaching out to their own personal networks it is an advertising win.
The formula is not very complex:
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Use contest software or develop your contest internally. The easiest and most obvious route is to hold the contest directly on Facebook. With a user base exceeding 1 Billion people, you can’t go wrong hosting the contest with them.
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Figure out a prize or set of incentives that really entices your target market.
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Choose a contest type that benefits your company (best picture using product, video, commercial, testimonial, short story, most votes).
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Set contest rules, parameters, terms, and conditions.
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Promote the heck out of your contest and make it dead simple for your users to promote the contest.
What unique contests have you seen running across your news feed lately?
Anyone craving Doritos?
Make moves today,
Marc D. Horne
DailyDealBuilder.com – Start a daily deal site with our enterprise level deal software that won’t break your bank.
support@hcdesk.com
800-794-7192
I originally published this article on Daily Deal Media.
