If you are a business owner, marketing manager that wants to target parents, then answer me this question:

How many times have you seen another business or a brand run a like and share or like and tag competition on Facebook? (You may even have entered them yourself as the prize was super nice.) 

Now answer this next question honestly:

Has your business or brand ever run a like and share or like and tag competition on your Facebook page?

Did you realise this is breaching Facebook page guidelines (see section III E) and that Facebook is well within its rights to close your page down?

And have you ever stopped to think what this type of competition is actually doing for your business?

What are your objectives?

If your sole business objective is to grow a community on Facebook or increase your brand reach by increasing the number of people who see your brand then these competitions are doing exactly that – they will increase reach and engagement on your Facebook page, earn you some new likes as other people see the competition on their friends’ newsfeeds.

But if your purpose in using social media is to use it to help meet your business objectives, to increase traffic to your website, to grow prospective customers, to generate leads, then these competitions will never work for your business.

Here are my tips for how to run Facebook competitions that actually do something for your business:

#1. Decide on the key goal of the competition

What would you like the competition to achieve for your business? You have to spend money and time on this competition, you want it to do something for your business.

• Maybe you want to get people to look at a new product you have online.
• Maybe you want some new email addresses to add to your mailing list to direct market to.
• Maybe you want some testimonials from the winners to use in your marketing.

Whatever the main competition goal, use that to then structure the competition in a way to achieve that goal. So,

• if you want to get people to look at a new product you have online – part of the entry mechanism needs to get them to click on the product page.
• if you want some new email addresses, then people have to give you their email address to enter.
• if you want some testimonials from the winners to use in your marketing, make the rules of the competition that the winners are going to get their photo taken and give you a review testimonial once they have received the product.

#2. Create a cute graphic

Make a nice sized graphic up e.g. on Canva to go with the competition. Everything is visual on social media today so you need your graphic to look fun and appealing.

Now make a version of your graphic for Facebook that has less than 20% text on it so you can use it for an ad.

#3. Use your website

The main problem with like and share or like and tag Facebook giveaways is that people stay on Facebook. They never have to give you any information to allow you to achieve that business goal for your competition.

So use your website. Most websites have form functionality to allow you to create a simple entry form e.g. Name and Email Address which you can embed into an article with some text about the competition with an image of the prize and any t&c. By the way, in case you were wondering, we use GravityForms on Mykidstime.com.

Tip: the more information you ask them to complete for the entry, the lower the entry rates will be, so keep it as simple as you can

#4. Test your competition entry before you tell the world

Then once you have your competition created on your website, run a quick test through to make sure your test entry data was captured.

Copy the URL link and use that for all your social media and/or ezine mailings to let people know where to enter.

#5. Use organic and paid Facebook to promote

Now set up an ad on Facebook to promote your competition to your ideal target audience.

And use your organic posts to tease people to respond e.g. Post up a picture of the prize with Who would like to win this amazing X? or Give us a Yay if you’d like the chance to win Y. Then when people respond with likes and comments, post up in the comments your competition link that shows people where to enter.

And don’t forget to pin your competition post to the top of your page while it’s running.

#6. Use curiosity to announce the winner(s)

Once your competition has closed, contact your winners directly then once you have confirmed everything create another article on your website with the winners announcement. You can use this to get people to see if they won.

Then use that winners announcement article link on your Facebook page with text like “Are you one of our lucky winners? LINK” This gets people curious and clicking to see if they won.

Tip: Why not include an offer text with call to action for those who view that page?

Creating competitions that actually deliver to your business objectives will make the time and money you spend on executing and promoting them worth the investment.

If you’d like some help with running competitions that get business results, then contact us now.