Hosting a contest can be a powerful guerrilla marketing strategy to increase visibility, engagement, and generate excitement around your brand. Contests provide a fun and interactive way to connect with your target audience, incentivize participation, and create a buzz that can extend beyond your existing customer base.
In this article, we’ll explore how hosting a contest can help grow your online business, increase brand awareness, and provide actionable tips to plan and execute a successful contest campaign.
Before we dig into the steps required to host a contest, let’s discuss the reasons why you should consider this guerrilla marketing tactic…
3 Main Benefits of Hosting a Contest
Increased Brand Visibility
Contests attract attention and create a buzz around your brand.
By promoting your contest through various channels, such as social media, email marketing, and word-of-mouth, you can reach a wider audience and increase your brand’s visibility.
As participants engage with your contest, they become more familiar with your brand, products, and services, which can lead to increased brand recognition and recall.
Enhanced Audience Engagement
Contests encourage active participation from your target audience. Whether it’s submitting entries, voting, or sharing content related to the contest, participants become actively engaged with your brand.
This higher level of engagement fosters a stronger connection and builds loyalty among your audience. It also provides an opportunity to collect valuable user-generated content that can be repurposed for future marketing campaigns.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Contests have viral potential, especially when participants are encouraged to share their entries or invite others to join. This word-of-mouth marketing can significantly expand your reach as participants spread the word to their friends, family, and social networks.
The excitement and exclusivity surrounding the contest can create a sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), driving more people to participate and share their experience with your brand.
6 Tips for Planning and Executing a Successful Contest
1. Set Clear Goals & Objectives For Your Contest
Define your objectives for the contest. Is it to increase brand awareness, collect user-generated content, drive sales, or grow your social media following?
Setting clear goals will help you design the contest mechanics and determine the metrics to measure success.
After all, without a clear goal in mind, you won’t know whether your contest was a success!
2. Choose The Right Type of Contest Wisely
Select a contest format that aligns with your brand and target audience. It could be a photo/video submission contest, sweepstakes, a quiz, or a creative challenge.
Consider what will resonate most with your audience and encourage active participation.
This particular step is very important because if you choose the wrong type of contest, your audience won’t engage with it. Make sure you know your audience (and, thereby, your buyer persona) very well before you sit down and brainstorm contest types.
3. Offer an Enticing Prize That Grabs Attention
The prize itself is critical to attract participants. This is a contest, after all, so make sure the prize at the end is worth your participants’ time.
Choose something that’s valuable, relevant to your target audience, and aligned with your brand. The more desirable the prize, the higher the motivation for people to participate.
Now, it doesn’t have to be expensive, just valuable. That may be a one-on-one phone call with you, or a backlink to your blog, or mention in your email newsletter.
4. You Must Market Your Contest
Create a comprehensive marketing plan to promote your contest. Utilize social media platforms, email newsletters, blog posts, influencers, and online communities to spread the word.
Leverage visual assets, compelling copy, and calls-to-action to capture attention and drive participation.
5. Get Involved and Interact With Participants
Throughout the contest, actively engage with participants by responding to their entries, acknowledging their efforts, and encouraging them to share their experience.
This interaction builds a positive brand perception and strengthens the connection with your audience.
In short, if you’re the contest host, be present as often as you can.
6. Follow Up & Leverage User-Generated Content
After the contest ends, announce the winners and express gratitude to all participants.
Make the most of the user-generated content collected during the contest by repurposing it for social media posts, testimonials, or future marketing campaigns.
This not only extends the life of the contest, but also showcases the engagement and enthusiasm of your audience.
Real-Life Contest Success Stories
Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor” Contest
Lay’s, the popular snack brand, ran a highly successful contest called “Do Us a Flavor” where consumers were invited to submit their ideas for new chip flavors.
The winning flavor would be produced and sold nationwide.
This contest generated massive participation, media coverage, and consumer excitement. It not only increased Lay’s brand visibility, but also resulted in valuable consumer insights and innovative product ideas.
Burgundy Cupcake Shop
A small local bakery, Burgundy Cupcake Shop, ran a “Design Your Dream Cupcake” contest on social media. Participants were encouraged to submit their cupcake flavor and design ideas.
The winner’s cupcake would be featured as a limited edition flavor in the shop. The contest generated a lot of excitement among the bakery’s loyal customers and attracted new ones.
It increased social media engagement, brought foot traffic to the store, and showcased the bakery’s creativity.
StellarSkye Boutique
A boutique clothing store organized a “Style Challenge” contest on their website and social media platforms. Participants were asked to put together their best outfit using items from the store’s collection and share it on social media with a specific hashtag.
The store awarded a gift card to the winner with the most stylish and creative outfit.
This contest not only sparked engagement and interaction among fashion enthusiasts, but also showcased the store’s unique clothing pieces and styling expertise.
The Alamo Heights Fitness Studio
A local fitness studio hosted a “Summer Transformation Challenge” for its members.
The contest encouraged participants to achieve their fitness goals within a specific time frame and share their progress on social media. The studio offered prizes such as free classes, personal training sessions, and fitness merchandise to the participants who showed the most significant transformation.
This contest fostered a sense of community, motivation, and accountability among the participants while promoting the fitness studio’s services and attracting new clients.
GoPro’s “Million Dollar Challenge”
GoPro, the action camera company, launched the “Million Dollar Challenge” contest, inviting users to submit their most incredible GoPro video clips for a chance to win a share of the prize money.
This contest encouraged GoPro users worldwide to showcase their adventures and creativity.
The contest generated a vast amount of user-generated content, increased brand engagement, and showcased the versatility and capabilities of GoPro cameras.
These examples demonstrate how contests can be leveraged to drive engagement, create brand advocates, and generate a buzz around your products or services. While Lay’s and GoPro are large national brands, the other three are smaller, localized businesses, proving this guerrilla marketing technique can work for anyone!
