Contest Ideas to Promote Your Brand
To turn your brand into a king on the market, you don’t simply create the good-quality content, you also make this content contest. The hype over social media promotion and user-generated contents isn’t meaningless.
In fact, creative contest ideas can take your brand to the new level: they can make people love it, hate it, recommend it or even laugh at it. But the key thing is: they make people TALK about it.
The basics for a successful online contest
Brand exposure is what you can achieve with one effective business contest idea. What stands behind “effective” and how do we measure it? Check out these contest setup tips that will help you craft a successful strategy:
- Determine the optimal length. It’s recommended to set up online contests lasting from 2 to 6 weeks. By sticking to this timeframe, you will get the intended users enough time to engage and won’t make them wait for too long.
- Choose a giveaway that will a) showcase the brand, b) satisfy attendees’ needs.
- Brush your knowledge on the creative contest entry ideas and become the one to stand out from the crowd.
- Explore the results. Always do this. Even if you fail. This will help you get up and start improving.
On which platform should you run a contest?
When organizing an online contest, you have to play two sides of the coin. Define the target persona and select the online platform for contest management that will polish your strategy. Have a look at some of the advanced online platforms that you can use for contest setup:
- Weemss. The online software that can be used to handle any type of contest, with very flexible submission and evaluation agenda. The functions that get the top appraisal relate to the management of submissions, registration, voting, and analytics.
- OpenWater Awards. This software would be the right choice for newbies in the industry because its key benefit is the advanced client support and guidance through all stages of contest setting.
- Easypromos. An online platform that focuses on social media contests and sweepstakes. With 21 different apps available, the software can align any promotional strategy with the proper social networking channel.
- Judgify. The online software that enables end-to-end awards contest setups and supports time independent submissions, adjusts judging from any place and helps in the scoring process automation.
How to use contests to promote your brand?
Making a good use of business contest ideas, you can promote a brand name online, without wasting money on paid ads. Use your business strategy and promotion objective to outline the specific results you want to get through the contest use. To get those juices flowing, you can analyze some of the trending online competitions that span your social media feeds. If done right, your contest promotion can be super-fruitful for your brand. Successful contest strategies increase followers on social platforms, capture the opinions of target audiences, reward the loyalty of clients, attract new users, and, of course, turn your brand name into a superstar! Enticing? Then let’s move to the sparkling contest ideas for businesses.
Contest ideas to promote your brand
Video contest ideas.
This is the best strategy for making people talk about your brand. Ask contest participants to submit short videos, in which they showcase the use of your product/service. In the end, you get a double win: increased brand awareness and video testimonials for your product!
Essay contest ideas.
Need some “text appraisal” from your clients? Just ask them to submit a short essay or product review for your brand. Long-term advantage: you can use quotes from the texts in product promotions.
Share your best tips contest.
The great idea for letting people peek inside and learn more tips and tricks on your product use.
“Like” or “Tag a friend” to win contest.
Online contests, in which clicking on one button is the only entry condition, can make your content go viral in a blink of an eye. Leverage!
Share a photo contest.
If you want to get user-generated visuals that feature your product, there’s no better way than asking people to share a photo. You can also play with the concept here: for instance, state that the photo has to be taken close to the lake or river.
Cutest pet contest.
Is your brand anyhow connected with our small furry friends? Then don’t miss the chance of making them a part of online contests.
Drawing/painting contest ideas.
Online contests can help you add artistic value to your brand. Ask people to paint the vision of your brand, their associations or just any of their favorite products.
Fill in the blank contest.
Test the knowledge of your target audience about the brand. But be careful, if your product is used by students, this idea contest can be, uhm, well…Let’s just say “controversial”. :)
Trivia contest ideas.
Specific trivia questions about the history or application nuances that relate to your brand can make people do a research and learn more about your offerings.
Name a new product contest.
Developing a new product? Get people involved! Ask your audience to choose the name for your next product or suggest a creative slogan.
Win a gift card contest.
You know what’s great about this contest idea? There’s no single person, who wouldn’t be interested in winning a gift card.
Vote for your favorite item contest.
In case you want to get the first-hand opinions on your product’s popularity, set up a favorite item contest, and get a rating from real clients!
Create a jingle contest.
Free advertising and new marketing ideas are in there. Jingle contests bring the future to your brand!
Build a lookbook contest.
If you think that your contest prize is worth it, you can go as far as asking for product lookbooks and use them in your future marketing campaigns.
Tips to promote your brand
Business contest ideas can go in different flavors, but the key thing is not only making them super creative, but also coherent with the promotion’s goals. To stay focused, use these tips:
- Work with influencers in your category.
- Involve audience to create a community around your brand.
- Run a promotion during holidays.
- Keep in mind customers birthdays to build brand loyalty.
- Launch a blog
- Allow voting management!