If you’re looking for a simple, effective, low-cost tool to generate leads and help your business grow, (let’s be honest, who isn’t?) you should absolutely consider incorporating sweepstakes into your marketing plan.
Sweepstakes are not a new phenomenon, we all know this. The word sweepstakes used to make me think back to the days of mailing in inserts from junk mail packets and those old Publishers Clearing House commercials where the winners were surprised at their door with giant checks. But in the current world of digital marketing and social media, sweepstakes have become an increasingly relevant and effective tool for taking on many of the challenges marketers face every day. Don’t believe me? Here are four major benefits of including sweepstakes as a part of your marketing strategy that may change your mind.
1. Growing Your Marketing Database
Lead generation is an almost constant challenge in the marketing world. Every business is always looking to expand their customer base and generate more leads. Whether it looks like growing their email list or gaining more likes on their Facebook page, this is a challenge most marketers face daily. This is also one of the areas that sweepstakes can be most effectively utilized. The important thing about list growth and lead generation is that you’re not just adding names, you’re gaining qualified leads – those you know are genuinely interested in your brand, business, or product.
Just a few months ago we facilitated a sweepstakes campaign for DJ Khaled during the release week for his new album ‘Grateful’. The sweepstakes was simple. Users were asked to enter their names and email addresses for a chance to win a pair of the DJ Khaled Grateful Air Jordan 3s. They were incentivized to share the sweepstakes page with their friends on social media by gaining an additional entry for every person they referred to enter. In just 18 days, we grew DJ Khaled’s email list by over 45,000 names and with the help of social media sharing, his album debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart that week. (You can read more about the Grateful launch here). This simple entry process and of course the incentive to win a sweet prize kept engagement levels high and are a great example of how correctly leveraged sweepstakes can dramatically grow your marketing database almost overnight and generate quality leads.
2. Getting to Know Your Audience
Effective marketing is really about effective communication and knowing exactly who you are communicating with is key. The more information you have about who is interested in your business and why, the more effectively you will be able to communicate with them and target future marketing initiatives to the right people.
Sweepstakes can provide a great opportunity to gather valuable insights into your audience based on the information that they themselves provide. Many sweepstakes platforms are highly customizable so that you’re able to collect as much or as little information as you find useful. Email addresses are obviously valuable marketing assets, but what about the age demographic of your consumer base? Do you know where most of your customers live? Do you know how most of your fanbase first heard about your brand? Do you know why your prospects are interested in your product? Whatever element of your target audience you’re looking to learn more about, sweepstakes provide a fun and engaging way to do that without feeling invasive – it’s all voluntary!
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- CBS Store Sweepstakes Facebook Ad
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- Sam Hunt Sweepstakes
3. Promoting Brand or Campaign Awareness
Here is where a sweepstakes campaign and the power of social media sharing can work together in a way that is really amazing. A sweepstakes campaign alone can provide a fun avenue to convey pertinent brand or product information in a fresh and engaging way. The prize you choose to give away, the event that the sweepstakes may be centered around, even the ad copy you promote the campaign with – all of those elements are new opportunities to communicate something about your brand with your fans or consumers. But when you incentivize participants to share the sweepstakes with their friends by awarding them an additional entry for each friend they refer, you can exponentially increase the magnitude of your campaign’s reach. I’ll use our DJ Khaled Grateful 3s sweepstakes as an example once more here – of the 51,600 unique registrations that were received during this campaign, 34,778 were referred by social sharing – that’s nearly 70 percent! I think that number speaks for itself on the power and utility of a socially focused sweepstakes campaign.
4. Rewarding Your Fans
Your fans and customers are quite literally what keep your business alive. Their loyalty and engagement are absolutely fundamental to your success. Why not let them know just how important they are to you and how much you appreciate their interest and attention? Sweepstakes can be a great way to go that extra mile and give something back to the most valuable part of your business – your audience! Incentivizing people to provide their information with a chance to win a cool prize not only garners more results, but it keeps your fans feeling engaged and excited about your brand or product and often gives them an opportunity to learn something new about your business. And then, of course, you are very directly rewarding those who are chosen as the winners!
While using sweepstakes may not comprehensively solve every roadblock you face as a marketer, they can be a truly effective marketing instrument for almost any consumer facing business. Whether you want to grow your email list, get people excited about your product, or gain specific insights about your existing customer base or target audience, sweepstakes can be an incredibly useful tool to getting the results you want and keeping your fan base engaged. It’s truly a win/win situation…so what are you waiting for?
If you’d like to learn more about Musictoday’s sweepstakes and other marketing services, send us a note and let’s get a conversation started!
About the Author: Kaylah Rodriguez is a Social Media Marketing Specialist at Musictoday. She manages both organic and paid social & sweepstakes campaigns.
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