Everyone knows the opportunities presented by social media sites in increasing one’s online visibility and one such social media site is Facebook. This strong and powerful social media platform has served many marketers with successes they have not gained from other online marketing activities. A lot of people have used Facebook successfully to promote their business activities, products or services. They have launched promotions with high-value prizes, raffles and draws. Promotions that have celebrity appeal or limited edition offerings tend to gain support from the community. But promotions need not always have costly prizes. There are other rewards you can offer when doing promotions on Facebook.
While doing promotions in Facebook, there are some rules that need to be followed. Facebook has Promotions Guidelines that spell out the rules surrounding the use of promotions within the Facebook platform. Such rules are designed to eliminate spam and protect the user’s profile data from being used by other brands for their own purpose and benefit. Facebook also imposes limitations on ways for companies to use the brand name and logo of Facebook in any promotion. And as an additional security measure, any promotion on Facebook needs to be approved by Facebook.
How to Set up the Promotion
There’s no argument on how compelling a Facebook promotion can be for any business or individual. Following the guidelines, you can use your Page as a starting point and create a link to your website for promotion entry details. Alternatively, you can have the entire promotion within the Facebook community. The following tips may help you achieve success with your promotion:
- Attractive Prize. As in any contest or promotion, an attractive prize will have an impact on the turnout of participants. If you offer attractive prizes, more people are likely to respond. But what prizes can be attractive? Prizes that money can’t buy seem to be favored by participants of the promotion such as an opportunity to meet a celebrity (movie, music, sports, etc. depending on the type of promotion held), or participating in a TV commercial or attending a product’s pre-launching party.
- Start with Your Existing Customers. This is the best way to start a promotion – get your existing customers involved. You can probably pre-qualify them to the promotion if they have purchased a certain item or product. With an attractive prize at stake, they will have a justification for making an extra purchase. With this strategy, you already overcome the tough part of getting the initial entries. You can reach out to your mailing list of customers by sending a friendly invite. Or get on instant messenger, Twitter, Google+, or email to inform them about the promotion and inviting them to join.
- Cross Promotion. You can use your website and other channels (social media accounts other than Facebook) to advertise the promotion in order to gain maximum participation. By adding a promotional banner that has a link to your Facebook Page is a good way to kick-off your promotion.
- Keep it Simple. The simpler the promotion, the better for participants. Avoid over-complicating the rules. If forms are to be filled out, limit the questions and make filling out easier for the participants. It will also help to give out a single prize of significant value as the top prize and several smaller prizes for second, third, etc. prizes. Less clicks to enter the promotion will be appreciated by those interested to participate.
- Don’t Make the Promotion Hard to Win. If you set the criteria too high, you might not have any participant. If you’re running a promotion for the most original T-shirt design, don’t ask for too many requirements.
- Keep a Regular Run of Promotions. You can run promotions for at least a month. If you give more time for the promotion to be known to the community, the more entries you are likely to get. By making enough noise in the community to build up excitement for the promotion, the more successful it is likely to be. Users or followers that are constantly reminded by adverts or write-ups about the promotion, the more they anticipate the big day when winners are announced.
- Integrate Promotion with Media Campaign. You can combine a Facebook ad campaign with a promotion to maximize the viral effect.
- Go for Fun Promotion. Avoid off-the-rack kind of promotions by making yours interesting, unique and fun. It should contain an element of entertainment. And the promotion should offer participants an outlet to express themselves, encourage members to share with friends, and convey messages about your product, brand or service.
- Use Third-Party Promotions Apps. There are several third party apps for promotions – some are free and some apps come with a small price tag. Some of them are:
- Wildfire Promotion Builder
- Fan Appz
- Virtrue
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