Facebook contests are a great way for a B2B company to boost fan engagement, get new leads, and gather market feedback. If done well, contests on Facebook can also be a lot of fun for your entrants. Here are a few tips to make B2B businesses and contest participants feel like they’ve all won something.
1. Make the contest easy to enter.
Focus on something that makes entrants stay on the contest page and complete in under one minute. Running a sweepstakes or “choose your favorite” contest works well for this.
In a sweepstakes, entrants fill out several fields with their contact info and press “enter.” In a “choose your favorite” style contest, you give entrants a few images too look at — maybe variants of a new product or logo — and click on their top choice. If you’re a soloentrepreneur, perhaps offer three choices of a headshot you wish to use in upcoming marketing material.
2. Capture and nurture your leads.
Most contest apps will require entrants to enter an email address. And that’s a good thing — you want their email for future direct communication. Make sure you state in the contest rules that by entering their address, they have agreed to receive messages from you with whatever regularity you send your email newsletters. Also state that they have the choice to later opt-out of such messages.
If you segment your email list, be sure to ask entrants a qualifying question that will allow you to place them in a proper bucket (ex. geography, position in company, experience with your product/service).
Upon completion of the contest, email all those who didn’t win the featured prize. In that email, offer them something free and unexpected — perhaps a relevant ebook, white paper, video episode, or podcast that you’ve created. If you haven’t yet delved into content marketing, look around your office for unused swag (branded magnets, jump drives, t-shirts, etc) from a prior conference and mail them to those new members of your mailing list.
3. Offer a prize that means something to your target audience.
iPads are probably the most sought after prize in the Facebook contest universe. But they suck the soul out of most B2B companies. Why? First off, iPads do little, if anything, to spread your brand’s message. Second, they attract people who want to win an iPad — not do business with you. These iPad lusters will certainly increase your fan count, but will not engage with you, share your messages, or become a paid customer.
Entice your ideal customer to your contest by offering something they’d like from your company: think along the lines of an extended trial of your software, an hour-long consulting session, or admission to a paid Webinar or two.
4. Use Facebook ads to bring the right people to your contest.
If you have over 400 fans on your fan page, use promoted posts as an inexpensive way to reach as many of your fans and their friends as possible. If your page has fewer fans or you wish to have more control over who sees your ads, use Facebook’s traditional ads or Sponsored Stories. Facebook ads give you amazing opportunities to focus on the demographics of who you want to see your message. (It’s up to you to make to make them click through the ad, however.)
5. Stay within Facebook’s promotion guidelines.
Facebook contest guidelines state that contest activity must not take place on your fan page wall. Create an additional tab, or app, on your page to host your contest. If you don’t know about coding on Facebook or are not design oriented, try the paid, almost-ready-to-roll options from Wildfire or ShortStack.
Have you run a Facebook contest before? What successes have you had? What stumbling blocks did you encounter? Sound off in the comments.