A blog on Facebook barely need an introduction nowadays.
It is normal to not be an active Facebook user but if you haven’t heard about this social media platform then, maybe you are extraterrestrial.
Expected to cross the bar of 1.69 billion global users, Facebook has literally connected people from nooks and corners of the world.
With such diverse audience and power to easily mould customer, brands pick the social media site for their major campaigns and engagement programs. Building a brand organically on Facebook requires effective planning schemes along with systematic, ethical execution of the same. It brings in new audience, offers fresh lead generation sources, makes the brand more visible and develops loyal base of customers.
Even in the presence of fast growing networking sites and social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, Facebook has managed to create its own niche. It is still at peak of the success with wide reach and functional option comparatively.
Due to its great reputation for making things go viral quicker and reach the right target market with fewer errors, marketers choose Facebook Giveaways to achieve various mileages online.
Let us discuss how a Facebook giveaway benefits companies in attracting customers and propagating more engagement digitally.
Steps to create effective Facebook giveaway
-
Reasoning
Before you dive into your account or page to run a Facebook giveaway make sure that your team is well aware of the reason to conduct one. It helps co-ordinate better and bring out the relevant strategies to do it.
A Facebook giveaway can be conducted on following cases:
- Collecting data and gathering information
- Promote a specific product, service or campaign
- Drive engagement
- Collect user generated content
- Grab attention of potential leads
- Build a credible brand
- Gain loyal customers online
- Improve conversion rates thus add to revenues
-
Decide the reward and its budget
It is very important to pick the right reward and plan the expense properly because it is the bait to increase participation. The prize must be attractive and luring enough to make users think it is worth the cost of their entry.
After all customers would trust your brand with their personal information, ideas, and opinions. Frankly the prize should motivate them to win the giveaway so that they can give in their best shots.
Choosing a reward relevant to the business one runs makes it overall effective. Announcing gift cards, products of own brand, credits, shout outs if you have a verified page, package offers, combination of more than one item are beneficial.
Gift hampers and club of various items together as a reward for Facebook giveaway gets maximum responses and users tend to put in more efforts as well as entries.
So if you run a business dealing in apparels and accessories, clubbing a pair of earing cuffs, coolers, casual wear and unique sandals would be a clear winner.
Not to forget that Facebook giveaway often attracts customers or users who do not resonate with your brand and would participate just for the sake of winning an item. To filter out such unwanted groups brands can specifically choose rewards that targeted audience would specifically prefer.
For example, you can offer an off-roading plus cave exploration with kayaking opportunity to promote your adventure travels start-up. It will bring in data and entries from travel enthusiasts in particular.
-
Make a Facebook giveaway blueprint
Strategizing plays a key role in bringing success to the brand and its contest. We are surely planning a digital set up but use a pen & paper combo to design the idea, frame a schedule, pick options and finalize the plan.
Mention the key points like target customer, kind of giveaway, rules of the giveaway etc. discuss about the drawbacks and keep backup plans to support a sudden error. Be prepared with damage control methods to make sure there is barely any space left for a failure.
Also Read – How to Get Facebook Blueprint Certification
-
Pick a theme/occasion/event
Choose a clever theme for your Facebook giveaway that will direct your contest in a particular related manner so that it doesn’t appear random. Check the calendar for important days and dates such as national holidays, sports events like world cups & superbowl, ongoing seasons, particular month, viral events etc.
Deciding a theme will help in designing better creatives, mailers and content in it. It provides a layout for all the ads you place and lets your customer know the reason for the giveaway clearly.
It becomes fun for audience to post pictures of their lovers in the photo contest during the valentine’s week. Otherwise it might get monotonous and make people feel like wasting their time & effort.
-
Decide rules and expected result
Be clear with what you are going to ask from your customers and why.
Do you want to increase your subscribers/followers?
Drive traffic to a particular website or blog?
Collect user generated content for various
purposes?
Want to gather information regarding user preferences?
Or
Something completely unknown to other usual brands and your competitors.
According to the expected outcome design the steps of the game. You may ask them to follow page, tag friends, mention people, share the giveaway, provide photos or videos, write captions etc.
Make it neat and write down the exact steps you want them to follow or abide by in order to win the Facebook giveaway.
-
Design the Facebook giveaway
After deciding all major pacts of the contest it is now time to create the Facebook giveaway and post the same for your users.
Develop an attractive and unique creative banner for the same and put a catchy tagline.
Quote your brands punchline, transform your founder’s or higher executive’s words as war cry, number the steps orderly, inform the do’s and don’ts, highlight the prize, put call to action buttons, add links and clickables to other social media sites of the brand.
Post the Facebook giveaway as a post for the users to respond.
-
Advertise the Giveaway
Some of your followers on Facebook might has ceased to use the platform but are active on another site, few of them must have missed checking out the page the day of launch and there can several such issues. Promoting the giveaway on Facebook story, cross promoting it on multiple social media networks, branding it on website with banner pop ups can ensure maximum participation from visitors as well.
Promoting the contest is more important than posting the same as there would be no one to take part in it if none were aware of the contest.
Advertise well to get most entries, have an engaging campaign and grab support from all customer communities online.
-
Keep the giveaway fresh
Applaud the entries, highlight the creative ones, recognize genuine customers with real efforts, provide mid-contest shout outs, support users and encourage more participation.
This ensures the participants that it’s a real giveaway and no hoax. Stirring up the comment section once in a while will speed up engagement rates with real-time reactions and new participation. Following up would simply keep it alive no matter what obstacle comes the way.
It will hike up the overall success and make sure that the customers who don’t win it equally honoured and valued.
-
Compare results
Monitoring the Facebook giveaway helps avoid future mistakes and assists in designing more happening campaigns or giveaways. Note the entries, quality of participation, peak hours during the contest, footfall or visitors from links provides.
It is a stage to practise some social media listening as well. You can see what works well with the users and when or how do they like engaging with the brand.
Reading results help you recognise the barriers that stopped more participation and maybe you can drop few rules to avoid the same situation. It will be a precursor to develop more lead generating, data providing, resourceful Facebook giveaway in future.
Related Posts:-
Learn the Best Ideas and Examples to Run Instagram giveaways
How to build brand advocacy on social media for growth in business
Best tips and tricks to Increase Snapchat Followers in 2020
Best Social Media Contest Ideas & Examples to Improve your Engagement
Selling on Instagram: Industry’s best tips and tricks for brands that sell
