Running Competitions to Promote Your Membership Website
If you're seeking ways to advertise your membership site and increase your audience, then running contests could be the answer. Naturally, there are many ways to grow your audience however, contests and raffles could be very effective.
Contents Toggle
- Benefits of Using Competitions and Contests
- Reach a Wider Audience
- Boost Social Media Following
- Increase Website Traffic
- Grow Your Email List
- Encourage Discussion
- Promote Your Membership Product
- Key Points to Consider Before Running a Competition
- How to Run a Competition for Your Website
- Contests & Giveaways by Fatcat Apps
- Comment Contest
- No Frills Prize Draw Competitions
- Final Thoughts
In this piece, we'll cover the benefits organizing a contest in order to grow your website and give you some advice on getting started.
Advantages of having competitions and Contests
Before we go over the instruments that will aid you with running a contest on your website for membership Let us look at some benefits to having an event.
Affect a broader audience
If entry to your competition will require the contestant to share your website on social media or in other places to reach a larger audience could be the main reason to run a contest.
A lot of contest management companies allow you to take entries for contests on social media. This includes sharing and tweeting of your content, giving visitors a chance to win.
Every share you make on social media might put your website and your membership products in the hands prospective new customers or members, therefore, it's a good idea to include a social media aspect to your contests.
Boost Social Media Following
Growing your social media following could be an end objective in itself. If you use the social media platform to let people know about the contest, then having people follow your account for the contest will naturally grow your following.
More Website Traffic
A good contest is sure increase traffic on your website. One way to do this is to make entry to your content involve some type of promotion on the part of the participants. Secondly, a great contest that has a prize may become a media-worthy occasion in and of itself. Making a giveaway for a great contest gives you a good opportunity to connect with important influencers, blogs, and other key participants in your field by offering them something to talk about that their fans might be curious about.
This increased exposure can increase web traffic and give you more chances to convert those new visitors into subscribers or members.
Expand Your Email List
After they have opted into your mailing list for entry into the contest, put your email campaign in motion and begin providing great content to your new subscribers. When your new leads have warmed up, you can send them a link to your membership program. them.
Encourage discussions
A different method of running an event is to select the winner among all who's left a message to your website. As comments can generate discussions about your site and the products it offers It is worth putting in the effort to entice your readers to share their views.
Promote Your Membership Product
The last but not least is running a competition can aid in promoting the benefits of your membership. By creating a newsworthy contest that other people in your industry are likely to want to pass on to their audiences and/or having an entry procedure that involves social media promotion and promotion, you will be able to promote your membership service.
Important Points to Take into Account Before Running a Competition
Before you get started and begin your first contest there are some things you should consider. To begin it's best to spend some time carefully thinking about what prize you'll give away.
Are you planning to give one major prize, or provide runners-up prize options as well? Access to your contest for free or at a reduced cost your membership program is a good option. However, if you want to advertise your contest to existing members it is necessary be thinking outside the norm.
Just make sure the prize you choose to award is appropriate for the people you want to reach, and making sure it's something they'll want to post with their friends on social media as well as put their name behind. Be sure to ensure that the budget for the prize corresponds to your expectations realistically for the contest and its results.
Hopefully, your contest can bring in more people to your site. If it does then it's important to ensure that you've set up systems to not only handle that extra traffic but also make the most of it.
Last but not least, you should set up website analytics to track the results of the competition. A free service like Google Analytics will allow you to see if your site is seeing an increase in traffic and where they came from and what they've been doing on your site.
How to run a Contest for Your Website
If you're using WordPress for your membership website It's much more simple than normal to host a competition. With a variety of great free and paid plugins designed for just this purpose, all you have to do is select the right tool for your goals. Below is a short review of some well-known WordPress competition and contest plugins.
Contests & Giveaways by Fatcat Apps
The no-cost Contests & Giveaways plugin lets you set up and host a giveaway that requires your visitors to send their email addresses to participate. After the contest's end date has arrived and the plugin has completed its task, it will choose a winner by random. Because of IP tracking and the use of cookies, this contest plugin will help to prevent contest fraud.
If you want a quick and simple way to test out contests on your WordPress site, this plugin is an excellent choice.
Comment Contest
The free Comment Contest plugin is a great tool to help you generate discussion on your blog posts. Once enabled, this plugin will allow you to decide which posts are to be part of as part of the contest before picking the winner. Because submitting a post is enough for entry into the contest, there should get a lot of participation from the people who visit your site.
The No Frills Prize Draw Competitions
The freemium plug-in lets you begin running competitions on your WordPress site for no cost, and you can upgrade to the paid version and unlocking more features.
Through the settings, you are able to choose the requirements your contestants have to do in order to participate in the contest, such as typing in a message, answering an multiple choice query or simply clicking enter. The winner is automatically picked by the plugin. It is up to the winner to reach out to the contestant and give them the prize.
If you're looking to go into the bottom of the pool with contests and competitions, the KingSumo Giveaways plugin can be expensive however it is packed with features.
Final Reflections
If everything goes as planned but, your competition could lead to increased web traffic, more exposure via social media and the addition of new participants to your organization.
Are you having any concerns about running a competition for your membership website? Let us know in the comments below.