Win yourself a prize, get in touch with your favorite company, or express your own opinion: A Facebook competition provides a way of getting customers to interact with the company. It activates passive fans and reaches other users who then become fans or even customers.
One thing is certain: these contests increase your organic reach. In this case, unlike paid coverage, you don’t have to spend money on advertisements. However, this should not be the main goal, since organic reach rarely leads to sustainable success. The organic reach achieved with a competition is only effective short term. If you don’t act appropriately to keep newly-acquired fans, the range curve will drop sharply within a short time. Some experts even believe that this has a negative effect on the Facebook algorithm. If a single post stands out due to an unusually high level of user interaction in relation to other posts, this will seem unnatural to the algorithm and could lead to the respective page being devaluated. On the other hand, if you proceed strategically, you will achieve more and improve your presence on a long-term basis.
Do you run a retail store and are responsible for its marketing and associated blog posts? You will go about it a different way, depending on what applies to you and what you’re aiming for. Different goals for organizing a Facebook competition could include getting to know regular customers better, introducing a product and arousing buying interest, or attracting more readers. Once a goal has been defined, you can work out other formalities more quickly such as the prize, the competition format and its analysis, and target group-specific addressing. Here is what you can achieve with a Facebook competition:
- Attract attention and gain new fans
- Activate the community and improve interaction
- Keep regular customers and gain new ones
- Generate leads (e.g. contact data)
- Introduce products and increase buying interest
- Strengthen branding
- Initiate user-generated content
- Conduct market research
- Receive feedback
It goes without saying that these goals interlock and lead to extra aims being fulfilled. For example, using your online store’s Facebook fan page helps you attract more prospective customers, but at the same time also increases the potential turnover through purchases. If you use a Facebook competition to conduct market research, you will know what your customers want and you will be able to orientate your product range more effectively. Lead generation, in turn, extends the possibilities for contacting potential buyers.