Running Competitions to Promote Your Member Site
If you're seeking ways to advertise your membership site's website as well as increase your reach, running a competition could be the solution. Of course, there are many ways to grow your audience, but contests and giveaways 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 post we'll discuss the advantages organizing a contest in order for your website to boost its traffic in addition to giving tips on how to get going.
Benefits of Using Competitions and contests
Before we go over the tools that can help you run a competition through your membership site, here are some benefits to creating a contest.
Reach a Wider Audience
If the entry into your contest requires the participant to share your website on social media or in other places, then reaching a wider public could be the primary advantage of running a competition.
Some contest management solutions offer the option to take entries for contests via social media, with the sharing of tweets or shares of your content, giving visitors a possibility to win.
Every share you make on social media can put your site and your membership products in the hands of new potential visitors or members, therefore, it's a good idea to include a social media element for your contests.
Boost Social Media Following
Getting more social media followers could be an end objective in itself. If you do use social media activity to let participants participate in the contest, then letting them follow your profile to join the competition will naturally grow your following.
More Website Traffic
The right contest can be certain to increase website traffic. For one, you can include a contest entry form to be a form of advertising on the part of the participants. Secondly, a great contest with an exciting prize may become a media-worthy event in itself. Creating a generous contest giveaway can give you the chance to reach out to important influencers, blogs, as well as other important players in your niche by offering them something to talk about that their fans could be curious about.
This new exposure could increase web traffic and give you more chances to convert these new customers to members or subscribers.
Increase Your List of Emails
After they have opted into your email list in order to participate in the contest, you can begin to put the email program into action and begin providing great content to your newly subscribed subscribers. After your leads have been well-established, it is time to offer your membership service to your new leads.
Engage in Discussion
A different method of running an event is to select a winner from everyone who left a comment to your website. As comments can generate discussion about your website and its products for membership It is worth taking the time to entice your readers to share their opinions.
Promote Your Membership Products
Last but not least, organizing a competition will assist in the promotion of the benefits of your membership. By creating a newsworthy contest that other people in your industry would like to pass on to their audiences as well as having an entry procedure that involves social media promotion, you can spread the word about your membership service.
Important Points to Take into Account Before Conducting a competition
When you are ready to begin your first contest there are a few things you should consider. To begin you should try to sit down for a while thinking about what prize you're going to award.
Do you plan to offer a grand prize, or have runners-up prize options as well? Free or reduced access to your membership plan is the best option. However, if you want to make your contest known to existing members you'll need be thinking outside the confines of.
Be sure to ensure that the prize is relevant to the people you want to reach, and it also being something that they'll be happy to promote with their friends on social media as well as make their own name known. Also, make sure your budget for prizes corresponds to your goals of the competition and its outcomes.
Hopefully, the contest you enter is going to bring more traffic to your website. If it does then you'll need to be sure that you've put in place procedures to handle that extra traffic but also get the most value from it.
Finally, don't forget to set up website analytics to keep track of the outcome of the competition. Google Analytics is a free program. Google Analytics will allow you to determine if your website is seeing increased traffic and where they came from and what they've been doing on your site.
How to Run a Competition for Your Website
If you're using WordPress to host your membership site It's much simpler than you'd expect to conduct a competition. With some great free and paid plugins designed for just this purpose All you need to do is select the right tool for your needs. Below is a short summary of the most popular WordPress Contest and competition plugins.
Promotions and Contests run by Fatcat Apps
The cost-free Contests & Giveaways plugin can be used to create and host a giveaway which requires that your participants provide their email address to be entered. After the contest's end date is set and the plugin has completed its task, it will pick a winner at random. Due to IP tracking and the use of cookies, this plugin is able to thwart fraudulent contests.
If you want a quick and straightforward way to try out contests on your WordPress website, this plugin can be a great choice.
Comment Contest
The no-cost Comment Contest plugin can aid in the creation of discussion about your blog post. After it is enabled, this plugin allows you to decide which posts are to be part of as part of the contest before selecting the winner. Because submitting a post is the only requirement to enter the contest, it's likely to get a lot of participation by your readers.
The No Frills Prize Draw Competitions
This free plugin allows you to start organizing contests on your WordPress website for free, but you have the option of upgrading to a paid edition and unlocking more capabilities.
Through the settings, you can choose what your participants must complete to be eligible for the contest. This could include typing in a message, answering an multiple choice query, or just hitting the enter button. The winner is automatically picked by the plugin, leaving you with the task of contacting the winning participant and hand over the prize.
If you really want to get into the very top of competitions, then the premium KingSumo Giveaways plugin will cost you a lot, but is feature rich.
Final thoughts
If all goes to plan though, your contest could lead to increased web traffic as well as increased exposure via social media and new members for your program.
Are you having any concerns about running a competition for your site's membership? Let us know in the comment section below.