If you sell any of your services or products online, you should consider sweepstakes as a method of marketing your business. Sweepstakes are one of the best methods of generating more leads, promoting your brand and ultimately making more sales.
A sweepstake is an online contest that’s open to anyone who comes across it online. You don’t have to pay to enter a sweepstake – just submit your basic details, usually your name and email address. The big selling point of sweepstakes is their prizes, which are usually high in monetary value.
Why Sweepstakes?
From a hosting perspective, sweepstakes are affordable to run, and have the potential to offer even greater benefits than other forms of digital marketing. One single sweepstake can give you access to tonnes of valuable customer data, which, with consent, you can use to boost your email subscribers and social media followers.
When done properly, a sweepstake can give you far greater brand awareness, which can help you to increase your customers and get more sales. You’ll need to make sure you plan your sweepstake thoroughly before you get started if you want to get the most out of the exposure.
Getting Started with Sweepstakes
Before you even begin planning to host a sweepstake, make sure you’re aware of the sweepstake laws across the US. Different states have different rules on how you’ll need to run a sweepstake. Read up on the sweepstakes laws in NY to give you a better idea of what you need to know before you get going.
Marketing your Sweepstake
Once you’ve set your sweepstake up, you’ll need to market it right to let it reach the widest audience possible. Posting your sweepstake to a contest directory is a good place to start. Sites like Online Sweepstakes will deliver quite a bit of traffic to your sweepstake, and can provide backup if you’re worried you won’t get the exposure you want through your online and social channels alone.
You can also link your sweepstakes to your website – because why not open the contest up to your current customers? Add a HTML to your homepage or write a blog post explaining your sweepstake in more detail.
Even if you don’t have the biggest online following, posting your sweepstake to your social media channels is usually the best way to spread the word. Bonus points to you if you manage to get users to share your sweepstake, which will send the contest to all corners of the internet without you having to lift a finger.
Sweepstakes Done Right Vs Wrong
Unfortunately, hosting a sweepstake isn’t just a case of creating the contest and sitting back to watch the new leads come flooding in. While a sweepstake done right can double, triple or even quadruple your customer base, a sweepstake done wrong probably won’t generate a single bit of new business.
Make sure you read up on sweepstakes before you try them out yourself. It’s worth having the extra knowledge to utilise in your sweepstake hosting if you want to see the most success.
