Wether they are run from your website or through Facebook online contests are a great way to get participation, engagement, and return visits from your online prospects. What do we mean by “prospects”? Simply people who have visited your site, are on your list, or otherwise on your business radar as potential customers.
Encouraging people to visit your Facebook page and getting them to “like” your page is one of the easiest ways to build prospects. It’s probably true that a Facebook “like” is a much “softer” relationship than, say, getting a prospect to sign up to your email list. Nevertheless, with “likers” or “fans” you have the opportunity to put your message(s) in front of them on a regular basis with very little effort.
Getting likes and return traffic involves two slightly different objectives:
1. Making your page interesting enough to get them to click the “like” button, and
2. Regularly supplying content on your page that is interesting enough to get people to come back.
Contests are a good way to address both of these objectives. An interesting contest (with or without a prize) is often enough to get a person to “like” your page. Stretching it out over a period of time, or making it ongoing, or having a series of “winners” stretched out over the life of the contest will tend to get people coming back.
To encourage likes you could give a low cost prize every week to someone from the pool of likers. Say for example, a $25 gift card, or a T-shirt with your logo or message. This may sound like a lot, but just think about it for a minute. Giving a $25 gift card once a week is just $100 a month. A T-shirt a week is even less costly.
There’s really no limit to the types of contests you could run. And your Facebook page is a really great place to do it.
For an example see our WinGiftCards contest.
