Robin Leedy & Associates is a Votigo customer who launched client Conair’s “Make Waves, Get Raves” summer-themed Facebook Sweepstakes to promote the brand’s featured appliances to achieve beach wave looks every day. The giveaway ran for 10 days total, with one winner chosen per day. Each winner received a beach chic prize pack with Conair hair styling appliances and brushes, scünci hair accessories, a plush beach towel, nail polish, water-proof mascara, and SPF makeup – all packaged in a cute beach tote.

Here at Votigo, we love to not only share successful campaigns, but also goals, metrics and best practices of our customers so that you may recognize the benefits of running social media promotions.

V: Did you have goals going into the campaign?

RLAPR: Our goal was to increase theConair Facebook fan base among targeted hair enthusiasts while promoting several featured Conair hair appliances for summer styles. The products and timing were very relevant to the season and the current/expanding Conair social community.  We were also able to cross-promote this giveaway on the scünci Facebook page , which is also a Conair Corporation brand, allowing for more targeted exposure of the giveaway and messaging.

V: How do you measure success- including the Facebook metrics and whatever else you look at?

RLAPR: We measure the success of the campaign through several items. We take into account the number of entries, how many new Facebook fans we received, how many shares we received for the Facebook giveaway posts, how many people were talking about the page, and how many blog posts we received mentioning the giveaway. We never do a giveaway for the sake of a giveaway…it all MUST relate to the brand’s messaging and social goals, so each giveaway works harder than just a few posts on the Facebook wall.

V: How has the response been?

RLAPR: Our response rate is very high and exceeded our goals for such a quick promotion.  We do not like giveaways on Facebook to run for long periods of time.  We don’t want to take consumers out of the purchase cycle forever because they think they might win the product instead.

V: How did you start integrating social media and how successful have you been to date?

RLAPR: Robin Leedy & Associates has been integrating social media since 2007. We’ve been very successful with working with thousands of bloggers, creating and managing clients’ Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube channels, creating and distributing videos, and launching numerous contests/sweepstakes, etc.  Like a giveaway, social media is not put in a silo. It is a mix within the brand’s marketing efforts because it then makes all the dollars go further.

V: What is your most successful social marketing project / campaign / effort to date?

RLAPR: Honestly, that would be like picking our favorite kid.  We have had many successful social marketing projects and their budgets were very varied.  One of our more successful and low cost ones was for Sea-Band anti-nausea bands  where the brand was ONLY doing social for our project period we could see its positive impact on sales, web traffic, etc.  Many times, our clients are doing a mix of marketing efforts, so it is hard to exactly measure the role of social media alone. We did bring the Softlips Facebook page to the one million fan mark earlier this year, and that was very special for us as a small agency…and we did it on a very efficient spend, as well.

V: Favorite tools & keys to success?

RLAPR: As far as social giveaways, our key to success is to make sure that all of the giveaways we run for our clients are done through Facebook sanctioned apps like Votigo. There are a lot of “illegal” giveaways that are done on Facebook, such as LIKES to a post or random comments chosen as winners. That doesn’t screen for age (COPPA rules), and creates privacy/legal issues.  If you are going to use sweeps and contests to market your Facebook page, do them in the way that protects your client vs. exposes them to legal issues or those that contradict Facebook policy.  Our overall key to success is to stay abreast of trends not only in the social/digital landscape, but the consumer mindset.  If you never heard of the term ZMOT, Google it.

V: How did you first find out about Votigo and what specific promotions have you run to date?

RLAPR: We found out about Votigo when we were searching for a more graphically-pleasing user interface for FB sweeps than our previous provider.  In the past several months, we’ve run more than 20 sweepstakes and contests for a variety of clients with Votigo and have been really happy with the set-up, costs, functionality and design.