The End is Just the Beginning

Just because your promotion has ended doesn’t mean you can drop the ball; there is still plenty of work to be done.  It is important to follow through with your promotion and continue to connect with your fans.  Your promotion has most likely established new or stronger relationships with your fans and it is important to act on these relationships.

One way to celebrate your fans is to send out an email to all of the participants and offer them a reward for engaging with your brand. This could be in the form of a coupon or a discount code, a preview of an upcoming product, etc.  It is also important to celebrate the winner of your promotion by announcing their win on your social media channels and displaying their entry in a gallery, a blog post, or your personal website.

Your next step should be to follow up and study the results of your promotion.  Measure your success by measuring the Return on Investment (ROI).  This way you will understand the impact of your social media marketing efforts.  Identify any trends to understand how your audience interacts with your business. Find out what resonates well with your audience and what information was disappointing and unexpected.  The research process is equally as important in this stage as it is in the planning stage.  All of these results can help you to optimize your social marketing campaigns in the future.

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March Madness Promotion

March Madness is here and now is the time to run a march madness promotion that will capitalize on its popularity and on the excitement the tournament brings. When the NCAA tournament begins, brands will be ready to take advantage of the hype in a similar way that they did during Super Bowl season.

The greatest advantage marketers have during the March Madness season is the engagement of the fans.  Most fans include college students and alumni who heavily support their teams.  Millions of Americans enthusiastically fill out tournament brackets and stay up to date on every game.  The big difference between March Madness and the Super Bowl is that the NCAA basketball tournament begins with 64 teams in the run to become champion, verses the two football teams competing for champion in the Super Bowl.  Because the men’s basketball tournament runs for so long, there is a greater period of time for brands to engage fans in fun promotions.

One idea is to engage fans with a photo contest that prompts them to dress up or to decorate their space in honor of their favorite team. It is a good idea to give away prizes that tie in basketball with your company or brand.  Encourage fans to visit your company website to take part in a bracket contest. Give away prizes to those who pick the most games correctly.  Take advantage of the excitement that is generated around March Madness and join the conversation that your fans have already started.

For more information on how to run a contest or sweepstakes contact us today

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Maintaining Momentum for your Campaign

Interacting with consumers and fans in ongoing dialogue is what social media marketing revolves around.  When launching a campaign this dialogue remains a priority from beginning to end and is essentially what will keep the campaign going.  One of the big challenges when running a campaign on social media is that it is easy to start the conversation and just as easy to stop it.  Running a successful campaign relies on maintaining momentum; but how do you do this successfully?

Here are 5 tips to help your campaign maintain momentum:

  1. Design for participation- Make sure that your promotion is designed to fully engage your fans and to encourage them to actively participate with your brand. Photo and video contests are a great way to ensure creative engagement.
  2. Get Personal- Create personal conversations with fans that enter your contest by tweeting to them, posting to their Facebook page, or by writing about their entry in your blog.  This social media communication shows your fans you notice and appreciate their entry and engagement.
  3. Constantly update your fans- Post updates about the promotion on your social media channels and personal website.  In order for fans to stay engaged they need to have all the facts. This can include sharing key milestones such as finalists being selected, just reached 100 or 10,000 entries, or even fun facts about the brand.  Post quality content about your campaign and your brand on a consistent basis.
  4. Announce daily giveaways and winners- by posting the winners on your social media channels you are encouraging your fans to continue to visit your social media pages and check in with the brand.
  5. Schedule posts- set up posts ahead of time and schedule when you would like them to go live.  This is a great way to ensure that all of the information gets posted and that the posts are spread out.

It is important to keep your fans interested in your promotion and in extension, your brand.  By incorporating these ideas into your marketing strategy you will create a continuous conversation that is rewarding for both you and your fans.

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Building Excitement Before You Launch Your Promotion

There are many steps to take when creating a promotion.  One important step to highlight is engineering the success of your campaign from the very beginning by getting the word out and building excitement before the promotion launches.  A promotion does not go viral on its own, the strategy goes further than just creating the promotion and letting your fans do all of the work.

In order to generate maximum awareness of your promotion it is a great idea to plan a media strategyPlanning posts across social media channels is a great place to start.  These posts should be easily shareable so fans can spread the message on their own social media. They should be an exciting announcement of your upcoming promotion offering all of the essential information and should include an incentive for your fans to become involved.   One great idea is to offer extra opportunities to enter the promotion and win prizes that coincide with their sharing activity.  For example, offer an extra entry into the contest if your fans share the promotional message with five friends.  This is a great way to get your fans to spread the message before the promotion begins and to get them engaged and excited.  If your message reaches enough people at the beginning it will eventually begin to spread itself.  The most important thing to remember is to make your announcement post exciting and worth sharing.  Using imagery can be useful in this step.

Another great way to spread the message is to send out an email to all of your fans and customers who have an email subscription.  This email should be similar to your social media posts in that they include the important information on the contest and where to find it when it launches.  This email can also include links to your website announcement and here they can share the message on social media.

A press release is another great way to reach a large audience and get the message out about your upcoming promotion.  It is also a great way to display all of the information about the promotion and talk about how the promotion relates to your brand and products.  Search advertising, display ads, and Facebook ads are all great ways to spread the message about your promotion as well.

After posting about the upcoming promotion on your social media channels and spreading the message via email and a press release, you can go a step further and find bloggers or other brands who will write about your promotion and your story on their own blogs and websites.  If you have made your story and your promotion exciting and shareable than the promotion will be easy to find when the time comes for the official launch.  It is up to you to make the initial efforts to create awareness.  You can reach new fans and followers by utilizing ads and reaching out to influential people in your community who can help spread the word. Remember, any touch point you have with a fan or potential fan is an opportunity to promote your contest or sweepstakes.

 

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