Running Competitions to Promote Your Membership Site
If you're searching for ways to advertise your membership site's website as well as increase your audience, then running an event could be your solution. Naturally, there are many ways to grow your followers, 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 piece, we'll cover the benefits of running a competition to increase traffic to your site and give tips on how to get to the point of starting.
Benefits of Using Competitions and Contests
Before we get to the instruments that will assist you in running a contest through your membership site Here are some of the benefits of making the contest.
Affect a broader audience
If entry to your competition requires the participant to share your website on social media or other platforms, then reaching a wider number of people could be the most important reason to run a contest.
Some contest management solutions allow you to take entries for contests via social media, with tweets and shares of your content, giving guests the chance to win.
Every social media share can put your site and membership product in front prospective new customers or members, therefore it's beneficial to have some sort of social media element for your contests.
Boost Social Media Following
Gaining more followers on social media is a worthwhile objective in it's own. If you use social media activity to let people know about the contest, then letting followers follow your page in order to participate is a sure way to increase your followers.
To increase website traffic
A good contest is sure increase traffic on your website. You can, for instance, invite people to participate in your contest and be a form of advertising by the participants. A second option is a contest that has a prize could become an exciting occasion in and of itself. Creating a generous contest giveaway gives you a good opportunity to contact relevant blogs, influencers, and other key participants in your field and give them something interesting to promote that their readers may be curious about.
This new exposure could increase web traffic and give the possibility of converting these new customers to members or subscribers.
Grow Your List of Emails
When those new visitors are on your list to enter the competition, you are able to begin to put the email program to work and start sharing great content with your new subscribers. When your new leads have warmed up, you can share your membership product with them.
Invite Discussion
A different method of running an event is to select one winner out of everyone who left a comment in your site's blog. As comments can generate discussions about your site and its products for membership It is worth taking the time to entice your readers to share their thoughts.
Promote Your Member Product
The last but not least is organizing a competition will help you promote your membership program. Through creating a contest that is newsworthy that other people in your industry will want to pass on to their audiences, or having a competition with an entry process that includes promotions on social media in order to help spread awareness about the benefits of your membership plan.
The most important things to consider prior to Running a Competition
Before you begin to launch your first competition, there are a few points to consider. To begin it's best to spend some time carefully thinking about what prize you will give away.
Will you offer one major prize, or provide runners-up prizes too? A reduced or free access to your membership program is an obvious choice. If you'd like to promote your contest to your existing members, then you'll have to think outside of the box.
Just make sure your prize appeals to your target audience, while also being something they'll be happy to share with their friends on social media as well as have their name on. Make sure that your budget for prize money corresponds to your realistic expectations for the contest and its results.
It is hoped that your competition will bring more visitors to your site. If so, you'll need to be sure that you've set up procedures to handle that extra traffic but also make the most of it.
Last but not least, you should install website analytics in order to track the results of the contest. A free service like Google Analytics will allow you to check if your site is seeing an increase in traffic as well as where the visitors come from, and the activities you've seen them doing to your site.
How to Run a Competition for Your Website
If you're employing WordPress to host your membership site and you're using WordPress for your membership website, it's more simple than normal to host the competition. There are a number of free and paid plugins available designed for just this purpose the only thing you need to do is choose the best tool to meet your goals. Here's a quick overview of some popular WordPress Contest and competition plugins.
Contests & Giveaways by Fatcat Apps
The no-cost Contests and Giveaways plugin lets you set up and host a giveaway that requires your visitors to provide their email address to be entered. Once the competition end date has arrived and the plugin has completed its task, it will pick a winner at random. Thanks to IP monitoring and the usage of cookies, the contest plugin is able to thwart fraudulent contests.
If you're looking for an easy and simple way to test the waters of contests on your WordPress website This plugin is an excellent choice.
Comment Contest
The no-cost Comment Contest plugin can aid in the creation of discussion about your blog posts. When enabled, the plugin allows you to choose which comments are included in the contest, before picking the winner. As leaving a comment is enough for entry into the contest, there will be a good uptake from the people who visit your site.
The No Frills Prize Draw Competitions
This free plugin lets you begin running competitions on your WordPress website for free, but you have the option of upgrading to the paid version and unlocking additional options.
Through the settings, you can choose what your contestants must do to enter the contest, such as entering some text, answering the multiple choice questions and hitting the enter button. The winner is selected by the plugin. It is up to the winner to reach out to the participant and hand over the prize.
If you really want to get into the bottom of the pool with contests, then the premium KingSumo Giveaways plugin isn't cheap however it is packed with features.
Final Thoughts
If everything goes as planned though, your contest could lead to increased web traffic and more publicity via social media and more participants to your contest.
Are you having any concerns about running a competition for your website for membership? Let us know in the comment section below.