Run Competitions to Market Your Membership Site
If you're seeking a way to promote your membership website and grow your reach, running a competition could be the solution. There are many ways to grow your audience, but contests and giveaways are a great option.
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 article we'll discuss the advantages having a contest to increase traffic to your site and give the necessary tips to get to the point of starting.
Benefits of Using Competitions and contests
Before we go over the software that could help you run a competition on your website for membership Let us look at some advantages of making a contest.
Reach a Wider Audience
If your competition will require the contestant to share your website on social media or elsewhere to reach a larger number of people could be the most important advantage of running a competition.
Some contest management solutions offer the option to accept entries from contest participants via social media, with the sharing of tweets or shares of your content giving your guests the chance to win.
Each share on social media could be putting your website and membership product in front prospective new customers or members. Therefore it's beneficial to incorporate a social media aspect for your contests.
Boost Social Media Following
Getting more social media followers can be a goal in and of it's own. If you use the social media platform to let your visitors enter the contest, then letting people follow your account in order to participate can naturally increase the number of followers you have.
To increase website traffic
The right contest can be certain to increase website traffic. For one, you can make entry to your content involve some type of promotion for the participants. Secondly, a great contest offering a thrilling prize can become a newsworthy activity in its own. The idea of a contest that is generous gives you a good opportunity to reach out to important influencers, blogs, as well as other important participants in your field by offering them something to promote that their readers may be interested in.
The new publicity could boost website traffic, giving the possibility of converting the new users to members or subscribers.
Grow Your Mailing List
Once those visitors have joined your email list in order to participate in the contest, you can begin to put your email marketing campaign into action and begin providing great content to your newly subscribed subscribers. When your new leads have warmed up, you can offer your membership service to your new leads.
Invite Discussion
Another popular way to run a contest is to choose one winner out of everyone who left a comment on your blog. Because comments can lead to discussions about your site and its membership products and membership products, it is worthwhile putting in the effort to entice your readers to share their opinions.
Promote Your Member Your Membership
Last but not least, having a contest can assist in the promotion of the benefits of your membership. If you create a competition that's newsworthy that other people in your industry would like to tell their followers about as well as having an participation process that incorporates promotions on social media and promotion, you will be able to help spread awareness about the benefits of your membership plan.
Important Points to Take into Account Before Conducting a competition
Before you get started and start your first contest, there are some aspects to think about. To begin it's best to sit down for a while considering the prizes you're going to offer.
Are you planning to give one major prize, or provide runners up prizes as well? Access to your contest for free or at a reduced cost the membership program is the best option. However, if you want to make your contest known for existing members then you'll have be thinking outside the box.
Be sure to ensure that the prize you choose to award is appropriate for the people you want to reach, and it also being something that they'll be happy to promote on social media and put their name behind. Make sure that your budget for the prize will be in line with your expectations realistically of the competition and its results.
It is hoped that your competition will bring more visitors to your website. If so, you'll need to be sure that you've created methods to manage this extra traffic, but maximize the benefits.
Last but not least, you should create a website analytics account to monitor the outcomes of the contest. Google Analytics is a free program. Google Analytics will allow you to determine if your website has seen increased traffic and where they came from, and the activities they've been doing on your website.
How to run a Contest on Your Website
If you're making use of WordPress for your membership website, then it's even simpler than you'd expect to conduct a competition. There are a number of free and paid plugins that have been built for just this purpose All you need to choose is the right tool for the goals you want to achieve. Here's a quick summary of the most popular WordPress Contest and competition plugins.
Contests & Giveaways by Fatcat Apps
The free Contests and Giveaways plugin lets you set up and run a contest that requires your visitors to provide their email address to be entered. When the deadline for contests is reached and the plugin has completed its task, it will pick a winner at random. Thanks to IP monitoring and the usage of cookies, this plugin can fight against contest fraud.
If you want a quick and straightforward way to try the waters of contests on your WordPress site, this plugin is an excellent choice.
Comment Contest
The cost-free Comment Contest plugin is a great tool to help you generate discussion on the blog's posts. After it is enabled, this plugin lets you decide which posts are to be part of in the contest, before picking the winner. As leaving a comment is the only requirement to participate in the contest, it's likely to be a good uptake from the people who visit your site.
No Frills Prize Draw Competitions
The freemium plug-in allows you to start organizing competitions on your WordPress website at no cost but you have the option of upgrading to a paid version, and unlocking additional options.
In the settings you are able to choose the requirements your contestants must do to enter the competition, including entering some text, answering the multiple choice questions and clicking enter. The winner is automatically picked by the plugin. This leaves the winner to reach out to the contestant and give them the prize.
If you're looking to go into the bottom of the pool with contests The KingSumo premium Giveaways plugin will cost you a lot, but is feature rich.
Final thoughts
If everything goes as planned however, the contest may result in increased website visitors and more publicity via social media and the addition of new participants to your organization.
Have you got any queries about running a competition for your website for membership? Please let us know via the comments below.