Giveaway ideas for website exposure?

Kent Brockman

Hi all,
I have put together a big Hamper with lots of our products (totaling just over €200) and am Looking for ideas or suggestions on how to maximize exposure using this hamper as a prize in a competition or giveaway?
I would like to use it to drive traffic to my website and possibly collect contact details of potential customers, but also want to keep costs to a minimum.

National radio will cost thousands so that is out. Facebook is free (have over 5,800 fans) but competitions are not allowed without using an App and people don't tend to enter if there is any effort involved.

Anyone had any success with something like this before or just have some suggestions that might help. Thanks.

El Guapo!

Have you thought about advertising it on Boards?

Kent Brockman

Dean09 wrote: »

Have you thought about advertising it on Boards?

Good Idea but I'm certain that it would be against the rules

El Guapo!

Kent Brockman wrote: »

Good Idea but I'm certain that it would be against the rules

Just posting the ad all over Boards would be against the site rules and would get you a ban.
But you could always pay for the advertising. I'm sure it'd be cheaper than radio anyway. Plus it'd get fairly big exposure on Boards. I've no idea of the pricing but if you dropped them a line I'm sure they'd be able to work something out with you. Might be worth a call.

capefear

To have a banner ad on boards.ie cost 500+vat for 125000 clicks.
I'm not sure but I thing the ad appears on the other sites boards own as well daft.ie etc.
Hth

Dean09 wrote: »

Just posting the ad all over Boards would be against the site rules and would get you a ban.
But you could always pay for the advertising. I'm sure it'd be cheaper than radio anyway. Plus it'd get fairly big exposure on Boards. I've no idea of the pricing but if you dropped them a line I'm sure they'd be able to work something out with you. Might be worth a call.

Overthrow

capefear wrote: »

To have a banner ad on boards.ie cost 500+vat for 125000 clicks.
I'm not sure but I thing the ad appears on the other sites boards own as well daft.ie etc.
Hth

Are you sure it's 500+ vat for 125,000 clicks? Surely you meant impressions?

capefear

My mistake, sorry you are correct impressions is the word I should have used.

TsuDhoNimh

Kent Brockman wrote: »

... but competitions are not allowed without using an App and people don't tend to enter if there is any effort involved.

I'd suggest having a read up on the specific requirements of Facebook competitions. It isn't a case of "there needs to be significant effort", it's simply a matter of having to adhere to some basic rules (the rules are basically there to stop people attempting to game the edgerank algorithm and to stay within the rules/requirements of the state gaming commission in relation to 'gambling').

With a small bit of research and a tiny amount of effort you'll be able to advertise an offer like this via Facebook no problem and completely within the rules.

arbitrage

Have you gone down the road of giving someone a e5 voucher if they refer someone to your site who spends a minimum amount?

For the hamper competition the facebook app is the job.

With boards the ads dissappear or are a lot less obvious and I would imagine most users browse the site while logged in. The main advertisement on boards that I have noticed (only on the mobile) was an ad to get right with God so it may be better to use that money to target your market on FB.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

capefear wrote: »

My mistake, sorry you are correct impressions is the word I should have used.

Off topic but isn't €4 cpm for forum traffic very expensive? I'd stay away from boards.ie advertising altogether. I ran a campaign about 2 years ago and the CTR was bad, what you'd expect from a forum.

Kent Brockman

Thanks for the useful info. Definitely trying to keep expenses to a minimum. The prize will hopefully be my cost for exposure.

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

I'd suggest having a read up on the specific requirements of Facebook competitions. It isn't a case of "there needs to be significant effort", it's simply a matter of having to adhere to some basic rules (the rules are basically there to stop people attempting to game the edgerank algorithm and to stay within the rules/requirements of the state gaming commission in relation to 'gambling').

With a small bit of research and a tiny amount of effort you'll be able to advertise an offer like this via Facebook no problem and completely within the rules.

I'd suggest having a re-read of the post to which you are replying
I have a fair Idea of how to use facebook and its rules, the page is very active and we make lots of sales thru facebook.
My point (from experience and research) was that people are not as inclined to enter a competition if they have to make an effort to enter.(i.e. more than 1 or 2 clicks).

I have done plenty of research and have ideas of my own, but I find it very useful to get lots of opinions and suggestions from a diverse group of people before making a decision. There may be an angle or combination of ideas that I haven't though of.

If you have a suggestion I'd be delighted to hear them (and if I have taken you up wrong, appologies)

flynnlives

have you looked at facebook offers, only came on stream in the last 3 weeks.
Maybe a "claim your buy one get one free voucher plus entry to the competition" kinda thing.
Or else a twitter campaign to increase your followers

btw what is your site so i can enter!

Kent Brockman

flynnlives wrote: »

btw what is your site so i can enter!

www.prints4gifts.com
www.facebook.com/prints4gifts

Might start a blog and run it from there either, or maybe do it in local shopping centre closer to Christmas........still undecided.

TsuDhoNimh

Kent Brockman wrote: »

My point (from experience and research) was that people are not as inclined to enter a competition if they have to make an effort to enter.(i.e. more than 1 or 2 clicks).

I won't disagree with the comment, the more work required the lower the conversion rate will be (this goes for every digital medium, but is especially prevalent on and relevant to Facebook), but I guess I do (and continue to) miss the point behind it and/or why this would mean Facebook isn't a viable means of promotion.

You're not actually looking to gain as many entries to the competition as possible, the competition is simply a means to an end. The end goal is that you attract potential customers, attract the right type of potential customers and through running the competition gain valuable permission to market to many of those people (be that via newsletter signups, mailing list permission, social interaction and/or any other platform/media interaction that you consider to be part of your marketing strategy).

When speaking about Facebook in particular, the value of the platform comes from interactions not from simple quantity of numbers. When you look at the nuances of edgerank, at the network reach value of each interaction (harnessing the viral benefits of social marketing) and the targeted nature of those network demographics, it becomes quite obvious that what you really want from a Facebook promotion is to engage with those users who will engage (the ones that don't fall into the demographics that would be put off by an additional click or two) and not simply pick up on the numbers regardless of the persona or demographic behind it.

Kent Brockman wrote: »

I would like to use it to drive traffic to my website and possibly collect contact details of potential customers, but also want to keep costs to a minimum.

Social media interactions won't always lead to a direct surge in web traffic, but over time and assuming you're running your social activity correctly it will lead to a steady growth of traffic in the medium and long term. Not only does it assist in the traffic volume, but through the added social interaction and trust built via that it leads to far higher customer loyalty, customer advoacy and lifetime customer value (e.g. avg. customer value/purchase, avg number of purchases, etc.).

Assuming you're looking at collecting contact information, which again won't lead to instant traffic but the same as social interaction will lead to permission marketing which will provide results, that already requires a potential signup to go a step further than a simple 'like' (or the "1 or 2 clicks"), so in order to reach your actual goal you'd have to be making the same compromise that you'd need to make in order to adhere to the Facebook promotion rules.

So again, looking specifically at the goal(s) you identified, I fail to see how a Facebook promotion doesn't meet your needs exactly.

You've correctly identified that a promotion of your nature (you want to keep it simple and run a sweepstake/promotion [winner chosen by luck] and not a competition/contest [judging based on specific criteria/on the basis of skill) would require a 3rd party app. However, that doesn't mean that a potential entrant will need to go to significant effort to enter.

It can be as simple as clicking the like button (assuming you do want to gain permission for future social marketing via Facebook, otherwise you can drop that requirement), filling out the email details (assuming you do want to gain permission for future email marketing - be sure your terms and conditions allow for this) and submitting the entry. Other than a small bit of work on your end to set the promotion up (either in terms of time and/or cost, if you opt for a paid app to facilitate it) it doesn't require any major investment by the potential entrant (other than agreeing to your requests for permission based marketing in the future).