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We’re at podcast #49 this week and what a ride so far! In this episode we’re going to talk about Facebook promotions and competitions, how do you run them? What tools can help you run them successfully? As we get into the holiday season more people are looking to run promotions so this is timely!
What have Andrew and Heather learned this week?
Andrew has discovered a tool called Comment Cast – this let’s you find out who’s written reviews for your app. This is important because if you are in the iTunes store specific to your country, you can only see reviews written by others in your country. We discovered that people all over the world had written comments and reviews for our podcast that we didn’t know about!
Heather also has an interesting tool – she discovered Email List Cleaning. This tool cleans up your email lists to make sure that the addresses are valid. This is important because email providers such as Mailchimp are strict about bounce-backs – they can decide not to work with you if your list has a lot of bounce backs. It is especially recommended that you use this if you are importing a list to your email provider from somewhere else and it’s a great way to ensure that you have a quality list.
Facebook Promotions & Competitions
Heather just finished working with a client on a Facebook promotion which sat as an app under the cover photo on their Facebook page. This was a giveaway of a large cash prize but the best thing for the client was that after 1 month they had 100 qualified leads – qualified as opposed to people who wouldn’t otherwise work with them. They didn’t have to spend a lot of money to run the promotion yet it was effective in gaining them those leads, this is one of the great things about using Facebook.
Tools:
Easypromos – various versions at different prices. We like them because you can very quickly have your promotion set up and installed (in the tabs under your main photo). It’s easy to use and you can segment it so that only those who are the target market will see your promotion. They give you a mobile-friendly URL to promote it also. Another thing we love about Easypromos is that they give advice on strategy for your promotions too. They also have a lot of tutorials available.
What we’ve learnt
Less is more! If you have a process that is too involved to qualify people then you will not get such great results. We had a two-step process so that if people didn’t complete the second step they were able to be followed up.
Ideas:
Quizzes – you can ask people whether they prefer x or y then give them a product suggestion at the end that matches their preferences.
Pictures – used for many different promos; you could have people help you choose your new book cover by voting (pictures can be used in the quizzes).
Sharing – these competitions through Easypromos are easily shareable so you could offer a prize where not only does the person who you first draw out win, but whoever referred them by sharing wins something too.
Prizes:
Pretty much anything! Cash always does well, but if you haven’t got a big budget what can you do? We suggest giving people a prize that would be valuable to them if they had to pay for it but doesn’t cost you a lot to offer. For example, if you are a consultant who normally offers your services at $500 per hour, you could give away two sessions with you which has a value of $1000 but only costs you your time.
If you don’t want to use your time, we came across an app which is effectively crowd-sourcing for a prize – Incentivibe. Basically you pay $25 per month and along with other businesses are able to offer a $500 cash prize. This means that you are sharing the prize with other websites, but you get to keep the lead details that come through your website. Another cool thing about it is that Incentivibe emails the winner and will do the email ‘from you’ if it is one of your leads that wins.
Want to see this in action?
Check out our Facebook page – we are running two simultaneously as we wanted to check out how they would work. The one that says ’12 Days of Christmas’ is through Easypromos and the $500 visa prize that pops up is through Incentivibe.
The good thing about Facebook promotions is that basically any business can use them and run a promo that is suited to them. We suggest that you have a look around and see what others are doing for some ideas.
Have you tried Facebook promotions or used some great tools? Let us know in the comments!