Running a contest is a good way to gain some exposure for your website. But you have to be careful if you hope to gain customers from this. A lot of people will just come to your site for the contest and not pay attention to your business. So its always good to structure your contest in a way that your business will be guaranteed to benefit. Here are some tips: 1)Collect as much information about the entrant as possible. You dont want to be invasive because that will turn people off, but at the same time you want to have a way to follow up after the contest ends. If you plan to follow up via email, be sure to ask if they want to be added to your newsletter. Dont automatically add anyone to your online mailing list unless they specifically ask. 2)Consider having a contest where entrants must find a key word or graphic on your site. Or you could have entrants answer a question about your site. This ensures that they at least look at what you have to offer. 3)You could also have a contest that requires a subscription to your online newsletter. This is a great way to increase your readership. The user would sign up for your Ezine and youd announce the winner from your subscriber base in an upcoming newsletter. Make sure the prize correlates to the subject of your newsletter. That way you wont have people subscribing who really dont care about what you have to say. 4)If you have a forum or message board you could try having a post-the-most contest. These are more difficult to get people to participate in unless you already have a large amount of people posting on a regular basis. Before you get started be sure to research the legalities. Just because you are running it online it does not excuse you from the law. Not all types of contests are legal everywhere and some types do require certain paperwork. |
