Run Competitions to Market Your Membership Site
If you're looking for a way to promote your membership website and grow your reach, running contests could be the answer. Of course, there are many options to expand the number of people who visit your site, but contests and giveaways can work really well.
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 go over the benefits organizing a contest in order to grow your website in addition to giving tips on how to get to the point of starting.
The benefits of using competitions and Contests
Before we go over the instruments that will help you run a competition through your membership site, here are some of the benefits of creating the contest.
Reach a Wider Audience
If the entry into your contest is contingent on the participants sharing your website on social media or elsewhere and reach out to a wider audience could be the main reason to run a contest.
Some contest management solutions offer the option to accept contest entries on social media. This includes tweets and shares of your posts giving participants the possibility to win.
Each share on social media could be putting your website as well as your membership service in front of potential new visitors or members, therefore, it's a good idea to have some sort of social media component for your contests.
Boost Social Media Following
Gaining more followers on social media could be an end objective in it's own. If you use social media activity to let participants participate in the contest, then letting people follow your account for the contest will naturally grow your following.
More Website Traffic
An effective contest will be sure increase traffic on your website. For one, you can include a contest entry form to include some sort of promotional element by the participants. Secondly, a great contest offering a thrilling prize can become a newsworthy activity in its own. Creating a generous contest giveaway gives you a good opportunity to connect with influential bloggers, influencers and other major people in your industry by offering them something to talk about that their fans might be interested in.
The new publicity could boost website traffic, giving the possibility of converting those new visitors to members or subscribers.
Expand Your Email List
After they have opted into your list to enter the competition, you are able to begin to put the email program into action and begin sending out great content to the new members. Once your new leads are warmed up, you can send them a link to your membership program. them.
Engage in Discussion
A different method of running contests is to pick a winner from everyone who's left a message on your blog. Because comments can lead to discussion about your website and its membership products and membership products, it is worthwhile making the effort get your customers to post their thoughts.
Promote Your Member Your Membership
Last but not least, organizing a competition will help you promote the benefits of your membership. Through creating a contest that is newsworthy which other members in your field would like 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 your membership program.
Key Points to Consider Before Running a Competition
Before you begin to launch your first competition, there are certain aspects to think about. First it's best to take some time thinking about what prize you'll award.
Will you offer one major prize, or provide runners-up prize options as well? Free or reduced access to your membership plan is an obvious choice. But, if you're looking to make your contest known to existing members then you'll have be thinking outside the confines of.
Just make sure the prize you choose to award is appropriate for the audience you're targeting, but also being something they'll want to post with their friends on social media as well as make their own name known. Also, make sure your budget for the prize corresponds to your goals of the competition and its results.
Hopefully, the contest you enter will bring more visitors to your website. If this happens, then you'll need to be sure that you've put in place systems to not only handle that extra traffic but also get the most value from it.
Don't forget to install website analytics in order to monitor the outcomes of the competition. An absolutely free tool like Google Analytics will allow you to see if your site has experienced an increase in visitors and where they came from and what the visitors have been up to on your site.
How to run a Contest on Your Website
If you're employing WordPress for your membership website, then it's even simpler than you'd expect to conduct a competition. With some great free and paid plugins available designed for just this purpose All you need to choose is the appropriate tool for the goals you want to achieve. Below is a short overview of some popular WordPress Contest and competition plugins.
Contests and Giveaways from Fatcat Apps
The free Contests & Giveaways plugin lets you set up and run a contest which requires that your participants provide their email address to be entered. When the deadline for contests has arrived and the plugin has completed its task, it will pick a winner at random. Due to IP monitoring and the usage of cookies, this contest plugin will help to prevent fraudulent contests.
If you want a quick and easy way to try out contests on your WordPress site the plugin you choose is an excellent choice.
Comment Contest
The no-cost Comment Contest plugin can help you generate discussion on your blog post. Once enabled, this plugin allows you to decide which posts are to be part of in the contest, before picking the winner. As leaving a comment is enough for entry into the contest, it's likely to get a lot of participation by your readers.
No Frills Prize Draw Competitions
This freemium plugin allows you to start running competitions on your WordPress website for free, with the option of upgrading to the paid version to unlock more features.
By setting the options, you have the option of deciding what participants must complete to be eligible for the competition, including entering some text, answering the multiple choice questions, or just clicking enter. The winner is automatically picked by the plugin, leaving the winner to reach out to the participant and hand over the prize.
If you're looking to dive in at the bottom of the pool with contests The KingSumo premium Giveaways plugin can be expensive however it is packed with features.
Final thoughts
If all goes to plan however, the contest may bring increased traffic to your website as well as increased exposure through social media, as well as new members for your program.
Have you got any queries concerning running a contest on your website for membership? Tell us about it in the comment section below.