A WordPress contest plugin can help any home business owner to get more traffic and increases the responsiveness of leads and prospective customers.
You’ve heard this before but it’s worth repeating again…
Let’s say that you are an affiliate marketer who sells courses about social media marketing.
You might be doing what most of your contemporaries are doing:
- You have a blog talking about benefits of social media marketing.
- You offer them a free ebook or cheat sheet to give them more tips in exchange for their email address and then
- You send more information while you cultivate a relationship with your leads or prospective customers.
Nothing new here.
Here’s the problem…
Most home business owners send 7-10 emails and they are lucky if they get their emails opened, let alone read.
Why?
Is it because the information they are sending isn’t valuable?
Probably not.
If you’ve read any of the posts on this blog you will notice a recurring theme….
Online leads vs Offline leads
Yes, unfortunately it’s true…
In the tests that me and my team have been doing we are still finding that leads geenrated offline(print media) still out perform online leads when it comes to sales conversion.
Jonny, I would prefer
As Ive mentioned numerous times on this site, the challenge that people experience when marketing their business online is the amount of noise that exists online.
That being said, there are. number of techniques that you can use to stand out from the competition and the headlines post is an example of how to achieve that.
Another technique that you can use is to use a WordPress contest plugin and the good news for you is that there aren’t many online marketers doing this at the moment 😉
SO..
In this post you are about to discover a new and unique way of applying contests and giveways to convert more leads and sell more of your products.
Let’s review some of the tools that you can use.
Why You Should Start Using Contests
As a business owner, your main focus is the following:
- Get new customers
- Increase the amount they spend with you consistently over time
- Turn these customers into raving evangelists o your product and services so that they bring you new customers
None of this happens unless you can firs grab their attention.
As mentioned( ad nauseam), a headline can be a great way to do this but if you can remember, a key part of the Get-em, Keepem, Grow’em formula is the concept of microcommittments.
This strategy is base don the willingness for prospects to carry out a number of steps before you ask them to buy your product.
Another key concepts that wasn’t mentioned in that strategy is the importance of …
Engagement!
Let me explain…
If you can encoruage your customer s to ‘take part’ in an activity, you are one step closer to getting another profitable micro-committments completed and Contests are one of the best strategies to achieve this.
If you are anything like me you pronbably love freebies and bargins and guess what…
So do your customers!
The benefits of incorporating contextst abd giveways into your marketing strategy is that you will receive valuable promotion of your business, brands and products.
Another key benefit is that you will not have a considerable expenditure that can often be associated with other promotional methods such as social media advertising and print advertising.
As people start to engage with your contests something interesting happens…
they start to tell other people
Which can do what for you?
Bring You New Leads and Customers
You might have a contest rule that advises the participant to share one of your youtube videos or blog posts and you would be amazed at how quick your marketing context can go viral.
So…
What type of contest or giveaway should you incorporate into your cusrrent marketing plan.
Well..
Theres no hard and fast answer here.
It really does depend on the product or service hat you are selling.
Generally, contests and promotions fall into 3 main categories:
- Sweepstakes
- Photo contests
Knowing which of these you want to focus one will determine the type of plugin that you choose to use on your blog or website.
Here are 7 of the best plugging that i would recommend using for your contests and give aways:
King Sumo Giveaways
This product is one fo the most effective ways to grow your customer base using email marketing.
Unlike some omn;ien apps, the uX design is so simplistic and designed for the a complete novice, you can get up and running in less than a few minutes.
Once you have determine what you are giving away, a mug, t-shirt, training courses etc, you can start promoting your contest on social media, your blog right away.
Here’s what you get:
- As many giveways as you want. – there are no restrictions on the number of campaigns you can set tup
- You can customise the start. and finish dates of your campaign with ease
- Technology developed to increase the probability of your campaign going viral
- …and much more
If you are building your business using email marketing, this product is ideal for you. If liek moist online marketers you are fiocused on social media marketing you can use this too but:PLEASE, PLEASE,PLEAASE…
Start using email marketing if you are serious about growing a business. Its still one of the most effective marketing media to cultivate a relationship with prospective customers
PRICE: $198
more information
RafflePress
Without a doubt, RafflePress is commonly regarded as the most popular wordpress contest plugin available.
Its 100% FREE and like King Sumo is allows you to create contest and give away campaigns in a matter of minutes.
One of the reasons that this plug is so popular is because of the seamless intergation with email and social media marketing, whcih more most online marketers, makes it a no brainer.
For those of you who are like me and dont have a creative bone in your body, this easy-to-use plugin comes with a drag and drop builder to enable fast creation of campaigns.
<<insert image here>>
Once you have decided on the type of campaign that you want to run, all you need to do is to use the editor and quickly customeise it to your likeing.
Here’s what you get:
- A friend referral feature – this is what makes it so effective at making your campaigns go viral
- Email verification and fraud protection
- CRM integration
Is this a good plugin for you?
Yes, if you want a solution that has security at the forefront of its design and easy customisability is of paramount importance to you.
Price: Free or £29.30/year (Premium)
Photo Contest WordPress Plugin
This plugin is great if you want to run give aways based an image based context.
I’m going to repaeat myself again, but stay with me.
We all know that user enegagement is the key to converting semi-interested leads into paying customer.
One tactic that svay marketers often use is to invite prospective customer into their world an ask them to get involved with activities such as:
- Helping to design a logo
- Blog rebranding
- ..etc
Let me give you an example…
Suppose you are thinking about designing a new logo for your blog.
you have a few colour schemes in mind but you arent sure wherether to go for a blue logo or pink.
you could create a contest, that invite your participants to view some colour schemes and aske them to let you know which one you like best.
As a rewars for participating, you can giveaway something fre, like a keyring, mouse mat or anything that you can think of that will have your new logo on it.
Can you see how this will help ypiur prospective customer to feel like they are contributing to your business?
Tactics like this help to strengthen the bind between you and your customers and it is a fantastic way of developeing rapport with your leads.
This photo contest plugin helps you to do just that.
Using this plugin, you can ask your contestants to submit photos as enteries.
Like the other plugginS mentioned above, you can modify the contest dates/schedule easily so that its clear what the deadlines, contest rules and requirements are.
Here’S what you are going to get:
- A portal to review participant entries
- Functionality – based on fraud protection
- Multiple language features – great for global marketing
- Different voting methods – to evaluate the winning entries
Is it worth it or not..
Yes, if you an come up with a giveaway based on a visual element.
Price: $39
There are 100s of these plugins available but based on our tests at Team sofa, these are the wordpress pluggins i would recommend that you use if you are new to running competitions.
REMEMBER:
The more you can get your customers and prospects to engage with your marketing activities the higher the probability that you will convert them into paying customers.
I hope you got some value form this post and if you are looking for new ways to get new customers for your products and services, make sure that you subscribe to your email newsletter below.
See you on the other side 😉
