Contest Promotion Ideas

There are a variety of contest promotion ideas and methods that will help to promote and popularise events like contests, thereby increasing the number of participants. There are both paid and free ways of doing that. Let’s check some of these out.

Ideas for promoting your contest

If you want to succeed with making sure people are aware of your contest, you should come up with some ideas for promoting your contest. Here are some common ideas that will help to promote any contest for either completely free or on a paid basis, depending on the means you choose.

1. Your own website

If you have your own online resources like an event organisation website or any other platform, then you can make a competition announcement directly on these platforms. To reach out the audience and anchor the maximum effect, you can place banners or pop-ups as well as consider some other ideas for contest promotion.

2. Another web resources

If you have been in your niche for a long time, then you probably know the other popular resources where you might post your contest and gain extra traffic to it. Many of these can provide effective advertising. If there are difficulties with the search, then you can, for example, go to a blog with reviews or other ratings and pick what you need in the required category to choose suitable sites on which to post your contest.

The main criterion for selection is the frequency of updates and whether or not the audience is active.

3. Social networks

Contests on social networks are the best way to have fun, get rid of boredom, and keep in contact with subscribers. A properly organised competition will give you not only new energy on your corporate page but also much more coverage for subsequent posts, leading to new followers, partners and sponsors, etc. Use different social networks to reach a variety of people.

4. Social media ads

Social networks are a big part of our lives. They may also be used as ad platforms. Almost all Internet users visit at least one of the large social networks. This audience should not be neglected. Advertising your events in public and in groups can have a positive effect. This may include Twitter and other specialised social networks, if ads are allowed there of course. The only thing is that the public and groups should fit with your niche and have an active audience relevant to your contest concepts.

5. Specialised contest websites

There are some websites that are dedicated to competitions. They can announce your events for free. Some of them are more professional and contain judging modules or printed flyers, etc. There are also websites where the event is held in real time as well. Judgify, for instance, allows you to:

• Encourage young, talented entrepreneurs to develop new solutions for the industry.
• Reward industry leaders for their top achievements in the market.
• Build awareness and showcase key industry players.
• Promote a new project.
• Attract the attention of the wider public and magnify your existing resources.
• Deliver high-quality expertise for industry needs, etc.

This gives much more potential for the contest’s success. A flurry of visitors to these resources is worth waiting for.

6. Forums and contest directories

In some forums, you can also announce contests. It’s free of charge and quite easy. Some of them also have blog sections. There you may add any information or update you want and also promote the contest on a regular basis

7. Friends and acquaintances

If you have friends and acquaintances who can help you to popularise the competition, try to contact them with an email request. Create a discussion by spreading your contest management software ideas around through your friends. This may be a blog announcement, an attached forum thread, a re-tweet, etc. Just do not take advantage of them. Also, do not rely too much on people since the human factor can sometimes work against you.

8. Ezine advertising and newsletters

There are popular magazines, so find an appropriate one and contact the editor of the newsletter about the possibility of advertising. High-quality newsletters with lots of live readers can bring a good influx of participants to your event. You can also use emails for bulk messaging with the info about your contest or add the contest to your email signature, etc.

9. Contextual advertising

This method can also be an effective way to attract new members if campaigns and advertisements are properly targeted. When promoting the contest, advertising in Google AdWords may also be used as the best way to promote a contest. It is the most popular and the most reliable among all of the online services.

10. Comments

Maximum coverage is given to contests that provide comments or are actively commented on. In addition, you may leave information about your contest in comments on relevant platforms. This does not mean that your competition can rely on likes only. Follow your audience, give it what it wants, and your every activity will be greatly appreciated. Take your time to work this method out.

11. Blog post for a contest

Blog posts are not only used when you need to announce an awards ceremony or another large scale event. Contests may also be promoted via your blog or another reliable company’s blog that is closely related to your contest and business niche. It is also one of the best practices for running a sales contest.

12. Press Release

A press release is a powerful means of promotion. It may cause a stir if done well and attract as much attention to your event as you need for it to be a success. Press releases may be published on your blog and on other blogs of well-known authorities or shared via emails in newsletters as a separate file. If you are old-fashioned, print it out and give it to people, or post it via newspapers and magazines. A press release is also quite a creative approach.

Conclusion

There are many ways to promote your contest. All of them deserve your attention so you can choose what’s best for your event. If you want to find out more about what a contest promotion is, give us a call. We will explain the reasons for using a contest promotion as well as provide the best ideas to promote a contest and tips to run your contest and then show why they really work.

Please leave your comments below.

Register to run your contest right away!