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How to Increase Customer Engagement Using Online Contests

With the increased use of the internet, a majority of the customer decisions are based on their online engagement with brands. They are more likely to buy from brands that keep more and more people involved on day to day basis, let it be their best seller, new product preview or even with something funny that entertains people.

As a fact of the matter, if you keep on pushing your products to the audience all the time, there will come a point where they would want to get rid of your promotional messages and posts and will ultimately unsubscribe from your mailing list or will unfollow your social media pages. So, consider the options to reward them for their engagement and they will participate more eagerly.

Online contests are one of the most powerful ways to increase customer engagement as well as convert new prospects into long term buyers. This article will guide you through tips and ideas to increase customer engagement using online contest.

What type of online contests is more popular?

Well, depending upon your products, you may come up with something unique, but when you are planning to do it for the first time, ideally you should opt for what people like more. Here are some of the online contest types that people participate more in.

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Like/comment/share-to-win;

This type of contest can be best done using social media. Like and share may not work that great but when you ask them to tag a friend in the comment, that surely goes viral. Generally, the reward for this type of contest is small, but for multiple people, i.e. 10 random comments will get %50 discount vouchers.

Voting contest;

Customers and prospects are required to post a picture, video, gif etc. and get voting on it. Top three entries will qualify for the finale whereby a panel decides the winner. To boost your contest, you can use some voting service for random votes on few entries, and the panel’s decision will ensure the quality of entries. Here you can read more about getting real votes for online contests.

Post your selfie with the product;

This type can work great for increasing sales as well as getting huge brand exposure. For instance, the product costs $5, and the winner gets $500 worth of products. This type of contests if paired with the voting can actually grow your brand’s reach to a broader audience and your contest can go truly viral.

Hashtag contest for #yourbrand;

It can be a text post, a photo, video or anything. Pair this one with voting again and whoever gets the most likes or votes wins!

The Bottom Line:

Running an online contest can help you not just to increase your reach, but also to improve user engagement which will ultimately build a strong relationship with the user. Remember, the contests that encourage users to get more deeply involved with your product actually help your business to get a huge number of brand advocates without investing any additional money or effort. And thus, this small yet well-thought investment offers exponential results.

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