In one of our last posts we gave you tips on how to create engaging, viral campaigns. But creating an engaging campaign is just one piece of the puzzle; equally important is coming up with campaigns that meet your business goals. There are many easy ways you can do this – if your goal is to drive sales, consider combining a coupon with your campaign (e.g. after entrants have entered your sweepstakes, quiz or contest use our coupon solution to provide them with a discount voucher). If your goal is to educate consumers about your products, weave this into your sweepstakes entry process (e.g. Zappos ran a shopping spree sweepstakes with us which required entrants to choose the clothing items they’d want to win from zappos.com and then input the clothing SKU numbers into the sweepstakes entry form). User generated contests are also powerful ways to educate consumers about your brand (e.g. Facebook ran a contest with us that required entrants to submit stories about how Facebook is doing good in their community) and so too are quizzes (e.g. check out the quiz currently being run by Snapple that helps entrants decide which of the Snapple flavors would be best for them). If your goal is to build your newsletter mailing list, Facebook fans or Twitter followers, sweepstakes and contests provide a powerful way to do this, but make sure that your promotion is tailored to attract those consumers who are most likely to consume your company’s products. For example, if you’re running a sweepstakes be sure to choose a prize that you think is especially appealing to your specific target demographic (i.e. don’t offer the chance to win a Mac Book Pro if you’re trying to promote luxury travel to an audience of retirees!)
The Selena Gomez campaign currently running via our platform is a great example of how to tie in the power of social media with specific business goals. Selena Gomez, a star on the Disney channel, is in the process of launching her music career. She decided to run a user-generated contest via Wildfire that asks entrants to submit a photo demonstrating what they are doing to promote Selena’s new album. Many thousands of entries have been submitted and these include user-generated videos, posters, side-walk chalkings, billboards, tshirts, events, websites and more promoting Selena’s album. What’s great about this contest is that it not only has powerful reach within the social networks (thanks to the newsfeeds and friend invites sent by entrants and voters, hundreds of thousands of people have been exposed to the contest) but also in the ‘real’ world (Selena’s album is being promoted via posters, events, chalkings and more).
The user generated angle is also great for non-profits.
I manage the Cystic Fibrosis Council’s page on facebook. How can I use this app to increase our fan base and ultimately donations to help fund our non-profit. Due to the economy we are in desperate need of cash to continue to provide client services. We have a large number of clients that need nutritional supplements to maintain good health to combat this lung disease.
We do have fundraisers and one coming up is our annual holiday cheese ball sale. I don’t think we can afford to ship them, but only can deliver them to customers that live within a 50 mile radius of South Bend/Mishawaka/Elkhart, IN.
Can this Application work for us?
Greg
Boardmember
Greg,
Sounds very interesting. We’d be happy to help! Send our Sales Team a note at sales [at] wildfireapp [dot] com so we can figure out a way to work together. Our technology (especially our Sweepstakes format) has proven itself to be a fast and effective way to build a mailing list and a social media following that you can tap into for your fundraising efforts.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Brendan
Wildfire Team
“Facebook ran a contest with us that required entrants to submit stories about how Facebook is doing good in their community”
Great idea IMO and we used this type of marketing approach at our Philippine Cafe’ in 2008 and our kids love Facebook.
~Clint
Thanks Clint! We thought the campaign for Facebook was pretty neat too. Glad you liked it!
Relevance, viral by design and always be entertaining are my three golden rules of social marketing. We are collectively spending a tremendous amount of time on social media sites – most of that time is spend looking for something interesting or entertaining to do. For that reason, I believe social marketing should contain game-like elements, peppered with rewards, puzzles to solve, patterns to recognize. A well designed social marketing campaign that is engaging, fun, entertaining, and informative way accomplishes the marketing goals in a way that strengthens the brand.
Right on, Ernest! Great to hear from you
Brendan
Wildfire Team
You have certainly been very busy writing up this great post, It was very interesting to read. Can’t wait to see what you write about in the next month
Making money online sounds like something that would be easy to do but in reality it’s a lot harder than it sounds. You need to attract a group of people (have a good niche is important here) and have them do something that gets you paid. I found a marketing blog and they explained everything in pretty simple terms to me. That helped a lot for someone new to making money online.
Friend of mine recommend me to visit your blog, I found the informations I looked for . Thank you very much