How to run an online competition
Ever wondered how other businesses pull off successful competitions and giveaways? Would you like to do a giveaway but aren’t sure on the rules and fine print? Whatever your question is, you’re in luck. All you need to know about competitions is right here.
We’ve sat down with Suki van Koeverden, founder of OrigamiGlobe, to chat about all things competitions, the dos and don’ts, and everything in between.
What are the most common types of competitions?
There are two main types of competitions you can run to promote your business – a game of skill and a game of chance.
Game of skill
A game of skill is where each entry is unique and involves some form of effort from your entrants, for example requiring them to take a photo or write a 25-words-or-less answer to a question. You would then choose your winner based on the skill, talent or effort shown or how well they met your entry conditions
Game of chance
A game of chance on the other hand, is where all entrants are put into a pool (or hat!) and you pick a winner completely at random. You may ask people to enter their name and email, make a purchase during the competition period or follow you on social. The skill shown in their entry doesn’t play a part in how you choose the winner.
Can you elaborate on why each would be useful and when to use it?
Number of entries
In general, you can expect to receive more entries for a game of chance competition because the barrier to entry and effort required to enter is a lot lower than a game of skill. It’s very easy to quickly fill in your name and email on a landing page for a chance to win a prize, whereas having to think about, set up, take, edit and submit a photo requires a lot more thought and effort.
Licenses
However, the big advantage of running a game of skill competition is that here in Australia, you don’t need to apply for a licence or permit to run a game of skill competition, making them popular among small businesses.
How do you choose between a game of skill and a game of chance?
It should all come down to your competition goal – if your aim is to collect email addresses to build up your list as quickly as possible, you’ll want to run an enter-your-email-to-win style game of chance competition.
If your competition goal is to collect user-generated content featuring your customers using your products, a game of skill photo submission competition would be the perfect fit.
Do you recommend competition collaborations?
I love competition collaborations! They’re a fantastic way to reach and engage new audiences, build connections with like-minded businesses and boost your prize pool to make it even more attractive, resulting in more entries.
Collaborations make the most sense when you’re in a similar industry with a similar target audience.
A baby clothing company teaming up with a pram company to offer the ultimate newborn gift set makes sense… on the other hand, a baby clothing company teaming up with a craft beer company doesn’t!
We have a handy guide to finding and setting up a competition collaboration if you’re interested in finding out more.
What are the most common goals of a competition?
We’ve been in the competition biz for a long while now, so we’ve seen just about every competition goal there is.
They usually fit into one of the following categories:
- Promoting awareness of your business
- Growing or engaging followers, likes or comments on social media
- Getting feedback or content from your target audience
- Generating leads or sales
Every business and every competition is unique, you need to come up with a competition goal that’s going to best help your business. When talking to my clients about setting a goal for their competition, I always start by asking them “Where do you want your business to be in six months?”. Then, I help them come up with a competition and goal that will help them achieve it.
What do you need to keep in mind when running a competition?
There are three things you really need to keep in mind when running a competition:
1. Why you’re running a competition – or your goal, see above
Build every aspect of your competition, from your entry method to your goal to achieve this.
2. Who you’re running it for
Your audience is not ‘everyone’, it’s a particular individual, for which you solve a particular problem, so tailor everything from your prize to your promotional messaging just for them.
3. Protecting your business
That means obeying social media rules for running competitions, having a solid set of terms and conditions to protect you from difficult entrants/winners and applying for relevant permits and licences.
Where can you get information on permits in Australia?
Always, always, always triple check any information you read on third-party websites (including ours!) with the relevant state government website(s). Information can and does change and there are a lot of sources out there with old and incorrect information, or information that applies overseas, which can cost your business.
We’ve put together a comprehensive guide to competition licences in Australia, which is updated regularly and of course contains those all-important links to the relevant state government websites so you can be sure you’ve got the correct information.
Are there any no-gos?
The only real no-gos when it comes to competitions are not asking people to tag and/or share on Facebook (that’s a big one) as it can result in your page and even personal profile being deleted.
Your main priority should always be in providing an amazing experience for your customers, as they are the people who will help your business flourish.
By providing an amazing experience for your customers, you will by default keep everything and everyone else happy and avoid no-go areas.
For example, a great customer experience is not being asked constantly to share a spammy, generic post on your timeline in order to climb the leaderboard or gain extra entries. Avoiding spammy behaviours like this keeps your customers, social media platforms – and me! – happy.
Your main priority should always be in providing an amazing experience for your customers, as they are the people who will help your business flourish.
Do you have an example of a competition that you really loved?
It’s really hard to choose just one! My favourite competitions are usually eCommerce brands because it’s so much easier to drive conversion to sales during and after the competition.
A great example of this is a sports brand that ran a game-of-skill competition to collect email addresses and answers to a question.
Not only did they collect over 2,500 email addresses during the competition, but we knew that these email addresses were from engaged, warm and interested subscribers because we saw over $73,000 worth of sales as a direct result of the competition, had an 80% opt-in rate to receive further marketing emails from the brand and had only 8 unsubscribes once the competition was over.
What are the most common mistakes you see?
The most common mistakes we see when it comes to competitions are really around the same areas as I mentioned above in the things you need to look out for.
No proper plan
Companies jump on the competition bandwagon without thinking about why they’re running a competition or tailoring their competition to their ideal client.
No terms and conditions
The amount of competitions we see that don’t have proper terms and conditions frightens, me as they’re leaving themselves wide open to costly mistakes and even lawsuits.
Poor user experience
My biggest bug-bear though would have to be either loop competitions or tag and share competitions.
Whilst neither are against the law, they both provide a terrible user experience for your customers and give you very little in return for the time, money and effort you invest in the competition.
How can you ensure a competition is far-reaching and successful?
The key to a successful competition is 20% strategy and 80% promotion.
Strategy
By carefully mapping out a competition strategy that includes:
- why you’re running a competition,
- who you’re running it for,
- what you’re going to say in your marketing messaging,
- how much you’re going to spend,
- when you’re going to run it and for how long,
- what you’re going to give away,
- how your audience will enter your competition;
you’re setting your competition up for success from the outset.
Not only that but you’ll save yourself a lot of time on decision-making and a lot of money on promotion!
Promotion
When it comes to promoting your competition, think far and wide.
Start with the channels you own and control – your website, email newsletter, blog and in-person events.
Then think about the channels you’ve earned the right to promote via – for example Facebook, Instagram, other social media networks.
You’ve built your audience and earned their trust and attention via these channels, use them to promote and funnel people to your competition.
Earned channels also includes people and business you’ve built up a relationship with, who do you know who would be happy to give your competition a shout out to their audience?
Finally, think about which paid channels you could reach your target audience via. Facebook and Instagram are obvious candidates and perfect for eCommerce.
You don’t have to spend a fortune and with a helping hand you should easily be able to generate a positive return on your ad spend.
I’m all about sharing, so you’ll find a handy guide to promoting your competition here, which includes both free and paid methods of getting your competition in front of your ideal customer.
The key to a successful competition is 20% strategy and 80% promotion.
About Suki
As you may have gathered by now, I’m a complete nerd for competitions and giveaways!
I started OrigamiGlobe in 2015, after years of working on national and international travel competitions for brands like Disney, Woolworths and AAMI. Whilst I loved my global clients and beloved big Aussie brands, I knew I could offer more than just travel prizing and help more businesses see the awesome potential of competitions – especially small business and ecommerce brands.
OrigamiGlobe has a range of DIY and done for you packages aimed at showing you how to create compelling competitions and get real results. You can find out more about me and what I do over at origamiglobe.com.
