Running Competitions to Promote Your Membership Site

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If you're looking for ways to advertise your membership website and grow your reach, running contests could be the answer. There are many options to expand your followers, but contests and giveaways could be very effective.

Contents          Toggle

•     Benefits of Using Competitions and Contests
•       Reach a Wider Audience
•       Boost Social Media Following
•       Increase Website Traffic
•       Grow Your Email List
•       Encourage Discussion
•       Promote Your Membership Product
•     Key Points to Consider Before Running a Competition
•     How to Run a Competition for Your Website
•       Contests & Giveaways by Fatcat Apps
•       Comment Contest
•       No Frills Prize Draw Competitions
•     Final Thoughts

In this post, we'll cover the benefits organizing a contest in order for your website to boost its traffic and give tips on how to get to the point of starting.

The benefits of using competitions and Contests

Before we move on to the software that could aid you with running a contest through your membership site Let us look at some of the benefits of having the contest.

Expand your reach to a wider audience

If the entry into your contest is contingent on the participants sharing the contest on social networks or other platforms and reach out to a wider number of people could be the most important reason to run a contest.

Some contest management solutions give you the ability to take entries for contests via social media, with sharing and tweeting of your content, giving guests the possibility of winning.

Each share on social media might put your website and membership product in front prospective new customers or members, therefore, it's a good idea to have some sort of social media component to your contests.

Boost Social Media Following

Gaining more followers on social media can be a goal in and of it's own. If you do use social media activity to let people know about the competition, having people follow your account in order to participate is a sure way to increase your followers.

Increase Website Traffic

The right contest can be certain to boost website traffic. For one, you can invite people to participate in your contest and include some sort of promotional element on the part of the participants. A second option is a contest with an exciting prize may become a media-worthy occasion in and of itself. Creating a generous contest giveaway provides you with an opportunity to contact important influencers, blogs, as well as other important participants in your field by offering them something to promote that their readers may be interested in.

This new exposure could increase web traffic and give the possibility of converting these new customers into subscribers or members.

Expand Your List of Emails

When those new visitors are on your email list in order to participate in the contest, you can begin to put your email marketing campaign into action and begin sending out great content to your new subscribers. After your leads have been warm, you are able to offer your membership service to them.

Encourage discussion

A different method of running contests is to pick the winner among all who's left a message to your website. Because comments can lead to discussions about your site and its membership products It is worth making the effort get your customers to post their opinions.

Promote Your Membership Product

Not to be left out, having a contest can aid in promoting your membership program. If you create a competition that's newsworthy that others in your niche are likely to want to pass on to their audiences as well as having an entry procedure that involves the use of social media in order to spread the word about your membership program.

The most important things to consider prior to conducting a contest

When you are ready to launch your first competition, there are certain things you should consider. To begin you should try to sit down for a while considering the prizes you will offer.

Will you offer one grand prize, or have runners up prizes as well? Free or reduced access to your membership plan is a good option. But, if you're looking to advertise your contest to your existing members, it is necessary be thinking outside the box.

Make sure that the prize is relevant to your target audience, while making sure it's something they'll want to post via social media, and also put their name behind. Also, make sure your budget for prizes will be in line with your realistic expectations for the contest and its outcomes.

Hopefully, your contest will bring more visitors to your site. If it does then it's important to ensure that you've put in place systems to not only handle this extra traffic, but get the most value from it.

Last but not least, you should set up website analytics to monitor the outcomes of the contest. An absolutely free tool like Google Analytics makes it easy to determine if your website is seeing increased traffic and where they came from, and the activities you've seen them doing to your site.

How to run a Contest for Your Website

If you're using WordPress for your membership website, then it's even simpler than you'd expect to conduct the competition. With some great premium and free plugins specifically designed specifically for this purpose the only thing you need to do is choose the best tool to meet your needs. Here's a quick review of some well-known WordPress Contest and competition plugins.

Contests and Giveaways from Fatcat Apps

The free Contests & Giveaways plugin lets you set up and host a giveaway that asks your guests to submit their email to enter. After the contest's end date is reached and the plugin has completed its task, it will pick a winner at random. Thanks to IP tracking as well as the use of cookies, the contest plugin can fight against the fraud that is associated with contests.

If you're looking for an easy and straightforward way to try competitions on your WordPress website the plugin you choose is a good option.

Comment Contest

The cost-free Comment Contest plugin can help you generate discussion on your blog post. Once enabled, this plugin lets you choose which comments are included as part of the contest before choosing the winner. Since leaving a comment is enough for entry into the contest, there will have a significant response from your visitors.

The No Frills Prize Draw Competitions

This freemium plugin allows you to start running contests on your WordPress website at no cost with the option of upgrading to the paid version and unlocking additional capabilities.

Through the settings, you are able to choose the requirements your contestants must do to enter the contest. This could include typing in a message, answering the multiple choice questions or simply hitting the enter button. The winner will be selected automatically by the plugin, leaving you to contact the lucky contestant and give them the cash prize.

If you're looking to go into the very top of competitions and competitions, the KingSumo Giveaways plugin isn't cheap but it's feature-rich.

Final Reflections

If everything goes according to plan though, your contest could bring increased traffic to your website and more publicity on social media, and new members for your program.

 Have you got any queries concerning running a contest on your membership website? Please let us know via the comment section below.