Honda Civic’s awesome trips Sweepstakes contest “Custom Honda Rides- Awesome Trips”, gives a chance to win a custom Honda Civic Sedan designed and autographed by Demi Lovato or a custom Honda Grom motorcycle designed and autographed by Nick Jonas, or a trip to Europe to meet Nick Jonas.

Contests can engage audiences with a theme or with a context increasing the interactions with your brand. In another example Kerastase, a popular Haircare brand encourages audiences to share their curls in a selfie contest, encouraging audience participation.

Ten Steps For Planning Brand Contest

 

Set Your Contest Goals

Start with defining your goals. Choose a goal that is closest to the metric that  you are trying to achieve results for. Is your goal Brand Awareness, Brand affinity, Conversions, Increased Web Traffic, Obtaining User Data or Increased Reach and Frequency or Impressions.

Pick a Contest Design

Pick the Contest Design that works for your Campaign goals based on the key metric.

Determine the reason you are running the contest. Is it for a new product that you would like to build awareness for or are you looking at engaging audiences, introducing a limited time offer or would like to build affinity for your brand with an existing campaign.

 

Decide Your Calls To Action

Select Your Calls To Action. Define what would you like the user to do after interacting with your post. McDonald’s has introduced the contest with messaging centered around  a Special price Combo and launch of new “Strawberry Lemonade”.

 

Define Contest Targeting

Define your Target Audience. Who are the key audiences for your Contest. Depending on your goal you can define your Target.

Decide on Contest Messaging

Decide on your contests’ key message or Takeaways for the consumer, this will flow from the campaign rationale. If the campaign rationale requires that your consumers think about your brand in a certain way, the key messaging in your contest should be designed to deliver the message.

Articulate the keywords For Discovery

Articulate the keywords and Hashtags that are mandatory for your campaign discovery. Build the same in your messaging.

Choose Contest Tactics and Channels

Choose the right tactics for your contest, the tactics depend on your budget your brand  and contest design. If you plan to go with a contest that requires User Generated data the a suitable tactic for your brand will require to create a buzz for your campaign. This could mean engaging a social media celebrity, co-brandng or any buzzworthy posts that can make your contest go viral.

Choose the channels that you would use to promote your contest and  the channels where you would host your contest. Include the Terms and Conditions link and host the link on your brand’s site or micro site. Depending on the channel determine the key communication elements such as “Facebook Video post” and “Twitter Post”. Decide on Organic Social Media and Paid Social Media elements. Choose the right creative sequence for maximum impact. Create a flow chart of messaging for different use case scenarios.

Decide Your Contest Budget

Your contest budget will cover for the contest design cost, cost for promotion and distribution on social media, depending on tactics and paid media as well as any creative and web development contest. If you are using a software vendor, you have to build in the cost for the same.

Measure With Metrics

Determine the metrics that you are trying to achieve growth for include the key metrics in order of priority i.e. conversions, visits, Engagement, Interactions. If you are introducing a price off, build in the metrics for the new price or new launches.

 

 

Collaborate and Roll

Bring in all stakeholders up to speed with the contest details, agree on all the Terms and conditions and Brand guidelines , define the critical success factors and the barriers to success and how to overcome the same.