Marketing Your Website With An Online Contest - How to bring in traffic, customers and subscribers without spending a lot of money
by Carrie Hinkel on March 27th, 2008
Who doesn’t like getting free stuff? Using contests to gain website visitors, or subscribers to blogs or newsletters is becoming more and more common these days. And why? Because, when done right, contest marketing works, and it doesn’t cost a lot of money to do.
What contests can do for your business
Increase awareness of your company - For those who never knew your business, products or services even existed; a fun contest with prizes just might get their attention.
Increase outside website links - There are dozens of websites devoted to listing all the ongoing website contests. So be sure to put your contest link on as many of them as possible. As you probably already know, those links will help to boost your rating in the natural listings of search engines - thus getting your company’s name out there even more. Here are a few contest list sites to get you started:
* Contest Beat
* Online-Sweepstakes
* Contests Blogger
* Prize Contests
Increase traffic to your site - Everyone who clicks on your contest link comes right into your website, so be sure to include ads and links for other areas of your site right there on the contest page.
Increase sales - New visitors to your website means that more people are seeing what your company has to offer, and there’s a good chance that some of those visitors will turn into customers.
Increase blog or newsletter subscribers - A great tactic for websites with a blog or newsletter is to require that contest entrants subscribe in order to enter. Sure, some new subscribers will end up opting out once the contest is over, but others might find your writings to be very useful, choosing to remain on your list.
Prizes to give away
The best thing about having a contest on your website is that the prize or prizes you give away don’t have to cost a lot of money. For instance, giving away a $300 Ipod can literally bring in thousands of contest entries. If your website sells products, consider giving away a gift basket full of your own goodies. Think about your current customers and what they would be interested in. If your target market is insurance salesmen, then perhaps giving away a Nintendo wii isn’t such a good idea - sure, you’ll get a ton of entries, but there’s a good chance that none of them will do you any good in the long run.
So, if you have been searching for a new way to bring customers into your website, then you may want to consider having an online contest. If it brings in a good amount of traffic, subscribers or new customers, then having monthly contests could be your next step. Regular contests not only bring in ongoing traffic, but they give an incentive to your current customers and subscribers to keep coming back to your website.