Social Media for Contest and Coupons

Found this great article for marketing. There are some excellent ideas and things that maybe we should consider when doing marketing and advertising using social media tools.

According to Allen Bonde, CMO of Offerpop and Managing Director at Evoke CRM, he suggset that contests and coupons are proving to be a low-cost/low-risk way to attract followers, reward your fans and set up discussions that make it easier to showcase products and drive conversions. When setting up these type of campaigns on Twitter, a little planning and a focus on the ‘basics’ goes a long way:

• Who am I targeting? – Find your audience’s passion, whether it is books, or travel, or fashion, or the latest tech gadget. Understanding where your buyers and influencers hang out and tapping into ‘shared experiences’ is huge, something I have discussed here.

• What type of offer fits my brand? – If you are a discount retailer, deals and coupons are a natural. If you’re a high-end boutique, perhaps a private sale or preview is more of a fit, like this example on Facebook. For multi-channel merchants, a multi-channel campaign that includes social offers, email, and even in-store promotions or redemptions is a good approach.

• How do I drive participation? – While reach and frequency define traditional advertising, reach and participation (which drives word of mouth, and more reach) drives social campaigns. This means aligning with the way consumers already use social media. On Facebook this means commenting and sharing and Liking. On Twitter it’s tweeting, retweeting and sharing of links and hashtags.

Here are some samples of using social media tools such as Twitter.
To read more on this, click on How to: Use Contests and Coupons.