As providers of 5 star winner management to brands, media owners and their agencies, we know only too well that offering a once-in-a-lifetime prize experience will help draw attention to your brand.  Selecting prizes that appeal to a specific new audience can also broaden your promotional message outside of your core customers.  But the benefit of a prize promotion need not come to an end once the winner is announced.

With some careful planning you can harness the power of social media through the relationship you develop with your winners.  A happy customer spreading feel-good factor around your brand provides an opportunity for a steady stream of high-value user generated content, further enhancing the reach of your promotional incentive.

When well executed, winner management content can be like gold dust in generating buzz and excitement, dramatically extending the life and more importantly, the commercial return on your promotional campaign.

Using social media effectively

Whether you’re offering an amazing set of prizes or a money-can’t-buy experience, your winners can help you create exciting content, such as reviews or holiday snaps, which continue to engage your audiences well after the closing date.

With branded merchandise, a photograph of your winner with their prize is a simple way to continue the story on your brand’s website and social channels.  Something funny or entertaining will get more attention than a straight-forward picture of your winner, so perhaps set your winners a challenge to be even more engaging.

Experience-based prizes give a little more scope for creativity, allowing you to share user-generated content. This kind of content can be powerful and memorable because it’s created in earnest by a genuine fan rather than by the marketing team. Blog posts, real-time photographs shared Instagram, quirky pictures and comments on Facebook – these are all quick and simple ways to continue the impact of your campaign.

Getting organised

With a little careful planning, you can work with winners to generate a buzz around the prize in real-time. If they’re active on social media, you can ask them to post photographs of them enjoying their prize or experience while it’s happening. You can also ask them to Tweet about it or even write a blog post.

It’s helpful to cover social media at the early planning stage of your campaign so that you and your winner can use relevant channels before, during and after the promotion – an integrated approach is always best. This forethought also allows you to ensure the relevant permissions are gathered from your winners at the outset and that they are briefed to supply the required content at the most appropriate time.

Which social media channels to use

Your prize promotion content should fit into an established social media strategy where you have an active following, though it doesn’t hurt to develop a theme or a hashtag which may draw a relevant audience. It’s worth bearing in mind that each social media channel has different rules about promotional use so you’ll need to consider any restrictions when planning and executing your campaign.

Measuring success

With the pressure always on to demonstrate commercial value from any promotion, this user generated content can be built into the measurement criteria of your campaign. Metrics such as the number of social media followers or the level of active winner engagement can be helpful ways to measure success. You can also use the social media element of your campaign to push more people to your website or to your email sign-up page for future marketing.

What to do next

If you would like to discuss effective social media in winner management or how NDL could help with any other aspect of promotional campaign management, please get in touch on 020 7428 3090.

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