3 Tips for a Big Football Sweepstakes Score
Football season is back! Time for tailgating and weekend fun watching the pee-wee, high school, college and professional games. You might think that it would be a great time to promote your business by giving away game tickets or running a football sweepstakes. And it is! People love winning free tickets or team merchandise, especially autographed items or trips to big games. However, there are three questions to ask before you run that promotion. Will your promotion violate copyright or trademark laws? You can’t mention the Super Bowl or NFL properties covered by copyright protection as prizes or part … Continue reading
Get Social with a Back to School Sweepstakes for Students
Social is the perfect platform for a back to school sweepstakes as it’s the easiest way to engage high school and college aged students. You don’t need a huge budget to run a social campaign, and as long as you run the promotion on a platform familiar to your target age group, and offer something they want they will find you! It’s a win-win for your brand and for your student audience. So what do kids want to win? They want cash or items they could not afford on their own. They crave experiences like concert tickets or getting … Continue reading
Sizzling Summer Social Sweepstakes Ideas
Need a summer social sweepstakes idea? Here are 6 of them! Hashtag a Day Sweepstakes: Post a new hashtag every day in your social posts, and ask your customers to tweet or post an Instagram photo or Tumblr post using that hashtag of the day. This sweepstakes will encourage people to look for your social posts each day – and reward customers with random drawings for daily prizes. I Need a Vacation Sweepstakes: Everyone wants to go on a summer vacation, but not everyone can afford to do so. Run a sweepstakes where you ask people to post photos … Continue reading
Social Contests and Sweepstakes: Favorite (and Least Favorite) Platforms to Use
Social contests and sweepstakes are currently the most popular tactic that we are seeing our clients use to increase brand awareness and reach. The Marden-Kane team has some strong ideas on what social platforms work, and which ones can cause headaches. We compiled this list of pros and cons to use when evaluating social platforms for your brand’s next social promotion. Remember: If you are thinking of running social contests or sweepstakes, be mindful when deciding which platform(s) to use, your call to action, and that you follow each platforms’ promotion guidelines. And as always, keep it legal by … Continue reading
Use the Marden-Kane Social Tracker Tool for a Successful Hashtag Contest
Marden-Kane’s Social Tracker tool is a quick, efficient way to run a social sweepstakes or contest. A social media sweepstakes or contest is a cost effective way for your brand to gain followers and increase sales without setting up a special web site or sophisticated data collection. The Social Tracker tool tracks hashtags, likes and comments on social media platforms. Simply let us know what hashtag to track for your promotion, what social platforms you want to track, and the dates you want the promotion to run. We take care of the rest! We send you daily reports on … Continue reading
Working with Third Party Brands for a Contest
You should approach working with third party brands in a contest or sweepstakes with caution. Giving away highly sought after prizes like trips, electronics or gift cards, or running promotions on social platforms, may seem like a great idea to garner interest and new followers for your brand. However, if you are naming a specific brand name other than your own as part of your contest, you may need to ensure you are using best practices for using that third party brand. Ask for permission It is a good idea to obtain permission prior to offering third party products … Continue reading
#Hashtag Contests 101
The buzzword in contests right now are hashtag contests (or hashtag sweepstakes). These types of promotions are easy to run, less expensive than setting up a contest web site, and don’t require a lot of lead time. The simplicity and low cost appeals to a lot of businesses anxious to expand their social channels, but you will still need to follow some best practices to ensure that you don’t run into any issues. What is a hashtag contest? A “hashtag contest” or “hashtag sweepstakes” is a promotion that requires users to post to a social channel using a unique hashtag. … Continue reading
Social Contest Platforms: Inexpensive, Easy…and Risky
Today I was sent a link to an article touting Platforms for Social Contests that will “launch and track your contest with ease.” The article then went on to list eleven platforms, all relatively cheap – well, really dirt cheap or even free – and all the wonderful features each one had. If I were looking for a way to run a contest and I didn’t know any better I would think that this contest business should be this inexpensive. Cough up a couple hundred bucks and we’re ready, right? But hold up. I know better. And you get … Continue reading
How to Contact Winners in Social Media Contests
Running a promotion on Twitter or Instagram or other social platform is fairly easy. You basically follow the social platform guidelines, post rules, collect entries and select winners from valid posts or tweets or pins. The hard part can be contacting and clearing winners. In a traditional contest where a form is used to collect data you typically collect address and phone or email so contacting winners is easy. A small prize can easily be mailed straight to an address. A winner of a larger prize can be called or emailed. But in a social promotion all you may … Continue reading
50 Reasons to Run a Sweepstakes or Contest
Looking for a reason to run a sweepstakes, contest, instant win game, rewards program or loyalty campaign? Here are 50 of them! To create an email opt-in list. To create a mobile opt-in list. To give away your products. To build your brand. To encourage brand loyalty. To encourage product try-on. To encourage product usage. To encourage product trial. To reward your loyal customers. To introduce your customers to a new product or service. To launch a new campaign. To gain new customers. To create a mailing list. To encourage user reviews of your products and services. To have … Continue reading
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