As far as online marketing goes, a sweepstakes is one of the best ways to drive engagement. It is common sense marketing; whenever a user realizes that there is something in it for them, they are significantly more likely to engage. And the statistics back it up. 35% of Facebook page Likes come from people joining contests. (Syncapse – June 2013)
Creating an app can be a little tricky and I would recommend that you have a developer on your team for this part of the process, but there are also tools that make it much easier (see the bottom of the article for some of these tools). The best part about having your sweepstakes app on Facebook is that it is extremely mobile friendly and, if set up properly, will work for Android, iOS, and for regular web users.
Whether you already have a page with a massive following or you just launched your page and can count your likes on one hand, advertising your sweepstakes on Facebook is the best way to get the word out. Facebook has the ability to target your marketing campaigns like no other social site. For example: If you are running a company that sells fishing equipment, you can have your advertisements solely show for people who have added fishing as a hobby on Facebook. Taking it a step further, if you have realized that a particular age group is more likely to engage and make a purchase, you can target based on age, location, gender, participation in a particular Facebook Group, people that have liked a certain page and the list goes on and on. This targeting ability will help you refine your ads to only show up to people who have a high likelihood of engaging.
As I mentioned before, there are tools to help you set up a sweepstakes on Facebook if you are not a developer. Some of them also have the ability to manage your advertising campaigns. For larger companies, Google’s Wildfire is a great product that allows for management of several different social sites, advertising campaigns, and the creation of apps. For smaller companies, ShortStack and Wishpond both provide the ability to easily create Facebook apps for your campaigns; they just have fewer bells and whistles than Wildfire.
