Yes, we ran a contest, but that in itself did not generate the hype necessary to increase both traffic to our site and the number of Likes … as the saying goes, there’s more to the story. From previous experience with contests we knew of three strategies to avoid or minimize in order to obtain “legitimate” or ongoing useful Likes.
First, we understood that the length of the contest should not be more than 4-5 weeks else the chronic contest goer websites would start funneling unqualified traffic into the system. We wanted our contest entrants to be those interested in the theme of the site, Facebook Page and Twitter accounts, being Costa Rica, that we could then continue to reach out to in the future. Our previous experience had been that if signups are solely contest related that there is a large drop out on subsequent contacts and low responses to calls to action.
Second, avoidance of utilization of a Liking service such as available through Fiverr.com to source a high volume of Likes. For the same reason in avoiding professional contest goers, we wanted to ensure that the Liking population would be valuable for future contact else the value of what is essentially a list would be low.
Finally, using PPC to drive traffic to the contest has to be crafted in such a way that the theme was foremost and the contest only the means to motivate action. For the same rationale as above. if the call to action is only contest related, the overwhelming appeal is to those same professional contest goers that are not ongoing interaction candidates.
So we set out to gain as many legitimate Likes as possible. The means to do so was outreaching to our existing network of followers and website visitors with calls to action to share the promotion amongst their like minded friends. Notably, this outreach strategy involved the following tactics:
The result was a total of over 1,000 Likes and for our client over 1,200 entries into the Contest, which Likes and entries can be effectively mined for the foreseeable future.