Don’t do a Hoover!
Online promotions are a great way to build your brand, grow your online audience and follower base, and generate more leads/income.
Many businesses decide to run some form of online promotions in order to do one of the above. However, we understand that running an entire promotion can be a daunting job.
So we’ve put together some tips to help you plan your online promotions superbly.
Know your objectives
As obvious as this point seems, it can easily be dismissed. If you begin a promotion with one objective and soon change that half-way-through, you’re likely to find your promotion is difficult to understand for entrants, and you won’t get the desired outcome.
You may decide an online promotion is only to gather more contacts. You may also decide to run an online promotion for the benefit of your business (e.g. Win the opportunity to be the face of XYZ Cosmetics). Whatever your objective is, be aware of it before diving into your promotion.
Be realistic
In an ideal world, any online promotion we put out would draw in thousands of people and go viral but you can’t bank on that. Your objectives should be realistic and calculable.
For example “I want to attract 1,500 visitors to my website as a result of my campaign is a calculable objective”; “I want to build brand awareness” is not.
Think about a high, but achievable objective for the campaign, so you know whether you are on-track throughout.
*Note* – By assuming that your promotion won’t go viral, doesn’t mean to not allow for the capabilities of that happening! You should have set up a process for running your promotion smoothly with your web developers, ready for whether your promotion is going to go viral or not!
Know your target audience
This point can’t be stressed enough. Knowing your audience is essential to which channel you use to advertise your promotion.
When considering your target audience, think outside the box. Is there another group of people that could, potentially, show interest in your competition and business? If your promotion would attract interest from more than one group of people, it may be worth considering the wider world and how many people you can advertise to through different channels.
Fulfill your promises and play by the rules
Don’t make promises to your entrants that you cannot keep. This will dampen the imagine people have of you and could, quite easily, have a negative effect on your brand (not to mention legal issues!).
If you are planning for a certain type of promotion (e.g. in-store voucher redemptions), ensure that you are prepared for the volume of entrants you expect. If you don’t do this sufficiently, you could easily find your business is negatively perceived by your audience.
There are laws put into place for businesses running promotions, and they are strict. Make sure that either you or your legal team know the laws and are acting lawfully on your promotion-running.
If you’d like to speak to us about your online promotions, give us a call on 01858 414217.
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