What defines “success” in terms of a Facebook contest? For eco-friendly shower head company Oxygenics, building the brand’s Facebook fan base from 117 to 8,758 (and still going) in less than three months sounds pretty good. So, how did Oxygenics drive traffic to the contest and get potential consumers excited enough to engage with the brand’s Facebook page?
The goal: to increase Oxygenics’ fan base on Facebook from 117 to 10,000 in just 90 days.
The method: First, the brand enlisted Shortstack to build a platform to run the contest on Facebook. Launched on March 12th, the contest asks entrants to provide their name, age, and email address to be eligible to win a $50 gift card to Bed Bath & Beyond, with a new winner being picked at random every day. Once fans enter the contest, they are encouraged to share it with their network of friends (see below).
The challenge: when a brand starts with such a small fan base, how can it drive traffic to the contest? Oxygenics spent over $200 on ads during the first three weeks of the sweepstakes, but still had less than 1,000 “likes” on Facebook. Consumers love contests and giveaways, but they have to be aware of them in order to participate.
The solution: Oxygenics’ marketing team found Facebook pages and blogs dedicated to contests and giveaways, with over 10,000 fans and a highly active audience. They began to market the contest to these outlets: posting it to Facebook pages, and offering bloggers Oxygenics shower heads for review. These pages – including Suburban Coupon Mom, Sweeties Sweepstakes and Freebie Junkie – gave the brand multiple mentions and encouraged fans to enter the contest, as reported by SmartBlog on Social Media.
The results: While the contest was launched on March 12th, the real results started to happen with Oxygenics’ outreach to blogger and giveaway sites. From the beginning of that outreach – April 3rd – until this week, Oxgenics added over 7,000 Facebook fans. One site – Sweeties Sweeps – was credited with sending over 2,500 fans to the contest. By consciously marketing to bloggers and giveaway sites, Oxygenics was able reach their ideal audience, largely composed of cost-conscious women in charge of the household shopping.
The cost? In addition to several hours of research, outreach, and emails from the Oxygenics marketing team, the brand paid for around a dozen shower heads that went to various bloggers in exchange for Facebook posts, blog mentions, and bloggers sharing the contest and brand name with their extensive networks.
Some specific highlights:
- Oxygenics saw an increase in individual post engagement after adding contest-blog fans; each post averaged 44 engaged users and a reach of 946 people
- After adding these fans, every Oxygenics Facebook post saw at least some form of engagement (like, comment, or share)
- Chicago, Los Angeles and New York are the top cities among Oxygenics’ new Facebook audience
- New fans are sharing the contest with their network — Oxygenics sees over 1,000 entries daily; shares from those entries result in an average of three fans per post
Connecting with bloggers was a highly successful strategy for Oxygenics to promote their contest and their brand. How can other brands hope to find the same benefits? SmartBlog on Social Media laid out several key findings related to blogger outreach:
- Find the blogger that fits the scope of your contest, and will be willing to help promote your brand in exchange for something. You can search for blogs using Google, or more specific blog-index sites like Technorati and Alltop.
- Tell bloggers exactly what you’d like them to do – tweets, posts, mentions, etc – and what you will provide in exchange, which must be valuable for their readers.
- Encourage bloggers to share your brand and contest with their networks.
- Give bloggers public credit – become their fan/follower, publicly mention them in posts or on your brand’s site, thank them for driving traffic to your site.
- Maintain the relationship – when one blog sent more than 2,000 fans to the Oxygenics contest, the company decided to purchase an ad on that blog.
Do you have any great examples of contests run on Facebook or another social media platform? Has your brand reached out to bloggers for support?
