Running Competitions to Promote Your Membership Site

Reader Disclosure

If you're seeking a way to promote your membership site's website as well as increase your reach, running an event could be your solution. Naturally, there is a variety of ways to increase your audience, but contests and giveaways could be very effective.

Contents          Toggle

•     Benefits of Using Competitions and Contests
•       Reach a Wider Audience
•       Boost Social Media Following
•       Increase Website Traffic
•       Grow Your Email List
•       Encourage Discussion
•       Promote Your Membership Product
•     Key Points to Consider Before Running a Competition
•     How to Run a Competition for Your Website
•       Contests & Giveaways by Fatcat Apps
•       Comment Contest
•       No Frills Prize Draw Competitions
•     Final Thoughts

In this article we'll go over the benefits having a contest for your website to boost its traffic and give the necessary tips to get to the point of starting.

Benefits of Using Competitions and Contests

Before we get to the tools that can assist you in running a contest on your website for membership, here are some advantages of creating the contest.

Reach a Wider Audience

If the entry into your contest requires the participant to share your website on social media or in other places, then reaching a wider number of people could be the most important reason to run a contest.

Many contest management services give you the ability to accept contest entries via social media, with sharing and tweeting of your content giving your guests the possibility of winning.

Each share on social media might put your website and your membership products in the hands of new potential visitors or members. Therefore it's an excellent idea to have some sort of social media aspect to your contests.

Boost Social Media Following

Gaining more followers on social media can be a aim in and of it's own. If you use the social media platform to let participants participate in the competition, having people follow your account in order to participate can naturally increase the number of followers you have.

To increase website traffic

The right contest can be certain to increase website traffic. For one, you can include a contest entry form to be a form of advertising on the part of those who participate. A second option is a contest offering a thrilling prize can become a newsworthy event in itself. Creating a generous contest giveaway provides you with an opportunity to reach out to important influencers, blogs, and other major players in your niche by offering them something to talk about that their fans could be attracted to.

This new exposure could increase the number of visitors to your website, which gives you more chances to convert these new customers to members or subscribers.

Grow Your List of Emails

Once those visitors have joined your email list in order to participate in the contest, you can start putting your email campaign to work and start providing great content to your newly subscribed subscribers. When your new leads have warm, you are able to offer your membership service to your new leads.

Engage in discussion

Another method for running a contest is to choose the winner among all who's left a message on your blog. Because comments can lead to debate about your site as well as its products for membership It is worth taking the time to encourage your visitors to contribute their views.

Promote Your Membership Your Membership

The last but not least is organizing a competition will assist in the promotion of your membership product. Through creating a contest that is newsworthy which other members in your field would like to share with their audience and/or having an participation process that incorporates promotions on social media in order to spread the word about your membership program.

Key Points to Consider Before conducting a contest

Before you begin to start your first contest, there are certain aspects to think about. To begin it's best to spend some time carefully considering the prizes you will offer.

Are you planning to give one grand prize, or have runners up prizes as well? A reduced or free access to the membership program is a good option. If you'd like to promote your contest for existing members it is necessary be thinking outside the box.

Be sure to ensure that the prize you choose to award is appropriate for the audience you're targeting, but making sure it's something they'll want to share on social media and make their own name known. Be sure to ensure that the budget for prize money will be in line with your goals for the contest and its outcomes.

It is hoped that your competition will bring more visitors to your site. If so, you'll need to be sure that you've set up procedures to handle this extra traffic, but get the most value from it.

Finally, don't forget to install website analytics in order to track the results of the contest. Google Analytics is a free program. Google Analytics makes it easy to check if your site is seeing an increase in traffic, where those visitors came from, and what you've seen them doing to your site.

How to Run a Competition for your Website

If you're making use of WordPress for your membership website, then it's even easier than usual to run an event. With a variety of great free and paid plugins available specifically designed to help with this, all you have to choose is the appropriate tool for the goals you want to achieve. Below is a short overview of some popular WordPress contest and competition plugins.

Promotions and Contests run by Fatcat Apps

The free Contests and Giveaways plugin can be used to create and run a contest which requires that your participants send their email addresses to participate. When the deadline for contests is reached and the plugin has completed its task, it will pick a winner at random. Due to IP monitoring and the usage of cookies, the contest plugin is able to thwart the fraud that is associated with contests.

If you want a quick and straightforward way to try competitions on your WordPress site, this plugin is a good option.

Comment Contest

The free Comment Contest plugin can assist you in generating discussion around your blog post. When enabled, the plugin will allow you to decide which posts are to be part of as part of the contest before picking the winner. As leaving a comment is all that's needed to participate in the contest, there should have a significant response by your readers.

No Frills Prize Draw Contests

This free plugin lets you begin hosting competitions on your WordPress website at no cost with the option of upgrading to a paid edition and unlocking additional features.

In the settings you can choose what your participants must complete to be eligible for the competition, including entering some text, answering an multiple choice query, or just hitting the enter button. The winner is automatically picked by the plugin. It is up to you to contact the lucky participant and hand over the prize.

If you're looking to get into the bottom of the pool with contests, then the premium KingSumo Giveaways plugin isn't cheap but it's feature-rich.

Final thoughts

If all goes to plan but, your competition could result in increased website visitors, more exposure via social media and new members for your program.

 Do you have any questions regarding running a contest for your membership website? Please let us know via the comments below.