12 Great Reasons Why To Run Your Competition On Facebook Messenger

 Most people dream of running a contest that goes viral. A promotion that gets massive success for little money. A give away that establishes the brand in the hearts and minds of millions.

Most likely this is not going to happen. Competition success is not defined by number of entrants alone. There are lots of reasons why you still should run contests. Especially using Facebook Messenger as a platform.

Here are 12 reasons why.

1. To build community - two way communication between members.

When your audience starts communicating with one another they start to create community. You unlock the knowledge & capacity to help one another more than you can alone. Community synergy magnifies your brand value where 1+1=3. To do this your competition might ask for a solution to a common problem. People might comment or upvote on others answers.  

2. To move followers to different social channels eg Insta to Facebook etc.

Often social media channels have lifecycles. Engagement on Twitter and Facebook might have moved onto Instagram or Messenger. So it makes sense to move your followings. By making a condition that people use a certain channel to enter you can shift people across. Daily Messenger use is growing fast and replacing traditional channels like SMS messaging.

3. To get social shares or a product or service or digital asset eg product launch.

Competitions are an excellent way to promote a new product or service. For example a Messenger ChatBot. The product will be novel in some way as they are new. Sharing is likely. If your competition and bot is well designed, integrated sharing will make it easy for the users to do so. So if each person who enters shares with 2 people you are getting 3 for 1 awareness.

4. To increase subscribers eg email or messenger.

This is the traditional reason people run competitions. To get email addresses of prospects for the business. By its nature interacting on Messenger adds someone as a subscriber to your channel. Inside the contest you can ask a user for their email address and sync that to your CRM platform. Mailchimp integrates with Messenger. Third party services like Integromat or Zapier can also connect to other CRMs. 

Remember that Messenger subscribers are more valuable than email subscribers. Why? They open more, they click through more and as such that means they buy more.

5. To Increase sales - eg coupon to all entrants.

Speaking of sales there is no reason that only the first few places have to win. You can share a discount coupon with every entrant. This may take them from being aware and interested all the way to desire and action. 

Of course you could make a purchase a condition of entry such as raffles to win a home. Perhaps you have a set of lapsed prospects who you want to incentivise to make their first purchase. The competition is shown only to them.

6. To increase engagement through comments - eg comment on this post to enter.

"Mention or tag a friend who you would like to share this prize with" is a common request in competitions. You run close to the Facebook law when you do this. It’s like click bait so you need to refer to the Facebook competition terms and conditions here.

7. To increase the number of followers on a channel to use that channels features.

With Messenger still being new it is the early adopters that are on board at the moment. Lots of businesses have more email addresses than Messenger subscribers. Through use of a specific url in an email you can get people to interact with your Messenger channel. This shift allows for use of the new platforms specific benefits. For example choose your own journey personalisation, or body specific calculations.

8. To segment and collect data on entrants.

Messenger Marketing is fantastic for segmenting and collecting data on your contest entrants. You can ask for traditional information such as phone and email addresses. You might also ask questions to help you qualify them further like,

• who are they (eg Personal Trainer), 
• what are their goals (Gain new clients), 
• where are they from (Postcode 2133) , 
• when are they likely to buy what you offer (Next 6 months), 
• what is their budget ($1500). 

Like most things the more you ask the less responsive people will be. If you don’t need it now don’t ask. 

9. To get word of mouth referrals - high quality traffic.

Referrals are the best possible source of traffic. To have someone else vouching for your brand other than you is money from heaven. In advertising we talk about starving the donkey's to feed the stallions. That is reduce your spend on low lifetime value (LTV) audiences in favour of high LTV audiences.

This is not always possible with scale limitations of different channels. As Messenger has billions of people on the platform that is not going to be your problem.

10. To build your brand - eg emphasise a point about your brand.

All brands have strengths and weaknesses. These are in the eyes of the beholders and not what is in your marketing plan. But Messenger competitions make people do things. One of the best ways people learn is through doing. So if you have 

• a customer service weakness make them write a post purchase review, 
• if you’re not insta famous ask users to post photos of your product. 

Think laterally and there will be a way to address your weakness.

11. To save money over advertising costs.

So Google advertising can be outright cost prohibitive. Some keywords are $10/ click and with a 5% conversion rate that means you are paying $200 to get 1 customer. 

Prizes for competitions may sound expensive and they should. The higher the perceived value the better.  "Win A $500 Winter Wardrobe" values the prize at $500 but a Winter Wardrobe sounds more expensive. 

You only pay the wholesale cost. You could even ask your suppliers to sponsor the promotion by donating the prize. Or you might partner with other brands in your niche that don’t compete with you. 

Facebook sees "Comment on this post" type competitions as engaging. It rewards the advertisers with low cost per clicks. 

This is how competitions save you money.

12. Fun, not traditional content.

Let's face it. Content like this blog post is boring. I don’t like to read it. I don’t like to write it, but it conveys the message. 

Messenger can make cool "choose your own adventure" type games or quizzes. They can be media rich. Full of sights, sounds & touches not only words. Messenger competitions make people feel good. It's an experience. 

The little bit of excitement, that hoping to win creates, is what competitions are all about.

So which of these reasons why facebook Messenger is great for competitions do you like? 

Any, none, 1 or some? What else is a good reason? 

Please leave me a comment below and if you do like this please share as a hat tip my way. 

Thanks

Anthony

About Anthony Idle

Anthony Idle is a Freelance Marketing Manager and loves helping people create unique customer experiences. He has spent the majority of his career in sales and marketing across multiple industries, gaining experience in areas such as digital advertising, smart automation and marketing strategy. While program development and optimisation is is his primary function by day, Anthony loves spending time with family at the beach, on bush trails or on his adventure motorbike. He has an MBA from QUT and a number of certifications from Google and DigitalMarketer.