How to create the perfect, free competition!

Here at The Competition Platform, we’d like to think we know a thing or two about competitions.

After over a decade of experience in helping to create eye-catching competitions with an abundance of different clients, we believe we have the definitive guide on how to create a perfect, successful competition.

Choosing the right publication

The first step is choosing the correct publication to host your competition with, so that you have the right audience viewing your brand and product(s). We’ve got a whole host of different publications to choose from, with each targeting a different audience so there is a site for every brand and business. The last thing you want to do is start a competition on our Men’s Health site to win a women’s gym-set bundle, as we imagine that won’t do too well on entries!

A great prize

This one is pretty self-explanatory, but having a stand-out prize on offer for your potential-entrants is a crucial factor in converting them into actual entrants. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to break the bank in order to get people to enter your competition. The prize could be an experience, or something money simply cannot buy, such as an item signed by somebody notable or tickets to an exclusive screening of a new film. Making your prize irresistible to your audience is a sure-fire way to get clicks and conversions.  

An eye-catching picture & snappy title

In our experience, the image and title for a competition is crucial when trying to catch the eye of any keen compers. When uploading competitions, we like to provide our clients with a series of guidelines to make sure that their image is as good as it can possibly be. These guidelines are as follows:

• No white backgrounds
• Keep text to a minimum
• Attempt to have a lifestyle image, rather than just the product or prize.
• Highest quality possible

Here are just a few examples pulled from competitions we have live at the moment:

Well-written copy

After catching their eye with your well-placed competition using your quality prize, picture and title, you now need persuade them to actually enter the competition, and potentially engage further with your brand, using some well-written, tempting copy. Using the power of the written word to describe the prize in all of its glorious detail can be enough to persuade a sceptical viewer to become an excited entrant. On the other hand, a competition with bad copy can be enough put off even the most dedicated of compers, so you need to make sure it’s top tier stuff!

A simple, relevant question

It is important when setting up your competition that the entry process is as simple and easy as possible. Including a question that has no relevance to the competition, or one that has a difficult answer to find, can be a quick way to deter any potential entrants. We recommend that you keep your question simple, relevant and easily-answerable by including the answer in the competition’s copy. You’ve put in all this effort to make your competition great, don’t scare people away with a University Challenge question at the end.

Share, share, share!

Now, you’ve got your competition set up and ready to go, it’s time bring the traffic! We find that the most successful competitions are the ones that are shared effectively across social media, forums, groups and email recipients. We offer our clients the chance to purchase additional prize sponsor benefits, which includes a feature in our weekly email newsletter that is sure to spike those entries! So spread the word about your amazing competition – whack it on your Instagram account, send it in your next monthly email blast, pop it in a few competition forums, or even place a link to the competition page on your own website.

Competitions are an effective way to increase your brand’s reach, improve your audience engagement, collect valuable data and improve the perception of your business amongst current and potential consumers. If you complete all of our steps, we believe you’ll have a competition that’ll leave your audience and your business as winners!

If you have any further questions about competitions, or would like get in touch with a member of our team to discuss setting up a competition, feel free to give our office a call on 0114 399 0828.