Draw contests are an effective way of boosting brand awareness and engaging your community. Depending on the mechanics and the prizes up for grabs, this campaign can be a lever for conversion and loyalty.

But how to create an original draw contest that captures the attention of your audience? In this article, we share some tips for setting up and boosting your campaign.

Why use draw contests in marketing ?

A prize draw is a game where the winner is chosen at random. Participants can try their luck by taking part in an experience or by filling in a form. Whichever route they choose, the final stage will be the same: the user who wins the final prize will be the one chosen at random.

The prize raw is a simple, fair mechanism (everyone has the same chance of winning) that maintains the suspense. For brands wishing to organise this type of competition, it’s a way of capturing and maintaining the attention of their audience. The brand can offer  the audience an opportunity to boost their chances of winning by sharing the game on networks.

Prize draw contest can be used to achieve a number of objectives:

• Gain visibility thanks to the promise of a prize and the sharing of a gaming experience;
• Attract new customers (and increase traffic) by redirecting participants to a landing page to fill in the game form;
• Engage your community and build loyalty with an original and memorable interactive format;
• Generate conversion (by offering coupons to all participants at the end of the campaign);
• Collect data and refine customer knowledge by encouraging user to fill in a form.

How to make a prize draw ?

Although prize draws are easy to set up and personalise, it’s important to think about your campaign to maximise its impact. Here are the 5 steps to follow to create a prize draw experience.

1. Choose the configuration for your prize draw

As mentioned above, it is possible to share a prize draw competition via a simple entry form, or to enhance it with a gamification mechanic. Depending on the audience (prospects or loyal customers) and the distribution channel, the most appropriate game path will not be the same. Companies need to take into account the appetite for games and the time they have to interact with the brand.

Select the right mechanism for our audience and your objectives

When the prize draw follows a game trail, this mechanism offers a number of other advantages. In particular, it maximises the time participants spend with the company.

By opting for this type of game (mechanics + prize draw), the company can create a memorable experience. The challenge is to choose a mechanic that is adapted to the audience, possibly to the marketing period for which the campaign is being launched, but above all to the targeted objectives.

For example, marketing games can represent an opportunity to collect zero-party data. The company can refine its customer knowledge by offering a Quiz, or collect product preferences via Fan’s Choice.

Memory can be an interesting format for promoting products in an original and memorable way. This is the strategy chosen by the confectionery brand Motta, which has opted for this mechanism to promote its special Christmas range.

By choosing a game like the Quiz, the brand can attract participants by offering prizes to be won in a prize draw. For example, for its competition dedicated to green mobility, the SNCF offered vouchers worth 20 euros.

3. Offer attractive prizes to engage your audience

Which brings us to another important point for boosting the impact of your prize draw competition: the choice of prizes. Users will be all the more inclined to take part (and share personal data) if the prize is attractive.

The choice of prize is crucial to achieving specific strategic objectives. As we have seen, offering discount coupons to participants can be a way of increasing sales and boosting conversion rates. But by adding a deadline or conditions of use (online or in physical shops), brands can choose to attract more traffic to their e-commerce site or boost their web-to-store strategy.

4. Optimising the promotion of your competition with viral levers

To achieve these objectives, the prize draw must also reach its target audience, and reach as many participants as possible. Brands can increase the visibility of their campaign by relying on social sharing and virality.
For example, it is possible to activate a Refer a Friend option. This marketing tool gives participants the opportunity to maximise their chances of being drawn by recruiting new players. So if a participant has shared the game link and recruited 2 new registrants to the campaign, they will have 2 more chances in the draw. The organiser therefore turns each potential user into a brand ambassador and organically reaches new affinity leads.

5. Automate post-game management

A competition with a prize draw is different from an Instant Win (where the participant knows whether they have won or not). It is crucial for the brand organising the competition to make it easier to set up by automating the stages that can be automated.

With Socialshaker, companies can create a secure, random prize draw in just one click directly from the platform. It is also possible to automate the announcement of winners. Companies can send an email to players who have won a prize, saving them a lot of time.

Organising a draw contest is an excellent way of boosting the visibility, appeal and sales of your brand. With Socialshaker, you can create a captivating game experience, designed to achieve your strategic objectives while making the work of your marketing teams easier!