Running a competition is a very simple way of growing a business. When used effectively a competition will create a buzz around a brand and increase word-of-mouth marketing.

Effective marketing tools are simple. Follow our helpful guide to ensure the competitions you run are effective and deliver a high ROI.

1. Identify your target audience

For a competition prize to be a useful marketing tool it needs to be specific to your target audience because if it isn’t it won’t capture their imagination. Ultimately you won’t receive a high ROI if the people who enter the competition are unlikely to buy or use your service.

2. Decide your marketing goal

What do you want the competition to achieve? Repair your company’s reputation, raise awareness, increase sales or drive traffic to your website? Failure to identify this prior to launching a competition will affect its ROI

3. Choose a prize relevant to your brand / business

The prize you choose will have the ability to act as an advertising tool, further increasing the ROI of the competition and its overall impact. Using a promotional product as a prize is a fantastic idea as long as you’re careful to choose something your target audience will want and find useful. Importantly, it can be branded with key messages which will help you meet your goals by continuing to advertise your brand for months, if not years.

4. Choose where you announce the competition carefully depending on your target audience

Traditionally it may have been as simple as advertising a competition in a trade or consumer magazine. Now, in a world where social media is consumed by a large proportion of the population, this is a far more complicated issue to get right. However, once you know who you are targeting it should be straight-forward.