Coupons, Giveaways and Sweepstakes Get the Most Entries and Facebook Engagement
According to a report from Wildfire titled “5 Best Practices for Increasing Earned Media: Proven Facebook Campaign Types that Triple Sharing and Participation,” coupons, giveaways and sweepstakes get the most engagement on Facebook.
The study defines earned media as coverage you can’t buy. This includes “mentions, recommendations and shares generated by users who are so engaged by your branded content that they’re compelled to share it with the world (or, their Facebook network).” This is important, because 68 percent of Facebook users say a recommendation from a Facebook friend would make them more likely to buy a specific product or visit a retailer, according to Omnibus.
The tough part is that earned media can’t be directly bought or created – it must be had through marketing campaigns that are optimized for engagement and sharing activity.
According to Wildfire, coupons received an average of 3,037 entries per campaign, followed by giveaways with 1,888 entries, sweepstakes with 1,630 entries, pick-your-favorites with 1,070 entries and quizzes with 1,024 entries.
When it comes to sharing, however, pick-your-favorites led the way with a 39 percent rate of sharing, followed by quizzes with 32 percent, trivia contests with 29 percent, sweepstakes with 26 percent, essay contests with 25 percent and photo contests with 25 percent.
The three campaign types that are conducive to the most sharing are applications that determine and publicly displayed characteristics of the user’s personality, according to Wildfire.
Moving further along, it’s time to look at whether or not shares generated by users get additional new users to engage with the branded campaign as well – earned media clicks. Pick-your-favorites got an earned media click rate of 27 percent, followed by giveaways with 15 percent, quizzes with 13 percent, sweepstakes with 11 percent, coupons with 11 percent, trivia with 10 percent, photo contests with 3 percent, video contests with 2 percent and essay contests with 1 percent.
Wildfire also looked at earned media click-to-entry conversion rates for the different campaign types. It found that 82 percent of users who clicked on a post shared by a friend who took a quiz went on to take that quiz themselves. The earned media click-to-entry conversion rate was 74 percent for coupons, 74 percent for giveaways, 69 percent for trivia, 66 percent for sweepstakes and 47 percent for essay contests.
Earned media can account for up to a 12 percent boost in engagement rates (i.e., viewing, clicking and participating with a campaign), according to Wildfire.
Wildfire offered five best practices for running campaigns with high entry and earned media: 1) play up the personality, 2) consider what’s in it for users, 3) incentivize sharing behaviors in creative ways, 4) benchmark performance with the right metrics and 5) mix things up.
Source:
