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Contest Marketing & Follow-up

Lesson 30 from: Unlock the Power of Pinterest

Melanie Duncan

Contest Marketing & Follow-up

Lesson 30 from: Unlock the Power of Pinterest

Melanie Duncan

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Lesson Info

30. Contest Marketing & Follow-up

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Bonus Video with Purchase: Create/Convert to a Business Account

07:39
2

Bonus Video wtih Purchase: Business Resource Center

04:25
3

Bonus Video With Purchase: Your Profile

06:27
4

Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Create Boards

10:16
5

Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Edit Your Pins

03:17
6

Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Follow

02:01
7

Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Pin

07:46

Lesson Info

Contest Marketing & Follow-up

So my favorite part you guys know is the marketing and this is where I think you really can choose whether or not the contest is going to be successful to the deciding factor is how you market it. And what do you think the biggest fail is for people when they choose to market their Pinterest contest? What is the most common mistake? Any ideas? It's not doing it not doing it absolutely. And I hinted about this earlier on Lee promoted on Pinterest. It's like there's this mindset that it's a Pinterest contest. So she secret we could on Lee talk about it on Pinterest and it's not true. I really think the best way to run any contest, whether it's on Facebook, Pinterest, instagram anywhere again integrated, integrate your social media marketing. And so what we did is we posted heavily on her Facebook page about our Pinterest contest. We actually changed for luxury. Monograms are cover photo. You know that big open space you can use on your top your Facebook page. We used a big banner, said h...

air right up in it to win it contest. Click here for details. They clicked on the cover photo. We had a brief description and a link to the contest page on our site where they could enter. We also did multiple posts on our page. I think this is an example coming at, so we obviously e mailing list. But we did do a post on the page where we said, Hey, we're doing a pennant to win a contest. Big image Click here to enter and we link to the page on our site where you could do that. So don't be afraid to use roller platforms, particularly we said earlier, because you probably have more Facebook fans and Pinterest followers reach out to them. The other obvious extension of that is emailing your list, letting them know that a Pinterest contest is going on. And so many of my clients I, you know, some of you might be going This is really obvious. It's really obvious after you hear it. But I had a lot of clients that were running contests, and I said, OK, so you email your list, right? Oh, no, I think about that. Uh, let them know again, these people have raised their hand and said, Yes, I'm interested in what you're doing. I'm interested in actually being able Teoh engaged with your brand and do more stuff. So we eat all this out to our list. Got some exciting news to share. Were hosting a special sweepstakes on Pinterest. This is after I learned that I was, in fact hosting a sweepstakes, not a contest. And here's you know how you can enter. Click here for details. I always do images in my emails much more effective for engagement. And I said it only takes a few minutes to enter and you could win over $200 worth of prices. Let them know how simple it's going to be. Some people see a contest, particularly Pinterest contest. They go probably take a lot of times, so I say it's on. Lee takes a few minutes minor cost and then look at the juxtaposition of the benefit and you could win over $200 worth of prizes. So I'm very strategic in the way that I am enticed scene and choosing to get people excited about this contest. Check out the contest detailed here, Link. The contest ends on May 24 so make sure to enter right away worldwide audience. What is the correct amount of time with the most effective amount of time to run a contest? Type in the chat room? What do you think it ISS a week? Two weeks a month? What is the most effective frame are the most effective length of time to run a contest in studio audience. Any ideas? All right, well, while we are checking that as well, and these guys are thinking we're just gonna took your mike a little bit. But in the meantime, just wanted to let you know that we have so many questions coming in on this as well. I love that. Earlier you said, Now is the best time to do a contest on Pinterest because other people aren't doing it and you're now giving us the ability to do so. So let's get some comments on that. And then maybe we can take questions later. Yes, I guess three weeks, guys. Two weeks of the most people would get impatient otherwise. All right, Rachel on the idea, I would guess Two weeks isn't back two weeks and doesn't testing across. It also depends on your brand. I mean, some people need a little more time to AMP it up. But the general rule of thumb seems to be two weeks. Is the right amount of time shorter than two weeks? You don't have time to build the anticipation and the maximize thematics exposure for the contest longer than two weeks. People kind of loses momentum there, kind of sick of seeing you post about it. People who wanna win are like I don't even entered. That contest is is so random. So two weeks into be that sweet spot of time to start promoting have a full promotion, talking about amping up buzz energy, energy, energy and the winner announcement. So two weeks is what I really recommend. One week to short, one week tends to be. There's just not enough time to promote it fully. You know, you can only post about it a few times. People, some people, both my mind, you know, they check their email never a few days so they might miss it. So you need enough time to do the touch points and to build the anticipation to have people share it. That just seems to be one week since to be a little bit short. people miss it way had people who were guessing everywhere from hours Teoh a month, Yeah, thank you for and definitely do like I see flash sales and that sort of thing. But I think when it's less than that, you just don't have the time to really drum up the excitement and get the most engagement and exposure around it. So it's an example I was talking about earlier. Here's an actual update we did to our Facebook page, where we pinned our We posted the picture of the image, the description and a link to the page on the site, and I really recommend some people will dio their pin it to win it contest, and they don't have people enter on a site near where have you seen this? Where they're like, Oh, just reap in this image to win. You can't do that cause you can't track who enters people. Pinter's will only show like the last 10 people who pinned, pinned or repent something, and then it says, and 100 other people. But if you click on that, you can't see who's who. Those people are so again bringing it home. I always say this should be hosted on your website. I've seen people do the Pinterest contest in the I frame of Facebook. You can totally do that. But for me, I want him on my site whenever I can. However, I can get him there. I want it on my site. So even when people we tracked this were coming to enter the Pinterest contest and it was on a page on our site, they would enter. And then we go look at some of our products. We get that interest in that exposure. So I recommend having that Pinterest or having the contest page posted on your site somewhere. So now we're going to talk about the follow up and I teased earlier. I said We actually got the most amount of our sales after the follow up. They're after the contest had ended. Any ideas? Why? Why would they buy after the contest and not during the contest that make any sense? No, it doesn't make any sense, right? Until you see this. So here's what I did. I sent out the email to look at the restaurant. I sent out the email and I said, and the winner is subject lines are always like I got to get him interested in excited. Everybody opens this email. You want to know who won you want? No fits you. So now I've got a really effective subject line. I said thank you all so much for participating. And that was a typo in the luxury monograms. Pin it to win it contest. Everyone did a wonderful job selecting such great choices from our site. We really appreciate your support and involvement. I'm thrilled to announce that the winner is and I put the winner's name right there. Congratulations, Sue. Over one here. Luxury monograms. We believe that you are all winners, right? So if you shop our site in the next 24 hours will give you 10% off your order. Just use coupon code, pitted it. Check out. Thanks so much for making our contest such a success. So here's what It is effective right now. People are excited about our brand. They just had fun. They engaged they you know they interacted with us. Some of these people, after entering the contest, went to our science thought All right. If I win, what do I want? you know, they start thinking about that. I was gonna win. So the office. Oh, my God, That pillow is so cute. I love that pillow. They started to think about what they wanted from our site. They primed themselves to shop from us. So what happens is when they get a coupon, they're going, OK, I didn't win. And you wouldn't want to do this during the contest because people are going on, I win on my win. They're not gonna buy anything right now. I might win it for free so a lot of people won't actually buy from you during the contest. And if you don't do something like this, you'll miss out on them winning now. That being said, if your prize a specific thing, if I would have said you have a chance to win a pillow, people might have still want a luxury monograms and bought a placemat or bought a tote bay because they're going Oh, I'm not gonna That's not what the possible prices, but not a lot of people going to go buy a pillow during that time because you're still thinking I'm I win it, so I'm not gonna buy it now. So for us, this was effective because we didn't generate a lot of sales during the contest because they had the choice to win anything. But what it did dio is get people to check out our products and think about what they would possibly want as a prize that they won. So this was very, very effective. Other key strategy scarcity. Limiting timeframe, giving them a time to act. If I just said all right, 10%. Whenever you want people forget about. Okay, that's good. Maybe I'll use it for Christmas. But a time Christmas comes, you know, they toy forgotten about us. So if you are willing to give a coupon, it always recommend having a definite time limit limit, you know, within 24 hours within the next week, the next 10 days by January 30th. Whatever you want it to be, however, you want to put it in there. But I really recommend doing this. So this is cool. We're taking the excitement people have about the brand. We've already we've been in their thoughts and they're like, OK, that's pretty solid. You know, I didn't win, but least I'm getting something so This is something I really, really recommend. If you're running a contest, you've got email everyone anyways, and let them know who won. Why not also leverage that into an opportunity to get first time customers or more customers to buy from you? And this could be for your clients to so talking of this for a service business, maybe Samantha one that juice fast. So maybe an email your list and you say you everyone that entered you've got a particular segment of people who did enter for this. You reach out to them and you say, Okay, Samantha, when the juice cleanse. Yea, Samantha. But, you know, I really value all of you participating. So what I'm gonna dio is I am going to send everyone my free three video online Siris for a bunch of these cool exercises. You can dio Okay, that's kind of cool. They've never washed any of your videos that never checked them out. So they go, they start watching them and they go. I like this girl. I had no idea. You are now being able to introduce more of your brand more of your content. You can invite them to a free training. You know, I normally don't do this, but I'm gonna go ahead and hop on a webinar, and I'm going to go ahead and share some of my biggest diet secrets. I mean, you can frame it, you know, whatever your industry is. But this is this is an email. But like I said, most who were gonna open, So use it. Don't just say, OK, The winner is everyone else piece. Use this to then parlay it into. But, you know, I want to give you one my e book or I want Teoh. Yeah, if you're a very small like targeted premium service, you could say, but I open to given anyone a free consultation that entered this contest. If you'd like to set up a time click here in schedule, My Google calendar, like you could leverage us into more premium services. Well, and give everyone that entered a chance to do a consultation. See if you know this is gonna be a right fit for your business. It fits into anything. It's not just about giving a coupon to sell more pillows, but this is a chance to take an active and got engaged group of people and now turn them into participants of your business. And people don't do this with contests. I think it's Ah, it's there, leaving a lot on the table. Any questions? Melanie. We have so many questions on these. Okay, so, money. Let's start with Terra Di had earlier asked, other than the pennant to win it type of contest. Yes, you mentioned there are other types. Yep. What might some of those beak so besides, dip in it to win it? Some people will have just one pincer contest pin, They say. Reap in this and you'll be entered. So you on Lee the only thing that they have to repentance the contest pin. That's a very simple, straightforward way to do it other. And what's more commonly seen on Pinterest is where you have to create a board. So you'll say, Okay, create a home decor board, pin three products off of luxury monograms and fill your board with other items that you'd love to have in your home or of other inspiration for your home or decorate. We want everyone to create a luxury monograms living room board, so pen with the other furniture that you'd like to have in your living room and pin a few aspirational things that you'd like from our website that would go in that living room so people will create, you know? Oh, and this is where the discovery in the aspiration of Pinterest can really take part because people are dreaming, you know, they're not necessarily going well, you know, I tend tohave account from West Elm, so I'll pin that couch and open one your products, People go. Oh, well, if I could have anything, I would get this couch over here. Oh, and then I would do these pose and Oh, my God. I've always wanted that There may blanket, so I'm definitely gonna pin that too. And they just have fun and that positive energy and that enjoyment transfers over to how they feel about your brand. You know, I told you, throw some emotional stuff in your psychology is when my favorite things to talk about, But that is cool. So people are now associating this positive. That's great. This happy experience with your products and services as well, which is something else I think is really cool about using contests. But to go back to the question. So the structure is. You can have people just repent a single pin. You can have people pin a certain amount of items off of your site, or you can have them actually create a specific board for that contest. Marketing Mojitos is asking that it seems like the rules on Pinterest are kind of a moving target. How do you stay on top of the latest changes? Contest rules? Do you check constantly story there. That's a great question. Any time when you go to the business of the business Pinterest area so business dot Pinterest dot com you will actually be able to pull it the latest terms of service, the latest contest rules. I haven't seen them change very much, literally. I think the first year and 1/2 there was nothing about contests on there, and I haven't seen them change it all again. This is where I give it a little bit of favor favoritism over Facebook, which does had to change all the time. I don't see Pinterest really changing or updating or really going after strictly strictly strictly monitoring their contest very much. I don't think it's something they're super concerned about right now. And speaking of monitoring Tina to wants to know how you can be sure that people do all of the things that you've stipulated in your contest. Yes, Tina, you can go through every participant and check and make sure that they have done each one of the steps. You may even want to. The person that you select is a winner. For whatever reason, make sure that they in particular went through and did all of the steps. I don't check everyone the truth, ISS Even if I say you have to pin three things and someone pins one thing, they still Pinson me for my sight. I'm happy. But if I am selecting the winner, that's the only person that I will go through and make sure that they did do the stipulations. But as for everyone else that entered, I don't tend to really navigate and make sure that Okay, you know, did every single person pin three things that every single person share this pin. The only personal fall through with is the person providing the price to Okay, so that sort of answers the question. A lot of people were asking, including Otter Creek. How do you keep track of the entries? Yes, so and that's the reason that I have that comprehensive list of Make sure to give us our email address because a lot of times you can reach out to people. If you want to verify and say, OK, cool, you know, were carried on the entrance. Will you send me a link to your Pinterest page? I just want to go through and check a few things, e mails, the best way to reach out and really find people. There's a particular question or something you want to cross check. Great. Well, let's ask some more questions. We've got Natalie, and I know I was surprised. I didn't quite realize what the difference was between a sweepstakes and a contest. So crazy really remind Natalie and other folks about that again. What? What do we need to do for it to be a contest? Right and again detail police. I called Mina contests because most people associate contest is that's amore common term. Even though mine is officially a sweepstakes, I don't know if that's wrong or right. That's just what I chose to Dio and you know I do. Like I said, I put disclaimers on the bottom of our contest page. I went ahead and looked up a few things online and figured out. You know, I have a little I had a little bullet point that I didn't show. It was not the same for everyone, but I said, You know, here's how we're selecting the winner were not liable for anything. Basically, this is the contest. If someone pinned someone else's content, were not liable for that were not liable for anything. We're going to get someone a pillow like, you know, let's just relax a little bit So I do put I do put, you know, just a not a general non liability clauses. The bottom, my contest. It doesn't seem to dissuade anyone from participating and just kind of It's making sure it's a business owner. You're protected. But like I said, you can Google that it's different to pay on the state you're in. We tended you just a really general clause that just says is the contest. It's for fun, you know, for some reason something happens. It's just not it's not our fault we're going to deliver on what we said, but other than that, those are our realms of jurisdiction. But I think that's covering. Most of the bases were talking about for how it should be framed and structured and the follow through of all of that, I think. Was it the how to keep track of the entry? Yeah, yeah, so I mean, just, you know, reaching out to people, You probably won't be able to monitor everything. It's probably not the most effective use of your time anyways, but I'm just cross checking and verifying the winner. All right, so email we talked a lot about that, using email to build build relationships, particularly that the winner is email at the end. So something else that happens after your contest ends is you still will get a lot of traffic to that page, particularly from Pinterest, because, like we said, a lot of that content gets recirculated all the time. So a big mistake people make is after the contest has ended. They either leave the contest page up and don't change it at all. And so people come there, they're like, Oh, this has already ended or this is you know it's weird or they just do something like it's over and it's like some default page like switched over there. Pereira put up. And it's just kind of this sad text like contest has ended. No one ever seen that you go to a contest page like, Oh, I'm interested in that. So you want to leverage that traffic? So what we did for this contest? Who said Sally, This contest has ended, but enter name and email below will let you know we launched the next one, so people are interesting. Go. Okay, well, sign up. But you have to do this. You can do a lot of things, but this is the page are now getting traffic to Did you want to give a coupon code? Do you want to say hey? Yeah, the conscious ended. But you know what? We can give you 10% off. Use this coupon code again. This goes back to knowing your customer value life cycle. If you know that a first time customer you can leverage that into three or four sales, which is very attainable for a lot of businesses, depending on your structure. Coupon codes can be great because they're just a little bump of incentive to get people to buy from you so that you can prove your value, improve your worth. So if you get people that are interested, that's gonna be a great page to give them a coupon code. This could also be a great page to give someone an E book. This could be a great page to get them report a checklist because you're promoting your business and your topic in this contest. Most likely. Hopefully you are so you can take people. You're gonna fitness contest. It's over. You could maybe say, Hey, it's Conte's over. But you know, here is a video with some of our most popular exercises. And again, this this is the same way you, with leverage thought follow up for what you would put in the email, take this traffic and leverage it in a way to get people to engage in experience with your brand further. So I really recommend doing something on this page utilizing this page because you're gonna get traffic to after the contest. So put something up a sign up a coupon code material free material people can sample and I'm get to know you better and shoes and decide whether they want to work with. You know, clients have actually gotten more clients and mawr sales from leveraging a contest page from three months ago from six months ago. These pages get traffic for a long time after that. T ell wants to know what you think of creating a video announcing the winner. Never gonna turn down a video. You can put that inside there. You will want a link it and host it on a page where you can also below the video, put text with a coupon code or something like that. I wouldn't just link it to YouTube. I would actually put it on a page on my site so that people click through there on my site. And I also have that coupon code about other thing they can dio on. It's all It's all there. It's all clean and very direct. Yeah, Can we? I'm not sure if you talked about the This is from Kimberly Collate tales. Well, any suggested frequency of contact? Super Super good question. So contests are kind of cool. You run one once, and as long as you do it with a goal in mind and you do it smart. So you follow some sort of a structure if you see a response to it. If you seen, you should be tracking, you know, during that two week period, do you get a spike from your traffic on Google Analytics? Do your sales increase afterwards, we'll be able to tell whether or not it worked. If you see that you promoted it correctly and you don't get a good response from it, you need to do it again. You know, this may be Pinterest is in the right platform for you. Maybe it's just your contest didn't have the right prize, but most people will see a good response and you can run contest. We actually do them quarterly now because we saw a good response to them, and a lot of times what we started to do that works. The best is we run a contest around a trending topic, so we'll run a Christmas contest and will say, All right, go ahead and pin your holiday decor, using three products from luxury monograms and other like beautiful holiday decor on items you find online, and we tend to see just like trending topics work for boards and for pins. They also work really well for contest. You probably saw there were a lot of Pinterest contests around Valentine's Day. There were a lot of Pinterest contest that happened around Mother's Day. I saw much of Pinterest contest, so that's a cool way. We tend to do four now, so quarterly throughout the year, and we do base them around a particular holiday or theme themes seem to be another really cool way. Teoh. Just make it more of an experience. The contest. So some sort of theme around it as well. It's really effective. We have some more questions. That's all right. Okay, Question from Middle C. How long do you give the winner to respond? 40 hours. If they don't respond in a certain amount of time, do you give the prize to somebody else? That's a great question. I've never had the problem. Normal people do respond. I don't if that's it, that's it Depends. It's up to you. You know, you have selected a winner, so if that person doesn't respond, that's totally their decision. And I don't think you have to feel like, OK, gotta find someone else. But a lot of people are very generous, and they would go well, I'm going to give this price to someone. So if it's not, too, you'll reach out and give it to someone else. But you just do what feels right for you. Michelle and R. B A is asking if there are any good resource is for the logistics of running contests thing where you might find samples of the wording for contest rules or things like that. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if I'm allowed to directly plug a product. I have a product called Contest that converts. If you had a contest that converts dot com and it's an entire information product on how to run a contest, it gives you all of the resource is the email sweat files, the templates. But other than that, you know, I think Google would be the best place to find that information is just gonna be a little bit more scattered. Yeah, Rachel, if you have any comments, so I'm targeting businesses and entrepreneurs. Yeah, I'm running contests towards other towards business people as a because you can't really run christmas and I don't know what I would not want to, like, make a board about. I don't know what. So are you looking like for theme for a contest or what? Yeah, Yeah, this is fun. So I'm an answer this. I also want to post out to the worldwide audience. So Rachel is looking to run a contest that is going to engage business owners. What is something that business owners might be interested creating a board around the kind of ideas around something that pops into my mind. This is just a really kind of obvious example, cause I work with a lot of women entrepreneurs, as I might say, you know, create your perfect office space and so I would have people pin, you know, office spaces. They find very inspiring places they'd like toe work. And I'd say, in addition, you know, please pin three pieces of content off my blawg, and that's where it concerts. Runners might be going. Okay. Wait, I don't understand. What am I supposed to have them pinned if they're not paying my products? That's where I would create a board. I think I had an example of this actually, on my on my business page. Let me see if I can find it, cause this is it really addresses. Let me see if I can find this real fast because you still want to get people Teoh pin things off of your site even if you don't have products for them to pin off of. But sometimes it's easier to put them on a board. So what? I had people dio when they run contests and they are service providers is create a board full of contest that they scribble full of content, that they could have their entrance repent that would bring them business and exposure. So this is a contest board that I would have if I was running a business. If I was running a contest for my service business, I would have people pin articles of mine checklists of mine. Um, you know, lists, videos of mind that share my advice, book recommendations, stuff like this. So I'm not going to send the necessary to my site, which I mean, you know, I want to dio, but this curates a little bit easier. You could say Go to my site and pen three articles, but you know, people go to this and I go, Okay, I get it sold. Pin, you know her article on how to be creative? All pin this tools and resource is and maybe all pin one of her videos. And so, as a service provider, it really does rely on having good content that you can share and put out there. You know, maybe one of your pins links your often page. Maybe one of them is an e book, things like that. So then they're pinning cool office spaces. But then they're also pinning your stuff and getting it out there, getting your expertise, your information on dure products or programs out there as well. Did he have any ideas online for, like, different themes? I did the office space, which is kind of an easy copout. But any other boards that maybe entrepreneurs would be interested in creating? Not just yet, No problem. So, you know, office Space Board trying to think, you know, maybe business information. You know, here's all these, like, great resource is pin really good resource is whether it's from mashable or whether it's from, you know, Forbes online, like pin cool articles, that type of stuff tips interesting videos, you know, just kind of formulated around what that audience would be interested in. I think something because it's a Pinterest contest, something around like an office space or like pin your ideal website inspiration, something that's a little bit more vision board or something, Gail Marie says. Travel spots good and bad, Jeremy says. For business owners, ideal office party creative outfits for the workplace. Jennifer can't create your ideal lifestyle, Career board and Valerie as solutions for you. Productivity Love at this Middle C favorite songs to get people in the holiday spirit very cute.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Post Design Elements.zip

bonus material with enrollment

MDBusinessPinterestH264.mov
How To Get Lots of Pinterest Followers Fast.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

What an incredible amount of GREAT information that Melanie gives in this course! I couldn't watch it all live, but I saw enough in about 30 minutes to know I had to have it and so I bought it and it is worth EVERY PENNY! I can't wait to start utilizing all the great info to make my Pinterest boards work for me and have more fun pinning! Thank you CreativeLive and Melanie!

Stamperdog
 

So glad I saw this and got it to keep. With just a few tweaks, I turned my non-active boards into active boards and quadrupled my followers in just a few days. This spilled over into site traffic AND major lead generation for my mailing list. Thanks for the inspiration, Melanie.

Michelle Smith
 

Awesome learnt so much thank u

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