How to Run a Video Contest in 2024 (13 Expert Tips)

With more and more businesses using video content to increase brand awareness, learning how to run a video contest makes a lot of sense.

Running an online video contest is a great way to gather user-generated content (UGC), grow your followers on social networks, and drive traffic to your website. And with UGC, you’ll have more high-quality content for your marketing campaigns to attract potential customers.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to run a video contest online step-by-step.

How to Run a Video Contest

Wondering how to do a video contest yourself? Follow the tips for creating a video contest below to learn how:

1. Set Clear Video Contest Goals

It’s hard to create an online contest without setting goals. Goals help you determine your success and measure the results after the contest is over.

For example, you might decide to run video contests to:

• Drive traffic to your website
• Increase your YouTube subscribers
• Boost brand awareness
• Build your podcast audience
• Generate more sales
• Collect video submissions for UGC
• Grow your email list subscribers
• Get more followers on social media
• Create a buzz around a new product or service

Choose a goal that aligns with your business and marketing motivations. Once you have a plan, running your giveaway campaign is much easier, and you’ll get the results you need.

2. Survey Your Audience for Video Contest Ideas

Your audience plays a part in how you set up your video giveaway contest. If you don’t know what your audience wants, you can’t offer a giveaway prize or experience people can get excited about.

Before creating your video contest, reach out to your audience and ask them what type of prize they’d go wild over. eCommerce sites could send an email survey to recent customers, bloggers can create an online survey for filmmakers and add it to a blog post, and YouTubers can run a video poll.

Once you know what your audience likes, you can use that information to choose an excellent contest prize, which we’ll cover next.

Check out these top WooCommerce plugins for other tools to boost your eCommerce website.

3. Offer Video Contest Prizes People Want

As we just mentioned, contestants won’t make an effort to enter your giveaway if your prize isn’t desirable. So, if you want to run a successful video competition, choose a grand prize that attracts many people. Remember to use the ideas you collected from surveying your audience when picking an award.

Some of the most popular contest prize ideas include:

• Free products or services
• Discounts and coupons
• Gift cards and gift certificates
• Cash prizes
• Prize bundles

Check out our complete list of contest prize ideas for more inspiration.

You’ll also want to ensure your prize is relevant to your target audience and brand. Silo Fit App offered a bundle of fitness goodies in this video contest example.

Choosing a prize you know your target audience will love helps you attract more contest entries from your ideal customers.

4. Create a Fun Video Contest Theme

Creating a theme for your campaign is another way to increase participation. Having a contest theme makes taking part more exciting and gives entrants the sense of being involved in something worthwhile.

Here are some fun video contest themes for inspiration:

• Launch a UGC contest similar to the Ice Bucket Challenge
• Ask entrants to send in their best lip-syncing videos
• Get participants to film a TikTok dance sequence
• Have people design a trailer for your product, short film, or film festival
• Put a call out for makeup tutorials
• How an online video editing competition
• Request the best unboxing videos using your branded hashtag
• Launch online music video contests

With a video app in their hands, you’ll be surprised how creative people can be and how popular a fun video contest can get.

Check out these video contest ideas for inspiration.

5. Create Clear Video Contest Guidelines

Another critical step is setting out your video contest rules and regulations. Will people have to submit a video for a chance to win, or will they have to share the contest on social media to enter?

Lucas Botzen, HR Expert and CEO of Rivermate, says:

When writing compliant rules and guidelines for running a video contest, clarity, legality, and fairness are the main considerations.

First of all, I make sure that these contest rules are simple and easy to read for any prospective participants. Without a doubt, this means avoiding annoying, complicated legal language and instead using language that makes sense to lay out as transparently as possible:

• what one’s contest is about
• who is eligible or qualified
• how one submits
• and how entries are ultimately judged

One shall also know and fully comply with the relevant laws, rules, and regulations of the jurisdictions where the contest will take place regarding privacy, intellectual property, and advertising standards.

Consulting with attorneys can help clarify many of the complexities of a decent sweepstakes and ensure all bases are covered.

Most importantly, fairness should prevail. To ensure transparency and trust, I always mention the selection process, the details of the prize, and what to do in case of disputes.

With due attention to these five elements, you should be able to construct a solid framework designed to protect both the organizers and the contestants and guarantee a legally sound, successful video contest.

6. Build a Buzz Before Launching

Before launching your video competition, you need to build anticipation in your followers. Generating a buzz for your giveaway gets people excited and eager to enter and makes it more likely you’ll attract more entries when the contest is live.

The best way to build anticipation is to release a series of teaser updates on your online video platform of choice. Here’s a timeline you can use for inspiration:

• 7 days before launch: Mention your contest in your regular video slot.
• 5 days before launch: Create a video dedicated to talking about your contest.
• Every day until launch: Finish your videos with a call to check out your giveaway announcement video when it launches.

You can also share your prelaunch announcements on your other social media channels to encourage maximum participation when you publish your contest.

7. Choose a Reliable Giveaway Platform

You’ve got the theme, the prizes, and you’re ready to launch. But before you do, you’ll need the right contest software to host it. Choosing the right contest creator can make all the difference in ensuring a smooth and engaging experience for both you and your participants.

Rather than piecing together different tools and hoping for the best, explore dedicated giveaway platforms. These platforms often have features designed to make running a contest a breeze.

Some popular free online contest platforms include Rafflecopter, Woobox, Sweepwidget, and others. But the tool I always recommend is RafflePress.

RafflePress is one of the best WordPress giveaway plugins. It’s beginner-friendly, making it a breeze to set up even if you’re new to contests.

You’ll love how easy it is to customize your giveaway. The best part? It has built-in actions specifically designed for YouTube contests, allowing you to boost your channel engagement.

Plus, its built-in viral sharing features can help you expand your reach and attract more viewers to your video content.

Luckily, this guide teaches you how to run a giveaway in WordPress with RafflePress.

8. Add Your Video Contest to a Giveaway Landing Page

When you’re ready to publish your contest, the best place to do so is on a dedicated giveaway landing page.

If you were to host your giveaway on video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, it would be easy for entrants to get distracted by other content. It would also be harder to track entries, making it difficult to pick a winner.

A giveaway landing page is a web page created specifically for your contest, linked to your main website. Creating one removes the distractions that prevent people from entering and makes it easier for contest builders like RafflePress to track entries all in one place.

Then, when you begin promoting your contest, all you need is to share the landing page’s URL. A giveaway landing page also helps with automation since it allows easy integration of an entry form.

9. Promote Your Video Contest on Social Media

You can’t sit and wait for people to enter your video contest, as tempting as it sounds. Instead, it would help if you promoted it to spread the word and secure more entries. An excellent contest marketing strategy helps your contest go viral so you can grow your audience and get tons of new leads.

There are plenty of ways to promote your video contest, but the easiest way is to share it on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and ask people to tag a friend in the comments to raise awareness.

You can also promote your contest with the following methods:

• Add a link to your website’s homepage
• Display a social media feed on your site dedicated to your giveaway posts
• Create an email newsletter with your top email marketing platform
• Add a popup to your site using OptinMonster
• Share your giveaway in a Facebook Group
• Use Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube targeting to reach specific demographics and interests with paid ads.
• Collaborate with complementary businesses to cross-promote your video contest to each other’s audiences.
• Reach out to relevant media outlets, bloggers, and journalists to generate buzz and coverage

It would help if you began promoting your video contest weeks before it goes live to get plenty of traffic and entries the day you launch. Remember to track your key metrics to understand what’s working and where to adjust your strategy.

“You can make a schedule of diverse promotional posts on your brand’s social media handles ahead of the contest, informing potential contestants about the contest and what it is all about, the launching date and the deadline, and what they stand to gain out of it. This should be at least a week before the contest begins.“
Neal Schaffer – Social Media Marketing Consultant

Check out our article on more contest promotion ideas to make your giveaway viral.

10. Make Choosing a Winner Super-Simple

When you build your video contest, think about how you’ll choose the winner. There are many ways to pick a winner, some straightforward and some more complicated.

The best way to choose a winner is to keep things simple by randomly drawing a winner from all video entries. You can save precious time and give the winner the good news quickly.

Most popular giveaway tools have this option built in to make the process easy for you.

Here are a few other ways to pick a winner:

• Internal Judging Panel: For contests emphasizing specific criteria, an internal panel can review submissions and choose a winner based on a predetermined rubric. This ensures fairness and consistency in judging.
• Guest Judges: Consider inviting industry experts or influencers to judge your contest. This adds credibility and excitement to your campaign and can even attract a wider audience.
• Public Voting: Get your audience involved and let them vote for their favorite entries. You can host voting on social media platforms or embed a voting mechanism directly on your website. Just be sure to implement measures to prevent fraudulent voting.

For help with this stage of your video contest, see our guide on how to pick a winner for a giveaway.

11. Engage with Contestants After the Winner Announcement

Your video contest doesn’t have to end when the prizes are handed out. In fact, the period after your contest is a golden opportunity to nurture relationships with your participants and get even more mileage out of the awesome content they created.

Here are some ideas to keep the engagement going:

• Showcase the Stars: Feature the winning video (and maybe some runners-up) on your website, blog, social media channels, and even in email newsletters. This will give the winners some well-deserved spotlight and remind everyone how awesome your contest was.
• Community Building: Create a dedicated space (like a Facebook group, online forum, or hashtag) where participants can connect, share their videos, and continue the conversation around your contest theme. This fosters a sense of community and keeps your brand top-of-mind.
• Exclusive Perks: Offer exclusive discounts, early access to new products, or special content to contest participants. This shows your appreciation for their involvement and incentivizes them to stick around.
• Repurpose the Content: With permission, repurpose the user-generated videos in future marketing campaigns, social media posts, or even website content. This not only saves you time and resources but also adds authenticity and social proof to your marketing efforts.

Remember, the relationships you build during and after your video contest can be just as valuable as the contest itself. By continuing to engage with participants, you’re fostering a loyal community that will eagerly anticipate your next exciting campaign.

12. Turn Your Video Contest Into Future Content

After your contest ends, don’t overlook the wealth of creative submissions from your participants. With proper permissions, you might repurpose these pieces as engaging content for your business. This strategy boosts your traffic, followers, and leads. 

User-generated content has multiple benefits. It reflects your customer’s views, leading to better engagement. Current consumers trust their peers more than brand advertisements. Plus, using this content helps diversify your brand’s visual impact without breaking the bank.

So, how can you repurpose this content across various platforms? 

You can recycle this user-generated content in several ways. 

• Showcase the winning video on your social media or your website’s homepage.
• Extract snippets or images from videos and feature them in emails or blog posts.

Doing so not only makes your content updates more vibrant but also gives them a personal touch that’s likely to entice your audience.

13. Track Your Video Contest Results to Make Improvements

When your contest is over, you’ve picked a winner and figured out how to use the UGC you gathered; our last tip is to analyze your results. Then, you can run an online video contest that’s even more successful next time.

The easiest way to get the information you need to optimize your contests is to use MonsterInsights, the best WordPress Google Analytics plugin.

MonserInsights makes it easy to track visits to your contest landing page, traffic to your entire website, website activity, etc. Plus, you can see MonsterInsights’ reports right from within your WordPress dashboard.

By reviewing your website data with MonsterInsights, you can learn which strategies sent the most traffic to your giveaway page and use that data to improve your next giveaway.

You can even use MonsterInsight’s real-time stats to monitor your site traffic during your contest. Then, you can make adjustments as you go.

How to Run a Video Contest FAQs

That’s it!

Now that you know how to run a video contest, get started! Running one delights your target audience and benefits your business with more targeted traffic, increased brand awareness, and engagement.

You might also find the following giveaway guides helpful:

• 10 YouTube Giveaway Examples to Skyrocket Your Engagement
• How to Increase YouTube Views with a Giveaway
• How to Do a Giveaway on YouTube (The Best Way)
• How To Get Subscribers On YouTube (14 Easy Hacks)

Don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook for more great tips to grow your business if you liked this article.

Stacey Corrin Writer

Stacey has been writing about WordPress and digital marketing for over 10 years and on other topics for much longer. Alongside this, she's fascinated with web design, user experience, and SEO.

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