New Update: Boost Social Proof with Reviews & Automation
Introducing RafflePress's new leave-a-review giveaway actions. Boost customer engagement and build trust effortlessly by incentivizing reviews in WordPress.
New Update: Boost Social Proof with Reviews & Automation
Stacey Corrin
Stacey Corrin
John Turner
John Turner
When you’re out of ideas, running a simple contest that works isn’t all that easy. Despite the fact that they can boost your followers by up to 34% and seriously increase brand awareness, the ideas sometimes just don’t come to mind.
I’ve been there myself, often wishing there was something I could reference to get the inspiration flowing.
But here’s the thing: your contest or giveaway doesn’t need to be complex to be successful. Sometimes, even the simplest contest ideas can generate staggering results. And in this guide, I’ll share my favorite ideas you can run when inspiration fails to strike.
Simple Contest Ideas:
Often, the easiest contests are the best because people are more likely to enter if it’s easy to do so. Essentially, when the requirements are simple, your audience will understand what you’re asking them to do.
For example, Agile’ Marketing Services ran a simple giveaway for their client, Basil Thai Cuisine, to grow their email list.
By giving away five $20 gift certificates, they thanked their customers and increased their email list by 52%! Plus, the giveaway generated buzz on Facebook, with 105 reactions, 11 comments, and 28 shares.
This shows that a simple contest can do a lot for you when done right. You don’t need to overcomplicate things to see amazing results.
With this in mind, let’s get started with something quick and easy first.
The following are some of the absolute simplest contest ideas you can use. They require minimal effort to set up, and they’re easy for your audience to understand and participate in:
As you can see, pretty much anyone can put together contests like these. And since there aren’t many hoops to jump through, you’re highly likely to see impressive results.
Now let’s look at some simple contest ideas that require a little more thought but are still easy to set up.
A social media contest is a giveaway where the goal is to get people to engage with your brand on social media. To run one, choose a social media platform, and then decide how you want people to enter.
For example, you could ask them to follow your page, like a post, or share something on their own social media account to enter. You can then select a winner randomly or based on specific criteria, such as the best comment or most creative post.
For a full walkthrough, see this guide on how to run a social media contest.
In this type of contest, you’ll share a funny or unusual photo and ask your audience to come up with the best caption. The goal is to generate some humor and get your audience to engage with your brand in a fun way.
To run it, pick a photo that’s sure to inspire creativity, share it on your social media channel, and then ask people to comment with their caption ideas. You can then pick the best one or choose a winner at random from the entries.
Here are some caption contest examples to get your inspiration flowing.
A photo contest is where you ask your audience to share photos related to a theme, your brand, or your products.
To run one, decide what kind of photos you want people to share. For example, if you sell plants, you could ask your audience to share photos of their plants at home.
Or in this case, a dog breed brand ran with a photo contest for pets:
Then, ask people to share their photos on social media using a specific hashtag. This will make it easy for you to keep track of entries. Finally, pick a winner and award them with the prize.
If you need help setting this type of contest up, see our guide on how to run a photo contest.
This type of contest is simple, fun, and easy to participate in.
To run one, come up with a sentence or phrase with a word missing. Then, ask your audience to guess what the missing word is. Make sure the sentence or phrase is related to your brand or has something to do with your products or services.
This kind of contest is incredibly easy to set up and participate in, so you’re likely to get great results.
A guessing game contest is one that requires your audience to guess the answer to a question, or the number of items in a jar. This kind of contest is very engaging, but it’s also very simple.
To run one, make sure the question you’re asking is relevant to your brand. If you decide to ask them to guess the number of items in a jar, for example, make it visually interesting and easy to see.
Then, ask your audience to share their answers with a comment on social media.
A voting contest involves two steps:
First, run a contest where you ask your audience to submit content on a specific theme. Then, post the content you received and ask your audience to vote for their favorites.
Alternatively, you can simply ask your audience to vote for a favorite product you sell, like Flanigans did in this example:
To make this easy, you can use a social media poll or a simple survey tool. This will help get the most engagement from your audience by involving them twice.
A short video contest is exactly like a photo contest, except your audience will submit short video clips instead of photos.
To run one of these, ask your audience to post a short video on a specific topic. Ask them to share their video on their social media platforms using a specific hashtag so you can find their entry easily.
In this example, the University of Malaya used this idea to raise awareness about prostate cancer:
It shows that even short video contest can skyrocket your engagement and help you get your brand (or cause) out there.
Take a look at this guide to learn how to run a video contest.
While there are many ways to run a contest, they often involve a lot of complicated steps and rules that can be overwhelming.
Running a contest directly on social media might seem simple at first, but it quickly becomes difficult to manage all the entries and keep track of the people who have entered. And while using a web-based giveaway tool is another option, you don’t have full control over your data or the design.
So, what’s the best way to run a simple contest?
The easiest way to manage your contest is to run it directly from your own website, where you can have full control over the design and how you capture entries.
If you have a WordPress website, one of the easiest ways to run a contest is by using a dedicated giveaway plugin like RafflePress. It makes setting up contests incredibly simple and easy.
Here are just some of the benefits of using RafflePress to run your contest:
For help getting started, see our guide on how to run an online contest in WordPress using RafflePress.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of how effective giveaways can be for your brand. This guide only touches on the simplest contest ideas that I know really work. But if you’re feeling adventurous and want to dive deeper, check out these other ideas for your contest:
Running a contest doesn’t need to be complicated. As you’ve seen, even the simplest ideas can generate great results. You now have a variety of simple contest ideas you can use to connect with your audience.
With a clear goal, a great prize, and a way to manage your contest, you can succeed. And if you have a WordPress website, tools like RafflePress can make the process even simpler.
Ready to run a simple, yet effective contest?
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Thanks it working and good idea for me and other people also.