How to run a competition for your jewellery business
Running a competition can be a great way to attract more customers and engage your existing followers…
But how do you do it successfully and what are the rules? Here’s what you need to think about when planning your next competition.
What is your why?
The first thing to consider when planning to run a competition is what your objective is. Whenever we do any marketing in our business it’s for one of three reasons:
ATTRACT - to attract new potential customers
ENGAGE - to engage those customers that are already interested in your business
CONVERT - to get sales
With a competition, your objective is usually either to attract new potential customers or to engage your existing audience.
Some examples of reasons to run a competition:
To get more followers to your main social media account e.g. Instagram
To get more subscribers for your email marketing
To get more engagement on your social media
To work with carefully selected partners to access their audience
Task: Write down why you want to have a competition. What are your targets? e.g. number of followers it generates etc
The prize
You need to think carefully about the prize you offer. You want it to be a prize that makes it worth entering the competition. However, you also want it to be a good return on investment for you. Offering a one off commission made from gold may not be worth it!
Consider:
VALUE VS COST
Task: write down a few alternate prizes for your competition. What is going to get people to want to enter?
The rules
You may feel a bit stuck when considering how to ensure your competition is within the rules of your chosen platform. Luckily there aren’t too many rules you need to be aware of.
Facebook and Instagram
The rules for both Facebook and Instagram competitions are the same.
You need to:
Share the rules of your competition - how do people enter, what can they win, when is the closing date
Share any terms and eligibility requirements e.g. is the competition only available to residents of your country?
State that the competition is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by or in association with Instagram/Facebook
You cannot tag people or encourage others to take themselves in photos that they aren’t in.
A competition can be a great way to build your email list. But how do you do it within the rules?
GDPR regulations > mean that
people need to know that they are being added to a mailing list
their data needs to be held securely
If you are using any of the mailing list companies e.g. Mailchimp, InfusionSoft etc then the data is held in compliance with the law.
So you can say ‘Join my VIP mailing list before the 30th May and be in with a chance to win a diamond necklace worth £200’
Find the full competition rules for:
Instagram https://help.instagram.com/179379842258600
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/policies/pages_groups_events/#promotionsguidelines
Twitter https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-contest-rules
Email https://www.jewellersacademy.com/blog/gdpr-for-jewellers
To give you some inspiration, you can find some different examples of competitions run by jewellers and how they are worded below.
Examples of different competition types
getting FOLLOWERS AND Interaction
To get more interaction you can have a giveaway and ask people to like and comment on a specific social media post. This helps for a number of reasons. It boosts activity on your account and the social media platform is more likely to show your account to more people. If you ask people to tag others, those tagged will be notified and see your account.
Example
Example of an interaction competition from @whencatiemetsodajewellery
Example text
To enter this giveaway, all you need to do is:
1) Make sure you’re one of our followers here at @whencaitiemetsoda 💗
2) Tag a friend in the comments telling them why you love them and what the first thing you want to do with them is when we are out of lockdown 💗 (enter as many times as you’d like!)
.
This giveaway will close at midnight on Sunday 10th May and a winner will be chosen at random.
An example from Facebook
working with Partners
One type of competition that can work really well is when two or more designer/makers come together to give away one prize each to make one large prize. This can be worthwhile for everyone as you access the followers of the other people.
When choosing partners to work with it is best to find products that your ideal customer would like, products other than jewellery as a nice mix encourages people to enter.
Example
Example of a partnership competition from @elinhorgan
Example text
HOW TO ENTER?
1. Follow & like
PUT ALL THE NAMES OF ACCOUNTS
2.Tag as many friends as you want who you think deserve this treat. Once they have done the same or followed each of our accounts, all names will all be entered to win these 9 gifts.
3. For an extra entry share the post on your stories or grid.....
Entries close 12am on Sunday 10 May and the winner will be announced on Monday 11 May.
GOOD LUCK! 🍀🍀🍀
Another example
💖TO ENTER 💖
-LIKE this post
-FOLLOW all of the lovely brands taking part
- TAG your friends! You can enter multiple times by tagging new friends in new comments! Each new comment counts as an entry! 💖
- SHARE this post to your stories for an extra entry, make sure to tag @yourInstagramname so we see your story!
This competition is open worldwide 🌍 and the winner will be announced at 9pm on Friday 1st May! GOOD LUCK!
building your Email list
You can use a competition to build your email list. GDPR regulations > mean that
people need to know that they are being added to a mailing list
their data needs to be held securely
If you are using any of the mailing list companies e.g. Mailchimp, InfusionSoft etc then the data is held in compliance with the law.
You can say ‘Join my mailing list and as a thank you, you will be entered into a prize draw to win XXX. The closing date is XX Good luck!’
It is best if you ask for as little information as possible for them to opt in so usually you will just ask for their email address.
competitions at in-person events
If you are going to be attending an event for your business e.g. craft markets, fairs, networking events etc; a competition can be very successful for building your email list.
The GDPR guidelines also have to be adhered to so you can have a sign that says ‘Join my mailing list and you’ll be entered to win a diamond necklace worth £149’
To ensure data protection we suggest either
asking people to put their business card into a jar or box if it’s a networking event
have slips of paper and pens available for people to write their email address down to put in your competition box/jar
A list for people to write on is not GDPR compliant because everyone writing on it can see the data of the people that have come before them.
LOGISTICS
There are some logistics to consider when you are setting up and administering a competition.
Overseas entries?
Do you want to accept entries worldwide? If the prize is valuable it could be more of a risk and a cost to send.
Use a number generator
One of the easiest ways to run a competition is to
Number the entries e.g. comments on a post, email addresses added to your mailing list etc. Usually this is done in chronological order
Count the number of comments on the post and use a random number generator to choose the winner. For example, if there are 50 comments use the random number generator below, in the max field type 50 and click generate. This will generate a random number for you
Count down from the top to the list of comments/email addresses and make a note of the name of the person and email address so you can contact them
How to have a successful competition
Set a target - how many followers/subscribers etc do you want to get with this promotion? Having a target in mind can be really helpful for your focus
Set a short timeline - the timeline you choose depends on the competition but you don’t want it to be open ended. It could be a weekend, week, 2 weeks, a month.
Ask other people to help - To get the ball rolling ask friends and family to start you off! You can let them enter or exempt them if you like. By having some people start already it encourages others to join in
Share your competition a lot! On average, people see less than a third of what you share. This means you need to share something three times before someone is likely to see it once! So plan a campaign to share your competition regularly and in different ways. You normally get most entries at the beginning and right before the deadline so keep at it!
Use video. Right now, video is the number one content that people are seeing. You can talk to people on instagram stories and share that you have a competition. You could create a mini slide show in Canva. You could go live on IGTV or Facebook to tell your followers about the competition and what they could win
Good luck with your competition! If you follow the guidelines above I’m sure you’ll be successful!