Promoting Your Website or Online Business with Competitions

Promoting Your Website or Online Business with Competitions
A lot of business owners use competitions as a type or
reward for their current customers, but competitions can
also be very effective in bringing in new business,
especially online.

There are two main benefits to running a competition. You
will almost certainly get an influx of people visiting your
site, looking around and joining the competition. Which can
create good awareness of your site in visitors minds so
that next time they are in need for the product or service
you offer they may think of you and return.

The second benefit is that you can start to build yourself
an opt-in list. Many sites running competitions actually
require entries to sign up for their ezines or newsletters
which they can always unsubscribe from later if they wish.
And some sites just have it as an option, put an additional
check box at the end of the entry form and ask people if
they want to sign up to receive your newsletter.

A successful competition campaign can easily build you a
list of a 500 to 1000 people or more depending on how you
market the competition. Most countries have local websites
that list competitions for their countries, which you can
often place ads on for free or for a very small advertising
fee.

Some people don't like the idea of spending money on
marketing the fact that you are giving away something for
free, but the reality is that by doing so you can
exponentially expand your market reach, and get a lot more
eyes on your site.

Not sure what to give away? Well the best tip is to make
sure that its not something that you sell. For example if
you sell TVs on your website, and you run a competition
giving away a free TV, then some people might put off
buying from you in the hope that they may win one instead.
So its usually better to give away something that
compliments your products or just something that you know
your target audience would appreciate.

iPods and MP3 players have become a hot prize over the past
few years, but many other things can work just as well.
Shopping sprees', DVDs, CDs etc and of course cash or gift
cards are always a good choice.

So what are you waiting for? Launch a competition on your
site today, make it a yearly promotion or even monthly if
it works for you. Remember to always operate inside the
laws that your competition will be running in, which you
will need to look into for yourself. Good Luck...

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For the latest Australian Competitions please visit
http://www.inittowinit.com.au