Careful Planning for a Sweepstakes Promotions

A Sweepstakes promotion is an effective promotion for your advertisement. I will help to enhance your products image, increase your products sales, get support from the retailers and enlarge the database of potential customers.

Sweepstakes can be very expensive, however, this kind of promotion can offer more control of its costs. In fact, sweepstakes promotions have several legal restrictions and requirements that must be followed, because that they are legally controlled and regulated by Federal, State and local authorities.

In order to carefuslly plan your sweepstakes promotion, the following guidelines are suggested to you:

You need to identify and define your objectives and marketing goals for your sweepstakes promotion. Plan your sweepstakes promotion as part of your total marketing strategy not as a stand alone promotion. Many methods can help you support your promotion, like TV, radio and other displays. The budget needs to be established for the sweepstakes promotion.

Besides, determine where the sweepstakes will be held, the geographic area of participation, duration of the promotion, age requirements, entry requirements, prohibited affiliations and legal requirements.

Strategies of Winning Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes are a specialized form of consumer promotion where the incentive offered in exchange for the consumer’s entry is awarded in whole, or in part, through the operation of chance or random selection. Sweepstakes use the value and attractiveness of the prize incentive offered to create excitement, interest and engagement with the Sponsor’s products and services and to build the largest possible entry database. Sweepstakes promotions can use cash, products and/or services of any value as incentives and do not have to have any relationship to the products or services of the Sponsor.

Before you entering a sweep stakes, you should do some preparatory work. You should buy cards, paper, envelope, pens and a clipboard. Entering a single sweepstakes at one time is highly recommended. In addition, one can also take part in a lot of online sweepstakes. It takes a considerable amount of time to track down sweepstakes to ender. Many of the online sweepstakes do not have a deadline and they offer less attractive prizes. Most of them are only allow one person to enter one sweepstakes.

Entering as many as sweepstakes will increase the success rate, but it’s better to enter many sweepstakes copious times than entering copious sweepstakes one time each. It is statistically the best chance to win sweepstakes to get the odds in one’s favor. Generally speaking, one should enter those sweepstakes which are technically more favorable.

Firstly, one should enter the sweepstakes of numerous valuable prizes. Then, you can try the sweepstakes shown in radios and TV. Another good idea is to take part in local sweepstakes. Very attractive prizes are offered by a few of those local sweepstakes. If one is good in freehand writing or cooking, he is also encouraged to enter a contest, because these contests have far less entries than sweepstakes.

Both general sweepstakes and online sweepstakes are becoming more popular day by day. Act smart while participating in these sweepstakes so as to increase their chance of winning.

Reduce the Cost of a Sweepstakes Promotion

Sweepstakes are a specialized form of consumer promotion where the incentive offered in exchange for the consumer’s entry is awarded in whole, or in part, through the operation of chance or random selection.

Sweepstakes promotions are very popular because they are often relatively easier to conduct and administer than Contest promotions (Contests typically require judging and consideration of every entry according to Contest criteria), and because they have been proven to be powerful tools to attract the interest, attention and engagement of a target audience and to aid branding and sales objectives of the sponsoring company.

How to reduce the cost of a sweepstakes promotion becomes an important question. The following are some good ways:

Offer a lesser value of cash alterative to your Grand Prize. For instance, you can offer a $10,000 cash alternative if the Grand Prize is $20,000.

Consider using gift certificates, phone cards, gas cards, etc. These prizes are easy to mail and have real value. They will reduce handling fees. US Savings bonds are also a good alternative and cost approximately 50% of the face value.

Find prize suppliers whose prices include warehousing and delivery (Drop-shipping).

Consider sharing the cost of a sweepstakes promotion and prize liability with a compatible brand or buy into a “Share-A-Sweeps” promotional program.

The Right Promotional Choice – Sweepstakes Promotions

There are many sweepstakes promotional methods to make the sweepstakes promotions. However, which is the right promotional choice for sweepstakes promotions? That is the most important question to consider when you trying to achieve specific brand objective or reaching performance levels.

If your objective is to build the image of your products brand, or even you want to increase brand awareness, good publicity for your product, then the right promotional choice is sweepstakes program. If your objective is to dramatically increase the product’s sales, then the best choice may be a coupon or free sample.

After you make the sweepstakes promotions being the right sweepstakes promotional tool, you should develop a theme in accordance with your target audience and prepare the message that you want to deliver. Only a sweepstakes be carefully planned and advertised, can the chances of winning sweepstakes could be increased. The sweepstakes should also include relevant prizes. Sweepstakes promotion should not be used as a stand alone promotion. A sweepstakes should be complemented with advertising, point-of-sales materials, and others. During the above, coupon advertisement is one of the important tools. A coupon advertisement which includes a sweepstakes has better readership and higher redemption's. Some studies have shown that a sweepstakes that is included in coupons and rebates can highly increase redemption, even by 25%.