In the last 2 weeks, I have seen a flurry of twitter contests being run by various brands, including news channels (ABP News), Software Marketers, Film studios, Fashion brands, TV stations, Online retailers, Comedy shows and a lot more.
The common themes in all these contests were:
– You are enticed to participate in the competition via the possibility to win a gift coupon or some sort of prize
– You are required to follow the brand’s twitter ID.
– You are required to answer a set of questions and retweet the questions to your followers
In my opinion, the primary aim of all these contests seems to be:
– Get more people to follow them
– Get more impressions (through RT’s)
– Get their brands to trend on twitter
These are easy to measure metrics, which they can then use to show brand engagement and the Returns on the Investment.
This seems to be a quick win for the brands as the participation levels in most of these contests seem to be quite good and they are able to add significant number of followers to the brands twitter handle (though, that by itself should not be the primary aim for the brands).
What is not known so far is the potential for continued engagement of these people with the brand?
In my opinion, the questions that these brands need to answer are the following:
– How do we continue to engage with the gained followers post the contest?
– Do we make such contests a recurring event (weekly or fortnightly) so that the amount of engagement continues to be high? How long can this momentum be maintained?
– How can we tie these contents to the other marketing campaigns that the brand is considering?
– Is it possible for the brand to be able to tie these contests to a social cause that the brand can associate with so that, not only does the brand gain more impressions on twitter but is able to support a cause while at the same time get some good PR.
PS: Some brands that did run twitter contests this month are Audi India, Dalal Street Journal, Disney India, Domino’s Pizza, Dreamscape Film Co, Elle, Garnier, ICICI Lombard, Jockey India, Kiehl’s India, L’Oréal Paris India, Lakme India, LP – Louis Philippe, MadOverDonuts, MaxIndiaLtd, MaybellineIndia, Micromax Mobile, Myntra.com, Nissan India, OUATIM Dobaara (movie), Tata Nano, Veet India, Zee Studio, SAP India, ABP News, Apollo Hospitals, AXN India
Just the variety of brands indicates that this has been successful across sectors, industries and business models.
