So, you have already planned an online business, built a web site, and now you are waiting for the traffic.

Don’t wait, as it may not come as fast as you would like. You need to take action now. All you need is an activity that will get people to come back and visit your site.

For sure, a lot of your customers may be looking for the type of product or service that you offer. So, how will you attract those buyers who are not yet familiar with your site and those who you want to have come back again?

How will you gain visitors and drive traffic to your site?

One answer is to run a contest. And not just an old contest. It must be crafted to keep them coming back to your site. Lots of clever people will say that running a contest will help, but they won’t give you tips on how to do it.

Benefits of holding a contest

One of the biggest benefits of running a contest is traffic. A contest can help you increase traffic to your site. Studies show that a contest, if held during a full month, can gain 500-5000 visitors and more. So, imagine that opportunity!

Your potential consumers may even tell their friends about your site and it’s also a chance to boost your sales.

Some affiliate programs online may also be curious of the number of visitors and page views you have. And one way to increase this is to run a contest.

Contests also help if you plan to sell ad space on your site.

Generally, if you write a monthly or weekly newsletter, running a contest and asking those who enter if they want to subscribe to your newsletter will usually result in about 1/3 of them signing up.

And lastly, those who have a business but don’t have a website can also benefit from a contest. The types and rules might be different, but running a contest would get you noticed and get people to come to your site again and again.

Steps to consider in holding a contest

Step 1: Determine your goal

The first thing you should do is to decide what goal you want to achieve. Choose whether your main objective is just to get people to visit your site, drive traffic to your site, get subscribers, or make a sale. Have you goal set and keep that in mind.

Step 2: The theme of the contest

Next is to decide what theme to have. The theme must be dependent on the type of business you have and the holiday seasons. All themes are good, but focus on something that will benefit visitors of all ages. Think about the types of people you want to attract to your business.

Step 3: Find Sponsors

Now with a goal and a theme, you need to find sponsors. This is said to be the hardest part of starting and running a contest.  The target sponsors are sometimes business owners. They are the ones who willingly donate the prizes.

If you belong to a business group, you can ask them if they would be interested in donating a prize to your contest in exchange for something valuable – like exposures on ads.

You must give your sponsors credit for the donation so they too can benefit from the visitors. You can also run a contest and just purchase the item yourself to give away, or use your own products.

Step 4: The Kind of Contest

You should also be thinking of what kind of contest you want to run. Be creative in choosing one. Make sure that your visitors will participate and enjoy the contest.

Do you want it to be a puzzle, or a sort of scavenger hunt?

Maybe you want them to fill out a survey and in return, their names will be raffled for a prize.

You can also run the contest and ask for feedback about your site or ask them to create a poem or an ad related to the theme. This all depends on what your goals are.

Step 5: Set up the contest on your website

Now is the time to set up the contest on your site. You or your web designer needs to make a page, design a logo if necessary, and set up the page to suit your needs and tastes.

Again, be creative in choosing the proper layout. You have to include the list of sponsors, prizes, and the set of rules.

Step 6: Promoting your contest

You need to promote the contest so people know you’re there and are offering free prizes!

Think of the many ways in which you can list your contest on the different sites.

There are many sites on the Internet that will list your contest on their contest site in exchange for placing their banner/link on your contest page. Most are free, but require a link back to their site.

If you do not know how to do this or do not have the time, then hire a company to do it for you.

Step 7: Picking a winner

One easy way to pick a winner is through random selection. You can just pick an email. Ask a representative to do the selection.

You do not have to purchase some fancy software to do it for you, as long as you are fair and honest. Don’t forget to remind the contestants that the winner/s will be randomly chosen.

Now, the contest is over. You can evaluate how far it helped in generating traffic to your site. If the contest went well, think of something that you can run in the succeeding months.

Hope this gave you some ideas.

Catch you later.

Ian

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