When it comes to your private label, how much would you spend for the below?
- 2,357 emails added
- 1800 Facebook page likes
- 800 YouTube Subscribers
- 450 Instagram followers
$100? $1,000? How about 30 cents per email? That’s how much Todd spent generating thousands of leads for a recent giveaway. If you’ve got a private label business and you’re looking to grow it, spending 50 cents to $1 per email signup is worth its weight in gold. Stick around to snag your piece of the golden pie.
The Tools
Contests are a stellar way to grow your subscriber base, generate leads, and boost website traffic. In fact, 83% of companies use giveaways to increase brand awareness. The first step to developing a successful giveaway is to use software with features designed to optimize campaign reach and conversion rates. Check out the below:
- Gleam.io: Gleam is where you’ll set up your contest. Basic. What makes Gleam unique from other contest-generating sites is the option to share your contest on social pages.
- Leadpages.net: Leadpages allows you to quickly create landing or splash pages filled with all the information potential contestants need.
- ConvertKit: When you’re building an email list, you’ll need a website that builds the list and sends emails to everyone on that list.
- Facebook Ads: A familiar friend. Facebook ads allow you to run hyper-targeted ads that advertise your giveaway to all relevant users.
The Steps
Step I. Start an email list on ConvertKit. When it comes to pricing, you can choose a plan for as little as $30 per month. This intro plan allows you to add up to 1,000 subscribers and automatically bumps you up to other levels as your email list grows.
Step II. Create an account on Gleam.io. Gleam.io is where you’ll run your contest or giveaway. You can sign up for as little as $10 per month, although Todd recommends the $49 per month version. The advanced package allows participants to virally share your contest with friends, an essential step for expanding reach.
Step III. Build your contest. Once you create an account on Gleam.io, you’ll be directed to a page that allows you to build out your contest. Hit EDIT in the upper-right hand corner to get started.
Building Your Contest in Gleam.io
Under SETUP, give your contest a name, select a start and end date, enter your terms and conditions, and choose a location and language.
Under USER DEFAULTS set a minimum age if you’re selling products that require participants to be of-age. Also enter the brand’s Facebook page. You’ll need one to run your giveaway (and should have one regardless). Choosing Allow Users to Like A Facebook Page allows users to log-in to your contest through a variety of services (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.).
Then you want participants to enter their information. After all, generating leads and spreading awareness is the end goal of any contest. Todd has users enter their name and email address. It’s helpful to at least have a user’s first name so you can send email messaging that addresses them by name. Personalization is key.
Sharing Is Caring
Each contest should have options for participants to qualify for multiple entries if they like a social page, subscribe to a YouTube channel, or refer friends. To add these additional entry options, click on the HOW TO ENTER tab.
First, you’ll see a section that mandates participants sign up for your email list or newsletter to be entered into the contest. This option is a built-in requirement on Gleam. Next, you’ll see a section labeled API key. This allows Gleam to connect to ConvertKit and pull the form information from the email list you’ve already created. In other words, when someone signs up for your giveaway, Gleam will automatically capture the email address and add it to your email list on ConvertKit. Other email services such as Mailchimp have similar options for email integration.
Once their email address has been added to your growing email list, the participant will have other options to add entries. Let’s focus on a few.
Viral Share
Refer Friends For Extra Entries: The crux of Gleam’s service. This option allows contestants to share the contest on various social pages. Because this viral share option is arguably the most important when it comes to expanding, Todd recently gave participants 15 extra entries every time they shared the contest and a referred friend joined. This huge incentive encourages users to share the love (and your brand).
Subscribe
Allow participants to gain entries by subscribing to your YouTube channel. Just add your channel’s URL into Gleam and when users hit subscribe from your contest widget, Gleam will verify their information and give them however many additional entries you’ve allocated for this step.
Visit Pages
Add additional entries for participants who visit your Facebook or Instagram page. While the option is only visiting the page, many who visit will like the page anyway. More likes of course grow your brand’s social presence. And you’re not limited to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! Gleam gives you the option to have users Download an App, Watch a Video, or check additional social pages for more entries.
Back To Building Your Contest
Now that you’ve completed your entry details, let’s finish up your contest creation.
Under PRIZE SETUP enter the title of the prize you’re giving away, the number of winners, a description of what you’re giving away, and upload a featured photo.
Under POST ENTRY add the default email that’s sent to everyone who enters the contest. This allows them to see what additional entries are available and allows contestants to quickly viral share the contest by clicking a share button. Every option for adding entries should be clear and clickable on this initial email.
And finally, under INSTALL OPTIONS, find options for installing the giveaway into the lead page.
More Steps
That was a doozy, but let’s move on to…
Step IV. Create A Landing Page with LeadPages.net. Lead allows you to create a landing page complete with images, logos, Call To Action messaging, and branding all customized to your brand, audience, and giveaway details. You can also continuously preview the landing page just to double-check that everything looks great. If you’ve ever used WordPress or other user-friendly website creation services, this setup should feel familiar.
You can even create a live ticker countdown to emphasize urgency to potential participants. Just add the HTML code copied from Gleam.io (in the main competition page under code install, there’s a space entitled embedded widget code).
Quick Tip: Keep in mind, if your contest has a longer window (say 30 days), make sure you’re sending out email content throughout. Don’t spam your new followers, but sending engaging content targeted to your customer base is important and it’s why you’ve created an email list to begin with. Todd recommends meeting your audience where they are. Don’t use a social site if it’s not relevant to your audience. If it’s just email, it’s just email. If they’re mostly on Facebook, focus on Facebook. You want to continuously keep your audience engaged so they remain loyal followers and continue to shop your product.
All About Facebook
Step V. is focused on Facebook ads which, depending on your experience level, can feel overwhelming. So let’s break it down.
Facebook Ads
To spread awareness and gain real momentum for your contest, use Facebook Ads. Facebook ads have several key benefits, such as micro-targeting and data capturing.
First thing’s first, create your Facebook ad using conversions. Conversions are determined using a Facebook pixel, or a piece of code that’s placed on a page to track page visitors. When a Facebook pixel is created, the pixel clocks when a user visits the page and signs up for the contest so we know if a user converted through a Facebook ad. We want to target more people like these users that have already signed up so when Facebook has that information from the pixel, it’s able to target that audience more effectively.
Quick Tip: Create a Facebook pixel in Ads Manager. You can add that pixel to Gleam.io under the POST ENTRY tab. When you add the pixel, just make sure under Pixel Tracking that Trigger On is set to On Load + Conversions because this allows the pixel to track key behaviors.
Target, Target, Target
Now that you’ve installed a Facebook pixel, you’re ready to set a target audience. Facebook allows you to target the basics – think location, age, gender, and language. But they also allow you to target demographics, interests, and behaviors. As you select different interests, you can see how many people on Facebook have those interests and will therefore receive your ad. Keep NARROWING YOUR AUDIENCE by adding additional levels of targeting. You can even go so far as to target people who’ve clicked on a CTA purchase button.
Quick Tip: Get as specific as possible when it comes to target audiences. This helps ensure that your ad is hitting only those most likely to engage which of course increases the efficiency. Facebook will update you on audience size as you continue drilling down. Your goal should be to get below that 50% marker. However, if you don’t know your audience, leave the audience broad and let the ads run for a bit. Facebook will provide data on who’s clicking. Once you have information about who’s responding to your ads, go in and update your audience so it matches that demographic.
Home Stretch
Next, edit your budget and your start and end date. Then make sure you click 1 day after clicking under CONVERSION WINDOW. The people served your ad will either click it or they won’t and you’ll know after that 24-hour period.
Finally, you’re ready to click Set Up Ad. Select your page, add in your social account of choice, format the ad how you like, enter the website URL, headline, CTA, and news feed link description.
Quick Tip: Facebook doesn’t like text on images so remove as much text as possible from the image and include all relevant information in the designated text area. Too much text on your image will hamper the results.
Overall
Your private label business depends on growing your customer base and building awareness. Follow these steps and add thousands of email leads for less money than it takes to fill a fridge. If that sounds like a sweet deal, comment where you can and subscribe for more videos just like this.
Happy selling everybody.
