best competitions?

[moomum]

what I mean (couldn't fit it onto a title) was
what are the best types of competitions to run to attract sales?

I have been given a load of breastfeeding related books to giveaway on lactivist.net, I want to attract attention for the publishers and also sales for me. I've got 5 books, and they are all good ones!

Shall I

a) do a comp where people have to look at the publishers website to find an answer?

b) do a comp where people have to comment on the blog and I pick someone at random, I can give people extra entries for reposting/facebooking/twittering etc.

c) do a comp where I have to get a certain number of comments and then I pick someone at random?

d) do a comp where entrants have to tell me why they want the prize?

what do you think works best?

[friendlybaby]

If you do a comp with a lot of effort then you will get far fewer entrants. On the other hand if you do a comp where people only have to email you their details then you get all the Competition-as-main-source-of-income people entering so that they can sell their prize on ebay and make money out of it. I also found when I did one that involved people looking at a site to find the answer that one person looks and posts the answer on MSE and then everyone else emails you the same wrong answer after that. It is a fine line and I don't know where it lies!

[antonia]

I think what you need to look at is how best to get the RIGHT sort of people entering the competition, and in a way that they allow you to have their emails so you can start building a relationship with them .... so, I'd have a competition that you can plug on various parenting blogs so you can get other people to help promote it. I'd probably also go with additional entries if people facebook or tweet it!

[tinycharms]

Ooh this is tricky!! I agree you want to attract the right people who are going to be potential customers after the competition. I just did a giveaway on FB and that worked really well for me, and because it relies on friends recomending my page, they tend to only send it to friends who would be interested iyswim. So I got a good response, lots more fans to the page and they seem to be relevant potential customers.

Becci
x

[moomum]

hmm, I guess I could get them to sign up to the newsletter for an extra entry too, thanks Antonia, I hadn't thought about that.