Using a Photo Contest to Promote Your Business

Coming up with exciting and unique ways to promote your business can be a challenge. Promotions such as discounts and giveaways can be great for attracting customers. Another good idea is to hold a contest. People love a good opportunity to win something. While you can have a very straightforward sweepstakes, you can also spice it up by making it a photo contest. By inviting people to enter their photographs in a contest, you’ll be giving them a fun opportunity to get creative, show off their personalities and skills, and win something they’d love to get.

Why a Photo Contest?
Photo contests are popular, but each one is unique. It invites your customers to show off something about themselves or their personal lives, and it gives them an opportunity to express themselves. They’ll enjoy doing it, and as a business you’ll enjoy getting a closer look at your customers. You’ll learn about the things they enjoy and the things that matter to them. This knowledge will only help you improve your brand. Photo contests are attractive and encourage greater participation with your company, especially because they’re often entered through your website. People will spend more time on your website, especially if they can check out the other entries. It really creates a win-win situation for everyone. There is something very endearing and personal about a photo contest that makes it especially attractive.

Get Creative
There is a lot of room to be creative with your photo contest. The theme of you contest can be anything at all. It should be something that relates to your industry. For example, if you sell baby products, encourage people to submit photos of their children. There are endless possibilities within each theme, such as photos of kids being silly, having tantrums, visiting their grandparents, doing art projects, or absolutely anything. From there, you can also integrate your business. You could make it a requirement that the kids in the photos are wearing or using your products, for example. This could be a great marketing tool to show off real-life uses for the things you sell. The more interesting or entertaining your photo contest, the more people will want to enter it.

Make It Worthwhile
Because entering a photo contest requires a little bit more effort than a normal sweepstakes, it will have to be worthwhile for participants. Depending on your budget, this could be done many ways. Most importantly, you’ll want to have a really great grand prize. The grand prize alone should be enough for people to want to get out the camera and upload a photo. But you could also consider giving additional motivation. For example, you could offer a special coupon to everyone who enters a photo. You could create prizes for second and third place, also.

Judging
A photo contest is also different because you can’t just pick a random winner out of a hat. Well, you could, but that would lower the excitement level and won’t encourage people to take exciting, quality photographs. Make sure the rules are clear on how a winner will be chosen. You could pick the winner yourself based on creativity or appeal, or you could open up voting to everyone who visits your website. This is a great way to boost customer engagement and encourage people to participate. When it’s over, make sure to display the winners on your website.

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