Branding is the activity of giving a particular name and image to goods and services so that people will be attracted to them and want to buy them. – Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
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However, creating a brand identity or coming up with a branding strategy might seem like a puzzling task, especially for small business owners. This is why we’ve created this handy guide to small business branding. In this blog post, we take a look at how to approach the concept of branding for your small business. We share ideas, examples, and useful tips. 

Small business branding: start by defining the idea and creating assets

How do you want to sell your goods or services? What will be the message that will turn potential buyers into loyal customers? How will your brand speak to its customers and convey the messages you want to share with them? 

Yes, creating a brand identity doesn’t happen overnight and it needs thorough research and competitive analysis. But once you have the general idea of how your brand will resonate with its customers, it’s time to create visual assets that will support your idea and help you achieve your goals. What will you need? Here are the most important aspects:

• Logo
• Color palettes
• Typography
• Images for social media posts and marketing campaigns

Therefore, if you’re starting small and can’t afford to hire a professional graphic designer, opt for freelancers or self-service design platforms like Canva. It’s a great way to create some great-looking visuals completely for free – or for a small fee if you choose the paid service version. 

Small business branding: start with a consistent social media strategy and run giveaways to spread your message

Once you know who you are as a company and have all the visual assets you need, it’s time to share them with your target audience and work on brand visibility and awareness. It’s truly important to have a consistent plan that will help you convey your message. Take for instance Heura Foods, plant-based meat products. Apart from promoting its vegan products, the brand is also on a mission to educate its audience about the importance of sustainability and the environment. They somehow manage to share all the posts with their branding colors. 

The company does a great job when it comes to spreading awareness about its mission. Apart from participating in popular events, like the recent Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, they also run social media campaigns in collaboration with popular accounts. 

In 2019, Primavera Sound welcomed more than 220,000 people. This year, apart from participating in the event with a food stand, the food company also raffled two tickets to the festival. It’s a fantastic example of small business branding; Heura Foods included its logo, slogan, and branding colors on the Instagram post that was reshared by the main festival account on various occasions. The result? Highly increased social media reach, visibility, and awareness!

However, the vegan meat brand works on its branding throughout the whole year. Recently, they launched a challenge on social media that turned out to be a great success. Interested participants purchased the new Heura product to be able to record a video recipe and share it on social media. Two users got rewarded with event tickets, store credit, and cookbooks from the participating brand. By creating a special hashtag for the challenge, the organizers generated more visibility for the brand on social media.

Branding for small businesses: invite users to use branded frames and stickers to decorate their pictures and collect UGC

We’ve established that getting started with a small business is a difficult task. Imagine launching a… new event! This is when small business owners really need to step up and put all their efforts and resources into promoting and generating visibility for the event. 

Pictures and selfies form a major part of social media. Tap into that phenomenon by designing frames and stickers with your logo, slogan, and branding colors and invite attendees to decorate their selfies in your virtual photo booth. This can really help your small business branding! By sharing their photos on social media, users promote your business to their followers and friends, helping you generate visibility and awareness!

Here’s an example from EASL, The Home of Hepatology. They recently ran an online event in which they educated people about liver disease. To spread awareness about their organization, they created a virtual photo booth which people used to share where they watched the event from. This is a great example of small business branding for online events. 

Interested in finding out more about virtual photo booths? Try our demos to test the real user experience. 

Incorporate gamification into your marketing strategy and boost branding for your small business

How do you get your customers to remember your logo, slogan, or brand image in general? The easiest way is to make sure that they spend time looking at all of those visual assets. But hard-sell campaigns are no longer welcome by consumers. This means that you have to find a way to engage and entertain your audience with branded content that they enjoy. And this is where gamification comes in. 

The Easypromos branded mini-games are fully customizable, which is a great solution for small business branding strategies. Choose a game that you find most engaging, for example, a puzzle or memory, and customize it with your logo, images, and colors. Offer an incentive, for example, free product samples, vouchers, or product bundles, and raffle them among all users that participate. Still not sure if it’d work? Take a look at this example from Andrew’s Airport Parking. 

In this example, users looked for matching images, which presented the portraits of Andrew’s Airport Parking employees. Note, that the game was customized with the brand’s colors and logo, which meant each user was exposed to the corporate image of the organizer. The best thing about it is that they didn’t mind it at all, as they were getting their portion of daily entertainment and a chance to win parking vouchers. 

Here’s an example of another small business branding game launched by the same company. In this example, participants rearranged the puzzle pieces to discover the image. You’ll note that one of the pieces shows Andrew’s Airport Parking’s logo – the man with a big smile!

Try our memory demos to see how engaging and entertaining branded games are! You will also get to see how customizable our applications are. 

Are you interested in finding out more about promotions, games, and contests for small businesses? Contact our customer support team!

Organizing an online contest is an action that will take your users from mere spectators of passive advertising to active participants of your marketing strategies. Online contests take user interaction to a level that can provide you with more useful data than marketers ever dreamed of. 

Before we dive into practical examples of online contests, let’s go over some important aspects to bear in mind before launching a contest. Online contests are great to increase brand awareness as they get the user involved in the action, and in doing so, will keep your brand top of mind. But here’s the catch, they can do more than that if you do it right!

Clearly define your main marketing objectives

This might seems a bit too obvious to mention, but it’s essential that your marketing objectives are crystal clear before you even start considering what kind of contest you will run. Do you want to collect data to generate leads? Collect UGC? Drive traffic to your e-commerce store? Promote a product line? 

Choose the kind of contest that best suits your objectives

Different dynamics fit better with different contest modalities. If you wish to collect UGC, a photo or video contest might be the way to go. Want to promote your product? A gamified solution could do the trick. Looking for some customer insight or feedback? A Pick Your Favorite contest may well be the way to go. 

Choose the right platform to manage your contest

Once you’ve defined your objectives and decided on a dynamic, it’s time to make a crucial decision: Which platform to use to run and manage your contest? All the hard work you’ve put in planning your contest so far has to be, and we can’t stress this enough, backed by a platform that is reliable, trustworthy, and robust enough to handle it. And unless you are both a marketer and a coder with superhuman powers, it should be easy to use and not require programming skills. 

But hey, we’re not here to tell you how difficult this task is, quite the contrary, we are here to let you know that you can take it easy. At Easypromos, it’s our job to make it EASY for you. But don’t just take our word for it. Check out the brand awareness solutions we have for you and see for yourself. 

Having said this, let’s go and check out some real examples of some contests that hopefully will help you draw a clear picture of what you need. 

Raise brand awareness, promote your product and gather UGC with a photo contest.

It’s not the first time we’ve said this, and surely not the first time you’ve read it either, but no content is more reliable than User-Generated Content (UGC). Nothing screams customer approval as customers themselves sharing and boasting about what your product can do. 

Nokian Tyres is a Finnish winter tire manufacturer, and they are well aware of this. Hence, they organized a photo contest and asked their users to participate by sending pictures of what their winter tires were up to out in the rugged Winterland of North America. The winners got a pack of the brand’s swagger and the organizer gathered not only useful UGC but also some very useful market segmentation data. 

Consumers will always trust other consumers more for product recommendations and pictures are the ultimate proof of what your product is doing for your customers. And, wait for it… it’s almost free!

Snowshoe Magazine, based in the Winterland paradise that Colorado, USA is, also organized a photo contest. In their case, however, the popular vote decided the winner. Aside from the advantages that we have already mentioned, photo contests with voting enabled motivate users to share their participation to get votes from friends and family. This, in turn, gives the contest even greater reach, which also benefits brand awareness. 

Pick your favorite contest to promote your business, increase brand awareness and gather UGC

Eastwood is a hardware shop that caters to classic car restoration enthusiasts in the USA. In this example, they organized a photo contest that would eventually help them pick the photos to be featured in their yearly calendar. 

First, they requested their community to send pictures of the cars they had used their products on. Secondly, they opened a voting stage in which the general public could vote for their favorites. The 12 winning contributions were then featured on their yearly calendar. 

Just take a minute to think about the impact and reach that such a campaign can have on your brand awareness. Not only do you get your product to be praised for what it can do by the customers themselves, but also, a much wider audience will have that precise reminder hanging on their wall for a whole year!

Add some fun and games to the brand awareness mix with a gamified action to nurture your database

Lovemore Music is a music shop based in South Africa. As part of their last Christmas campaign, the shop launched a series of gamified promotions and shared them on their social media to get their audience engaged. 

This particular example consisted of the very entertaining Slide & Match game. Users had to register to participate and the 10 players with the highest scores entered a final prize draw. It’s no secret that users love a little game here and there for fun, but if you also offer them the chance to win a prize, and foster a little competitiveness among them, they will be eager to participate and share their data with you. 

Promote your business and services, and boost brand awareness with a game

Australian Andrew’s Airport Parking is also well aware of the benefits that these gamified actions have for your brand awareness. Consequently, they often launch gamified promotions to engage with their audience in a fun way. 

In this example, they set up a puzzle with a customized image and the top 3 scoring players won a $100 airport voucher. To participate, users had to fill out a registration form that provided the brand with valuable information for segmentation purposes. 

How do you like these brand awareness contest ideas? Do you have an idea you’d like to share with us? Or maybe you have further questions? Contact us!

Define the goals you want to achieve with promo codes on social media

Social media is probably the best medium for growing your audience and increasing brand awareness and visibility. However, social media channels are also vital for driving more sales – and we’re not talking about shoppable posts on Instagram! By implementing innovative strategies into your social media plan, you might be able to see a significant spike in sales. One of those strategies could be a promotional codes campaign. And let us tell you that you don’t need to sacrifice your revenue to run a codes campaign. All you need is a good plan and you will end up driving sales and increasing profitability significantly. 

Start by asking yourself what goals you want to achieve. You might want to:

• Reach new customers
• Reactive or retain existing clients
• Upsell a product or clear out stock
• Promote a product or service
• Convert followers into sales leads

These five goals are among the most popular reasons for sharing promotional codes on social media. Let’s take a look at how to do it!

Reach new customers with promo codes on social media

Don’t we all like a bargain? The treat’s even better if it’s a deal from our favorite store or brand! If you have an active social media following, you’re in a good position to run a promo code campaign on social media; it’s likely that your discount will be welcomed with open arms by many of your followers, especially those that were hesitant to make a purchase. And did you know that sometimes potential customers are waiting for special offers to try out your product?

Take a look at how a skydiving center decided to share a promo code on social media. The company looked to promote its services to its social media followers and convince them to reserve a tandem skydive. The promotional code was a great way to drive traffic to the reservation website. 

Reactive or retain existing customers with social media promo codes

Social media promo codes can also work really well to reactivate or retain existing customers. Apart from touching base with your followers by sharing your promo codes, you also get to make your audience feel valued, especially if you have a private community for your customers. Let’s take a look at an example from a brand we all know, Sephora.

The beauty brand has a private community for the customers that form part of their loyalty program. With the start of their newest spring campaign, Sephora looked to boost sales, while also rewarding paying clients for their trust and loyalty. To do so, they took it to Instagram to share their special promo code. The loyalty program members were invited to enjoy one of the discounts. Depending on their loyalty program status, the promo codes were ranging from 10 to 20% off. Why did they share this private community promo code on social media? It’s the best way to promote the scheme, as well as reach many existing and potential members! 

Upsell a product or clear out stock with promo codes on social media

Do you want to promote one product specifically? Or maybe you need to clear out stock for your upcoming collection? Apart from sharing your discount codes on deal websites, you can also leverage social media channels!

This example shows clearly how a nutrition brand promoted its vanilla protein powder. The brand shared a special code with its followers. However, there was a twist! The code was valid only for 24 hours. Limited time offers create urgency and customers are more likely to redeem them. 

Share promo codes with followers that sign up

A popular tactic to gain more newsletter subscribers is to give a 10% discount to new database members. 

However, this kind of promotion is available only to the users that visit your website. How about promoting your brand with promo codes on social media? Take a look at the next example.

In this example, you can see how users obtain a discount code after sharing their contact details with the brand organizing the promotion. The best idea about this sort of action is that you can share the link on a variety of different social media channels. You won’t only get a chance to boost sales and collect new contact details for your CRM or database, but you can also access the promotion statistics to check which social media channel brought the most participants to your promotion.

Are you keen to find out more about sharing promo codes on social media? Check out our codes campaign demos or contact our customer support team in case of questions! 

Provide entertainment with a branded Timed Quiz and stay top of mind with customers

Just like we mentioned at the very beginning, your product shouldn’t be the main focus of your campaign. It’s all about the customers and what you can offer them, or rather how your offer will make a difference. Simple and powerful campaigns now all share the same characteristic: they all provide some sort of entertainment, whether it’s a mobile game, funny video, or discount. These types of content get people clicking and sharing, which brings even more eyes to your brand. 

This is why the secret lies in delighting your customers with engaging and interactive campaigns that apart from boosting brand awareness will also help your lead generation strategy. A branded Timed Quiz is a dynamic questionnaire that you can use to take your brand to the next level. Before you say it, yes, this might not be a typical branding quiz but it can definitely increase your brand awareness, as users get to interact with highly engaging content that positively impacts their opinion of your brand. 

Take a look at the above example of a Olympic Games Timed Quiz DEMO. Instead of asking about a brand or product, it aims to provide a piece of entertaining content that would appeal to a wider public and offer a product sample as prize. The quiz consists of a series of questions about the games and athletes. Users answered all questions as quickly as possible for a chance to win.

Brand awareness survey: launch fun quizzes to improve customer relationships

The typical branding quiz for customers checks the participants’ knowledge about the organizing brand or its products. However, someone who doesn’t necessarily know your whole product line or new collection might abandon the quiz before hitting the submit button, which is something you obviously don’t want. Avoid this from happening by offering your audience fun quizzes that apart from collecting marketing information can also give your audience something in return. Here are two different types of branding quizzes that don’t come with participation barriers but with fun elements that drive the user to complete the participation. 

Personality Quiz to create a more personal connection with your customers 

A Personality Quiz can be a quick and fun way to create strong connections between your brand and customers, as upon answering questions about their personality, likes, and preferences, the customers feel like the experience is all about them rather than your brand, especially if the customer is going through the very first phase of sales funnel. Additionally, the lead generation process becomes more efficient, as participants share their contact details in order to reveal a hidden personalized message. Let’s not forget that online personality tests are all about entertainment and fun, rather than reliable personality analysis.

The above example shows how a home decor brand engaged with their audience right in time for Halloween. They were looking for a way to increase their brand awareness with a questionnaire for their customers. However, instead of directly asking the participants to share their likes, they asked a series of questions about their decorating preferences. After providing answers to all the questions the users registered to view personalized messages. In this case, they revealed the users’ decorating personalities. Once again, instead of showcasing the products and prices the brand engaged the user and offered some personalized suggestions based on the user’s answers. This way, the participants could – but didn’t have to – view items that might appeal to their decorating preferences.

Raise brand and product awareness with Product Recommenders

Apart from providing fun and entertainment, the Easypromos online quizzes also promote brand awareness. And that’s thanks to their customization options and features. Brands can launch questionnaires for customers that fully showcase the organizer’s corporate colors and logos; this leads to increased awareness and visibility and therefore increases the chances of users recognizing the brand’s visual cues. 

Another type of brand awareness boosting quiz is the Product Recommender app. But they’re a little bit more specialized than Personality Quizzes, as they specifically present the products of the brand. They’re super useful for users in the MOFU stage of your sales funnel when participants especially need some guidance.

So when would brands launch this kind of branding questionnaire for customers? Product Recommenders are especially popular around big campaigns like Mother’s Day, Christmas, or Valentine’s Day when online users look for present ideas. E-commerce businesses can launch social campaigns to capture the users that need help in choosing products for their loved ones. And this is when Product Recommenders come in. Users answer a series of questions about their friend’s or family member’s likes and preferences, and based on their answers, the system displays a product that should best fit their needs and fulfill their expectations. 

Interested in testing the user experience? Give a go to our Product Recommender DEMO and discover how it can help you boost brand and product awareness. 

Collect feedback from your customers and reward their loyalty

So far we’ve looked at quizzes that brands can launch to provide entertainment and generate user engagement. However, there are other brand awareness questionnaires that companies like to share with their paying customers. Surveys are highly popular with e-commerce stores and online service providers looking to collect feedback from customers. So if you wish to find out what your client base likes the most about your brand and what could be improved, then it’s time to launch a satisfaction survey.

Surveys are normally delivered to customers via email or text messages; make sure to give the customer time between the purchase and the survey to actually evaluate or test the product. Create a questionnaire with just a few questions to ensure that the users complete it and don’t forget about incentives! Prizes are the best way to thank your clients for taking their time to complete the survey. Discount codes and coupons are especially popular with satisfaction surveys as they encourage repeat purchases. 

Ready to launch a brand awareness questionnaire for your company? Contact us live chat in case of questions or doubts!

Working on brand recognition might seem like a tough nut to crack – but it doesn’t have to be. As soon as you set specific goals you can start engaging your audience with digital promotions because generating positive noise around your brand is a great way to improve its reputation and recognition. We will now take a look at different steps to brand recognition and how online promotions can be used in each one of them.

Brand non-recognition: get out there with social media giveaways and boldly promote your brand and products

Social media giveaways are the most straightforward type of digital promotions, as they’re easy to set up and finalize, and take just a few seconds to participate in. They generate brand engagement and interaction between the user and the brand. 

When your brand is a startup or a small business that hasn’t yet gained much attention from the target audience, you should totally put your bets on social media giveaways. Apart from their simplicity, which is undoubtedly their biggest advantage, they also require very little investment – and that’s something important for small brands.

Sweepstakes increase social media engagement, attract new followers to your social media profiles and concurrently boost brand recognition and awareness. Take a look at the above example of a comment giveaway organized by an organic products brand. The giveaway did its job for the organizer: the brand gained visibility, grew their following and exposed more users to their products. But there’s a way to take brand recognition even further. 

Instead of asking users to explain why they want to win, ask them what they want to win! And instead of raffling a product bundle, give away a gift card to your store for a product of their choice. Ask your followers to mention their friends in the comment section (so that your giveaway can reach more users) and explain which product they’d like to try. You can even encourage them to visit your website to discover the new collection or the best-selling items. Apart from driving traffic to your website you also get to expose your target audience to your products. 

Brand recognition: get ahead of your competitors and work towards brand preference

Has your brand already gained some recognition and your target audience can recognize your logo, products, or slogan? That’s great news because your customers can actually recognize your brand now and that can play a big part when it comes to their purchases. But your job is not done yet! You now have to put some effort into maintaining your brand recognition and gaining a positive reputation because your next-door competitor is most likely working on the same thing.

Discount codes are a great way to attract new customers and put the spotlight on your brand and products. By offering special discounts and offers you get to acquire paying customers but also retain the existing ones. Discount code distribution has proven to be a successful way to increase brand recognition. 

Launch a coupon campaign and give away discount vouchers to all users that share their email address with your brand, and remember that the more attractive the offer the more likely you are to convert prospects into customers. Have you ever wondered why discount codes actually work? The principle of urgency and fear of missing out play the major parts here – if the user doesn’t redeem the code before its expiry date they won’t get to save money, and that’s what often pushes users to make use of the discount.

Brand preference: incorporate gamification for added value

Brand preference is yet another stage of brand recognition but it’s actually much more than just recognition… At this stage, your customers are likely to lean towards your brand when it comes to their purchase choices. It might be because your prices are more attractive or your products are of better quality than most of your competitors. And this is when it’s time to put extra effort into working on customer relationships. 

Offering great post-purchase customer service and following up with (more!) discounts are some ways of adding value to your products. But apart from positive experiences, online users also look for fun, engagement and entertainment and they don’t necessarily have to find it on online gaming websites. 

Differentiate your products and brand from the crowd by incorporating branded mini-games. Additionally, you will generate a new experience for your audience, convert more users, and better position your business. 

Take a look at this example of a branded Memory game that can be launched by any business! In this case, the example shows a gamified promotion organized by a fashion brand. Users looked for matching images for a chance to win a gift voucher to the organizing store.

Gamification is a great solution for brands whose audiences are engaged and respond well to digital promotions. As branded games leave a positive impression, your audience grows more attached to your brand, putting you on the right path to customer loyalty.

Brand loyalty: attract lifelong customers and brand ambassadors

From brand recognition to brand loyalty – the ultimate goal for many brands. If you’ve managed to position your brand in the market, attract customers and generate buzz around your products… You’ve done a great job. But once you create customer relationships you can’t just abandon your customers. You need to foster the existing ties.

Loyalty schemes go way back. Before loyalty cards were introduced, people used to cut out barcodes from cereal or biscuit boxes. Nowadays, we still use loyalty cards but there are also more digital solutions for loyalty programs. 

So if you’re looking to encourage customer loyalty, here’s an idea for you; distribute unique codes to your customers every time they make a purchase. Invite them to accumulate five or ten codes for special rewards like prizes and discounts. 

Take a look at this example. The organizing brand was giving out unique codes for each $20 spent at their petrol station. Once the user accumulated and validated five codes they received a $5 discount for their next purchase. This kind of promotions will drive your customers back to your store. Because who doesn’t like to save money?

We hope that all these examples have given you a better understanding of brand recognition and digital promotions. But don’t worry if something’s still unclear – contact our customer support team!

The saying out of sight, out of mind couldn’t be more relevant when it comes to staying top of mind with customers. Want to attract clients? You need to be visible! 

In this blog post, we take a look at how to stay noticeable and relevant thanks to online promotions and games – and therefore how to improve brand recognition when your competitors are more active than ever!

Work on brand recognition with mini-games and expose your logo

So what is brand recognition? It’s whenever your audience can identify your brand from visual or audio cues. To be able to do so, you need to deliver enough of these clues. One of the best ways to expose your existing and potential customers to your brand is to organize a branded game, full of corporate colors and logos. 

Take a look at this successful campaign launched by Andrew’s Airport Parking; you can see how gamification can better position your brand thanks to brand livery elements. The airport parking business organized a Memory game to raffle a $100 parking voucher among all registered participants.

Apart from seeing the organizer’s logo on the back of the cards, the users also saw it on the welcome and thank you page of the game, as well as on the registration form.

Wondering how to make sure you make the most out of a gamified promotion? Give your audience more than one opportunity to participate in your game in order to improve their score and therefore their ranking place. We guarantee it’ll work – online audiences love rivalry! The more they play, the more time they will spend looking at your brand colors and logo! 

Launch photo contests with branded frames and stickers 

We’ve already mentioned that brand recognition comes from brand visibility. Various contests (for example photo or video competition) are a popular form of digital promotions. They’re a fantastic solution for brands that are already well-positioned in the market, especially if you’re asking participants to share pictures of your products that they purchase. However, there’s also a fun tactic for anyone looking to improve brand recognition and stand out from the crowd. 

Take a look at this following PhotoFun contest, in which users decorated their selfies with branded frames and stickers.

Barons Quay, a British shopping center, looked to engage their audience and increase brand visibility and awareness. They launched an online photo contest for users that wanted to decorate their selfies with festive stickers and frames that came with the organizer’s logo. Each time a participant shared their postcard with their friends or on social media, new users were exposed to Barons Quay, making them aware of the brand and more likely to recognize it in the future. 

Additionally, the brand obtained great user-generated content for their social media channels; and that’s a perk for anyone looking to boost customer loyalty and trust.

Launch brand recognition campaigns and win customer loyalty

Whenever users participate in a giveaway they automatically become more aware of the brand behind it. It’s even likely that they’ll come back to find out who won or to see if the brand is running other promotions. Take advantage of all the benefits that come with digital promotions and organize an Entry Form Giveaway for your audience, just the way Fairfield Forum did. Apart from completing a variety of different marketing objectives, you will also make sure that your audience will be more likely to identify your company over others.

The commercial center ran a Father’s Day giveaway for all customers that spent the minimum amount at the participating stores. Apart from boosting brand recognition, Fairfield Forum also drove customers to their premises and boosted sales. 

Promote your brand with a quiz to collect leads and reinforce exposure

Quizzes are popular with all types of customers because they’re fun for all age groups! It doesn’t matter if you launch a quiz that will help your audience determine which movie character they most resemble or if you check your customers’ knowledge about your products and brand; quizzes engage and entertain! 

Launching Personality Quizzes is a great way of standing out from the crowd and converting followers into leads. Especially if you throw in some nice incentives!

Here’s an example of a Personality Quiz organized for Valentine’s Day. Users answered a series of questions about their preferences and based on their responses, the application displayed personalized final messages. Additionally, each participant entered a draw for a chance to win the prize that most suited their personality (based on their answers, of course!). Providing fun experiences is one of the most successful ways of working and maintaining brand recognition online!

We hope these examples of brand recognition campaigns helped you understand how online campaigns can increase brand awareness online. Don’t worry if you still have some questions – our customer support team is here to help!

However, launching a contest is never a bad idea. But it is incredibly important to invite your followers to participate in a promotion that appeals to their likes, preferences, and lifestyle.

Reasons for organizing a pet-themed contest

In one of our previous posts, we mentioned that online promotions with baby and animal topics seem to be always the most popular among online communities. 

So does your brand sell products or services aimed at pets and their owners? Or maybe you simply have a reason to believe that the majority of your social media followers are pet lovers? Your guess might be just correct, as 67% of US households own a pet, according to the 2019-2020 National Pet Owners Survey. And targeting your audience’s soft spot is ALWAYS a good idea. With the number of pet holidays that happen throughout the year, you have more than enough chances to do it! Here are just a few from the Complete List of Pet Holidays:

• World Animal Day
• International Dog Day
• International Cat Day
• Hug You Cat Day
• International Homeless Animal Day

And the list goes on! 

Brands organizing pet-themed contests can accomplish much more than just engaging their online communities. By sharing content that strengthens the emotional connection between the brand and the target audience you retain the most loyal customers. 

Did you know that clients who feel a connection to a brand spend up to twice as much as those who don’t?

Another reason to make contests a permanent part of your marketing strategy is if shared on social media they convert followers into qualified leads. And if users participate by sharing videos, texts, or pictures you automatically get to collect the so-desired user-generated content that happens to be the most authentic type of content brands share on their channels. 

In this blog post, we show you examples of successful online pet contests organized by companies from different sectors. They engaged online communities, improved brand, and product awareness, and generated hundreds of contact details for the organizers’ databases. And most importantly, they allowed brands to share user-created content that humanized the brands and helped boost customer loyalty and trust. Take a look because one of them might inspire you enough to launch your own online pet competition. 

Are you looking for something more simple? Why don’t you launch a pet-themed comment-based social media giveaway to boost engagement and connect with your social followers?

Boost brand visibility and social media presence with pet Photo Contests

If you have a pet yourself, your phone is likely to be full of cute shots of your puppy, or your grumpy-looking cat. If you’d come across a pet photo voting contest online it’d take you less than a minute to participate. Now think that there are thousands of people like you. And they’re the people you should launch a photo contest for!

Boost social media presence by encouraging social media sharing

First up is this photo contest organized by DogTV, an absolute pioneer in pet-themed online contests. DogTV is the first television network made specifically for dogs! The TV channel regularly launches contests for their loyal viewers, giving them a chance to shine in front of other dogs, as the best content pieces make it to the TV channel itself. But this time DogTV went further. Instead of asking the users to submit pictures of their dogs, the brand decided to look for the Dog Mom of the Year! This contest targeted all the female dog owners that wanted to claim the special title. 

It was in the public’s hands to choose the winner, therefore all participants shared the promotion link across social media channels. It tremendously boosted DogTV’s brand awareness and improved their social media presence. The brand also expanded their mailing list and obtained content for the TV channel and social media networks.

Promote your brand and product with a pet photo competition

Maggie Dent is an Australian parenting author, educator, and speaker. During the recent self-isolation, the author decided to celebrate the connection we have with pets, the compassion and kindness they bring out in us. Maggie Dent launched a photo contest for pet owners; interested online users shared pictures of their kids spending quality time with their four-legged friends, parrots, and hamsters.

Once again the winner was chosen by the public, which encouraged the participants to share the promotion link across social media channels. It was also a great way to attract more potential entrants, and convert followers into Maggie Dent’s online community members. 

You might be wondering what would be the best prize for a brand awareness campaign on social media. Follow the steps of Maggie Dent; the winner got $500 worth of Maggie Dent’s resource, while the 2nd and 3rd runner up got $200 vouchers to redeem in the online shop. It was a fantastic opportunity – that Maggie Dent took – to promote educational products and raise brand awareness. The online pet photo contest also drove many participants to the e-commerce simply to check out the products that Maggie Dent offers.   

Launch a pet-themed online contest to drive traffic to your e-commerce site

Have you recently launched an online shop for your pet shop? Or maybe you simply want to drive traffic to your e-commerce? There’s a way to do it! Here’s an example from Vetscriptions, a British pet shop. The business asked their customers to upload pictures of their “super pets” for a chance to win a £50 voucher to spend in their online store. 

TIP: If you’re looking to boost sales offer a discount code for all participants, apart from a big final prize. You get to collect great pictures for your social media channels while boosting sales and driving traffic to your website. It’s a win-win. 

Boost social media engagement and visibility with a Mention + Hashtag Contest 

Many brands launch content-focused contests in order to raise awareness. But how about launching a contest in which users participate by posting on social media instead of uploading pictures through an entry form? 

Here’s an example from Lara Vital, a popular online pet shop. Lara Vital wanted to promote one of the products available at their shop: dog food. To do so, the company launched a Mention + Hashtag Contest, in which online users participated by sharing a picture of their dog with one of the Natural Extra products. 

It was a great tactic to boost the brand’s visibility on social media and promote the sponsoring brand and product. Social media pet contests tend to go viral, as many potential users learn about the contest from posts shared by their family and friends. 

Launch pet Video Contests to expand your database and obtain authentic content

Video Contests are very similar to Photo Contests, as they are based on exactly the same dynamics. However, video content is more engaging than image and written content. It is reported that videos generate 1200% more shares than texts and pictures. So if you’re looking to repost the content obtained through an online pet contest you might want to put your bets on audiovisual pet competitions. 

Here’s an example from Koala Mascotas, a pet shop from the Canary Islands. The organizers were looking for funny videos of pets; dogs, cats, parrots, and even spiders were welcomed! 

The winner was once again picked by the audience and won a gift bag full of products appropriate for their funny animal.

Share fantastic stories and tap into your customers’ loyalty with Writing Contests

Haven’t we all shed a tear reading a heartwarming story about rescued cats or dogs? Well, some of us have! By targeting your potential customers’ emotions you create an emotional connection between your brand and potential clients. And that connection can be often built through stories, as they’re the trigger for our brain emotional center. Here’s a great example of a Writing Contest launched by Rescue – disinfecting products. The company decided to give back to their community and to do so they turned to their social media followers. Rescue asked online users to nominate animal shelters that needed disinfecting products. Over the course of a year, monthly, they donated products needed for keeping animal shelters clean and safe.

It was a fantastic customer-driven campaign, as the online users helped choose the shelters most in need. The contest increased brand and product awareness and hugely reinforced customer loyalty and trust. In order to convert website visitors into leads and disseminate the contest, Rescue announced the promotion also on their website.

Go viral with a Refer-a-Friend pet contest

Have you ever thought about organizing a contest where participants get extra chances to win for convincing their friends to also join the promotion? Let us tell you: it’s the best way to make your promotion go viral and tremendously increase brand and product awareness. 

Universo Mascotas is another online pet shop, regularly launching fantastic pet-themed giveaways and contests for their online community. This time the brand organized a Refer-a-Friend contest in which they wanted to hear stories about rescued animals. 

Interested participants shared pictures of their rescued furry friends and then shared a link with their family and friends. For every recruited participant the recruiter had an extra chance to win a 6-month food supply for their pet. 

Don’t worry if your brand is not associated with pet products or services, as any brand can launch a pet-themed contest. Celebrate World Animal Day or any other event to tap into your customers’ loyalty. 

Extra Idea! Create an Interactive Pet Game

Do you want to add an even more original touch to your pet contests? Create an interactive game where users can choose their favorite breeds or pets. Try the Face Off Cat Breed Game to see how it works!

Do you have questions or doubts? Or maybe you launched a great pet contest that you’d like to share with us? Contact our Support Team! 

If you are a small business owner, you are competing with millions of other businesses for a unique position and place in the market.

How Is Branding Important For Small Business Growth?

Branding relates to creating a company’s name, logo, and design that is easily described as belonging to the company. It helps to identify the product and differentiate it from other products and services. These give you a better option to differentiate yourself from competitors and to be clear about what you are offering. 

Your brand is the real representation of who you are as a business and how you want to be understood.

The Florist’s Loft is a botanical event space in Toronto. Despite its small social media community, the brand has a strong and consistent presence and brand image, which creates a sense of trust and loyalty. By showcasing their space they generate more consumer demand.

What Does a Reputed Small Business Brand Do?

Branding is about understanding your target market and the competition within the market share. Branding is about reaching potential customers who see you as the sole provider of solutions for their needs. Promotions are key to reaching this customer base, exposing your brand to these customers, and building a brand community. 

A strong brand will figure out all the above qualities:  

• Deliver the message
• Confirm the brand’s credibility in the market
• Emotionally connect target prospects with products and services
• Motivate the potential buyer to make a purchase
• Create goodwill and loyalty

Intangible Concepts Of Branding: Brand Improves Recognition 

Branding is important for your business as it makes customers recognize the products and services you are providing them. The logo is the most important element of the brand, as it is essentially the face of the business.

This is why the professional logo design must be powerful and easy to remember.

Brand Trust for Your Small Business

People often buy from a business that looks shiny and legit. 

For example – A small business uses the new company’s logo to give business cards, employee t-shirts, and a professional image of the business exterior. Passersby and others who face the logo can now easily recognize the business as a trusted center in society.

Brand Increases The Business Value

Branding is important when trying to build a future for the business. A well-established brand can add value to the business. It will give more weight to your business in the competitive industry. 

Moreover, it makes your business a more attractive investment opportunity due to its well-established market position.

Attract New Customers to Your Small Business

A good brand should have no trouble developing its sponsorship activity. A strong brand image usually means that customers have a positive impression of the business. Because of the familiarity and credibility of the name, they may believe that they can do business with you.

Once the brand is well-established, word of mouth is the most effective advertising strategy in the business.
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In the following example, you can see how The Knot Pillow Store reinforces a strong brand image and reputation through a variety of high-quality social media posts. Their consistent social media voice and focus build trust and engage the customer’s creativity. By showcasing their products in different settings they tap into customer loyalty, build product awareness and improve brand depth.

Brand Creates Employee Satisfaction

The mission of any business is to make the employee feel connected to the business, the brand, and that they are an integral part of the organization. Creating a team environment and sharing common goals is important. When employees work in a strong brand company, they are more satisfied and take more pride in their work.

In many cases, increasing employee satisfaction and creating brand teams can be achieved by using promotional products on your desktop. 

Toyota Finance looked to reward its best insurance dealers at the beginning of the year. Once a seller closed five new motor vehicle insurance policies they got to spin a prize wheel. Their hard work was rewarded with cinema tickets, Kindles, chocolates, and vacuums. It’s a powerful example of how desktop promotions can motivate employees and boost morale. 

Brand Supports Advertising

Advertising is another component of branding. The advertising strategy directly reflects the brand and presents your business in front of the customers.

Use the promotional products of outstanding companies, such as outsourced branding from advertising techniques. It makes it easy to develop an integrated and attractive advertising strategy that best fits your branding goals.

Where Does Branding Stand?

• For a successful brand, you must know the demands and expectations of your customers. You can do this by integrating your brand strategies across the company at each public point of contact.

• For example: Consider branding your business or organization as a living breathing person. Imagine this person (your brand) explaining who they are, why they are precious, and what they have to offer in particular.

• As consumers begin to identify your brand, it remains at the top of mind of customers. Promotions and contests reinforce the brand, building on the customer relationship.

Checklist to Evaluate Your Brand

How to know whether your brand is strong enough to give the value you need? 

Start by asking yourself:

1. Is this brand relevant to my target audience? Will the customer “get it” without much thought?
2. Does this brand share the uniqueness I am offering? 
3. Does the brand reflect the promise I made to my target audience and have value to my internal audience?
4. Is the brand reflecting the values that I want to represent for consumers?  

How Is Marketing Important For Small Business Growth?

Marketing Research is an amalgamation of all the activities that you will do to bring business products and services in front of potential customers. 

The success of small businesses depends on the ability of business owners to sell their products and services. Your marketing strategy must be fruitful to keep your small business alive. It sends a message to potential customers and encourages them to test their company.

For example, you have established the most incredible garden the world has ever seen. Every bud blooms as all the flowers blossom, the leaves are the most vibrant green you have ever seen. To share these beautiful flowers with the world, you collect them into bouquets and stack them in enough vases. 

Then, you go outside to sell your flower bouquets. You write your name in front of the shop, place the logo, and then what’s next? 

You can only target those who pass by to admire your colors. At the end of the day, you still have a full table of flowers. Businesses need a traffic generator, digitally. They must market to create awareness that they are there and reach people who are looking for what they are selling. 

This is why marketing is so important to small businesses. Without accurate and engaging marketing, its scope is extremely limited.

Adelaide Florist put their bets on an interactive solution, a branded Word Search game. They promoted their small businesses with a gamified promotion on social media, in which they raffled a $50 bouquet. 

Users looked for 10 flower names hidden in the Word Search. Upon completing the game the users shared their contact details in order to join the raffle. Thanks to the integrated registration form the organizing company could not only contact the winner but also expand their mailing list for future marketing purposes. 

Learn here the concept of strategic marketing.

What is Strategic Marketing?

• Identify product needs through consumer research, and observe and quantify sales patterns of similar merchandise.
• Modify existing products or create new ones to meet the needs and desires of your consumers.
• Decide how to reach out to potential customers, so they become aware of your products and buy them.
• Create marketing campaigns based on your findings on how to reach customers more effectively.
• Confirm customer relationships through follow-up sales campaigns and loyalty programs.

Marketing Informs The Consumer

At a basic level, marketing guides your potential customer about the products and services of your business. However, if your customer does not understand what you are selling, it is of no use. 

In order to attract customers from a crowded market, your target audience needs to know why they prefer your company over others. This is where marketing comes in to inform current and potential customers about your company and its needs. 

Therefore, marketing is a powerful way to increase the value of your business services and products in an interesting manner.

Marketing Equalizes The Market

Marketing is a type of playground for all small and medium-sized businesses. It helps them to apply different strategies and ideas to their own niche competitors. 

Modern marketing is a cheaper game than ever before. Email marketing campaigns and Social media platforms have made it a more affordable option to contact customers. Intelligent marketing can also improve competitive conditions with known competitors.

Some even say that small and medium-sized companies have an advantage. They have more time to focus on each customer individually through different marketing platforms. 

Modern consumers experience more than prices, so one-on-one conversations like this can push customers toward big brands in your direction.

Marketing Sustains The Company Existence

According to a survey, marketing is more like food than medicine. In essence, marketing is about maintaining a company’s existence, not overcoming a lack of engagement. 

However, marketing allows businesses to create and maintain a healthy relationship with their customers every day. It is not a one-off solution, but rather an ongoing strategy that helps companies to prosper.

Marketing Engages More Customers

Customer engagement is essential to the success of small businesses. It allows you to convey your message and attract potential customers. You don’t have to bring people to the store like in the past, you can hire people on multiple platforms via e-commerce, social media, and more.

Jennison Grigsby moved her yoga business online during the pandemic lockdowns. She looked for a way to appeal to more online users and attract them to her digital yoga lessons. 

Yoga with Jennison launched a social media giveaway, in which Jennison raffled a 60-minute online session for three. Apart from boosting engagement and growing her social media following, she also gained new customers who found her thanks to the Instagram giveaway. 

Marketing keeps customers busy beyond store hours, it is also about building a brand and then nurturing the customer’s relationship with that brand.

Marketing Sells More Products

While opening a store near you, it can give a kick-start to it. The marketing expands your options and draws attention to what you’re selling so people can buy it.

The foundation of any business is earning money and marketing is an essential channel to reach that ultimate goal. Creatives explain that since marketing ultimately increases sales, so there is no more business without it.

Sure, you have a good product, but if people don’t know about your offerings, how can you sell? Simply it is not possible.

Marketing Grows The Organization

This marketing function is partly the conclusion of the first four. Strategic marketing leads to the growth of your company. If you successfully train customers, retain them, build a good reputation in their heads, and sell them wisely, your company will probably do better. 

In addition, most companies thrive on gaining new customers. With marketing, you primarily attract these customers. Marketing essentially secures the future of your company through new and old customer loyalty.

Social media engages millions of active monthly users, which makes online platforms the perfect place to showcase products and attract potential customers and new community members. Vessi – a Canadian footwear start-up – turned to sweepstakes in an attempt to boost their brand and sales. 

Regular comment-to-win giveaways grew a strong community and helped Vessi become the industry benchmark for waterproof footwear. 

Would you like to find out more about the giveaways organized by Vessi? Head to the case study to discover more details. 

Marketing Create Needs

Marketing not only defines the needs of the consumers, but also helps in creating the needs of the consumers. It really starts with the understanding of your potential user.

Many marketing campaigns are based on creating awareness of a product and the desire to do this product themselves. The important thing is that this awareness creates needs.

Different Marketing Tools

Marketing can be accomplished from a variety of online and offline methods.

• SEO
• Social Media Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Pay Per Click Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Print Campaigns
• Television
• Radio

At Which Place Branding and Marketing Overlap?

Although branding and marketing differ, there is one area where they overlap. Branding and marketing stand side by side to each other, and the strategies strategies become one whenever they are used on a daily basis.

As the saying goes, “The picture says a thousand words.” Thinking this thing in mind, if you select your company’s colors, logos, and graphics, then make sure that these things represent your brand first. 

The Final Verdict

I hope that your concept of branding and marketing is understandable in the real world. The power of branding is to be closer to the consumer, not a real service or product.

It’s branding that explains to customers who you are. Meanwhile, branding can give your businesses more than just providing certain types of service or creating products. 

At the same time, marketing is essential to attract and engage customers with your brand. Understanding branding and marketing can help you build a solid foundation for your small business.

The Easypromos Hidden Objects game allows you to:

• Personalize the promotion with your corporate image: upload a logo and customize the appearance of the promotion so that it matches your branding colors and corporate image. 
• Quickly and easily upload an image with hidden objects and mark the areas that users must locate. Showcase your newest products, collections, and branding. 
• Organize a prize draw for all registered participants or the 10 fastest players. 
• Collect contact details of potential customers with an integrated registration form. Users register to opt in for a prize. 
• Share the game on social media, embed it on your website, or share it with newsletter subscribers. 

Now that you know a bit more about our Hidden Objects game application, it’s time to share with you examples of successful promotions that brands created using the Easypromos app. Let’s take a look!

Hidden Objects games for Christmas campaigns

Let’s be honest, people go crazy for Christmas! Decorations come up as soon as Halloween finishes, and some people begin Christmas shopping as early as September. That’s the reason why every single brand should celebrate Christmas and run a festive campaign!

Let’s take a look at two different examples of Christmas Hidden Objects games that engaged online communities. 

First up is a Hidden Objects promotion launched by MyPetBuddy, a dog walking business from the United Arab Emirates. MyPetBuddy challenged their audience to locate four different objects hidden in the promotional image: Santa, snowman, carrot, and Santa hat. Each registered user that completed the game had a chance to win a themed goodie bag with toys for their dog. 

Thanks to the registration form MyPetBuddy expanded their database, as users had to leave their contact information in order to opt in for a prize. 

The next example is our Hidden Objects game Christmas template, which appealed to many different brands last year. The secret to the success of this example is that brands could easily download the image and personalize it with their logo. That way users participating in the game were exposed to the organizer’s corporate image throughout game playing. Clearly, they didn’t mind, as for finding four hidden chocolate chip cookies, they had a chance to win a variety of attractive prizes!

Would you like to try our Hidden Objects DEMO for Christmas campaigns? Give it a go and discover how easy it is to engage users and improve brand awareness. 

Online Easter egg hunts with Hidden Objects game

After Christmas comes Easter! And we couldn’t help ourselves but share with you these fantastic online Easter egg hunts. In the modern era of technology, many traditions have moved online, and Easter egg hunts are one of them. Organize your own online egg hunt to reconnect with your audience and activate dormant followers and newsletter subscribers. Believe us, it works! 

Stenberg College wanted to connect with their students during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and they decided to reward their pupils with $100 Amazon gift cards. 

The promotion targeted only the students of Stenberg College, therefore, all players had to provide their student email address to join the promotion. The organizer gave away 10 Amazon cards throughout one day, drawing one random winner per hour. It was a fantastic way to boost excitement and rivalry!

Next up is a creative Easter egg hunt organized by Plum Guide, a British vacation home rental company. Their online egg hunt was a little bit different than the one launched by Stenberg College, as Plum Guide looked to promote their services and boost sales. Interested participants looked for golden eggs hidden in a picture of one of Plum Guide’s properties! Isn’t that a great idea? Apart from engaging their audience they also showcased one of their luxury properties. 

One lucky winner received a £200 credit, while Plum Guide increased brand awareness and ensured they would eventually attract a paying customer. 

Mother’s Day Hidden Objects game

Any occasion is good enough to launch a branded Hidden Objects game. Do you need to reinforce branding and improve brand awareness and recall? This example is for you. 

Take a look at how a local florist promoted their business right in time for Mother’s Day. Instead of launching a traditional Mother’s Day giveaway, the flower shop wanted to give their target audience something to remember. They launched a Hidden Objects game in which users looked for hidden flowers, which would be used to create a Mother’s Day bouquet. The main prize? You guessed it, it was a beautiful bouquet delivered right to the front door of the winner’s lovely mum!

Entertain your audience for Halloween with a Hidden Objects game

People love Halloween almost as much as they love Christmas! And believe us when we say that any brand can launch a playable promotion for Halloween.

Take a look at how easy it’d be for a home decor brand to organize a spooky game. In this case, we simply hid five logos and asked the audience to locate them! It’s a perfect promotion to test your followers’ visual skills, expose the user to your corporate image, collect new leads, boost engagement, and simply entertain your social media followers!

Promote new products and bestsellers with branded Hidden Objects games

Product promotion is one of the top priorities for many brands. You might know by now that branded mini-games can do a fantastic job when it comes to promoting new products, and even bestsellers. Hidden Objects games happen to be one of the most popular games for anyone who wants to improve product awareness.

Beronia looked for an interactive lead generation and product promotion strategy. They went for a Hidden Objects game in which they rewarded the 10 fastest participants with gift boxes full of their best wines!

Another alcoholic beverage brand that went for the same idea is Canasta. During the 2020 lockdowns, Canasta looked for a way to connect with their customers and reward their engagement. They launched a branded Hidden Objects game presenting four different situations of people spending time at home. In each image, there was a hidden Canasta bottle.

Both brands accomplished the goal of engaging their audience, boosting brand awareness, and collecting new contact details. 

Here’s just one more example of a Hidden Objects game created by an ice cream shop! 

Test the visual skills of your followers with a Hidden Objects game

Would you like to test the visual skills of your audience? No problem, you can do it with the Hidden Objects app! Take a look at the challenge that we created for our audience, in which users had to locate four bitten apples. This one was quite difficult! 

Are you ready to launch your own Hidden Objects game now? Use our ready-to-use Hidden Objects game templates to create your own promotions in no time, and in case of questions or doubts, don’t hesitate to online chat with us! 

Any business owner has one ultimate goal: to be the brand of choice for their target market. But with thousands of companies and products out there your message might often be unheard in all the marketing noise. So put simply, brand positioning is placing your brand and product in the target customer’s mind.

Brand positioning is placing your brand and product in the target customer’s mind. 
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Before we proceed to actual tips and examples that will help you place your brand in a better position, let’s look at just a few brands and products that have been positively accepted by the public and continue to be highly recognized. In other words, their position is solid! Here we go:

• Whenever thirsty we ask for a coke
• While relaxing in the park we sometimes throw a frisbee around 
• We all use super glue 
• Who doesn’t like to chill in a jacuzzi? 

Yes, you’ve guessed it! Coke, Frisbee, Super Glue, and even Jacuzzi are brands and tradenames that positioned so well in the market that they continue to be used as general words by billions. 

As you can see brand position in the market is a very important aspect for any business. And every marketing plan should be working towards reinforcing brand positioning. Let’s now take a look at how digital promotions help brands differentiate themselves from their competitors. 

Strengthen your brand positioning by adding important campaigns into your marketing plan

First things first; advertising is important. It’s the way to reach your customers, connect with potential clients, and promote your brand and product so that you can boost sales. However, we’ve all come across adverts that are boring, irrelevant, and just don’t have that “something” to attract our attention for more than half a second. 

Customer communication is a vital part of strengthening customer relationships throughout the year, however, big events like Christmas, Mother’s or Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day or Black Friday is when customers are on a lookout for better deals more than ever. And that’s when the way you communicate with your target audience is also very important. This is when digital promotions come into the picture. 

Online communities tend to respond to interactive content very positively, which leads to businesses obtaining great results. Gamified promotions, giveaways, and contests create excitement and tap into customer’s loyalty and trust, meaning they also improve brand position in the market. Here’s how to take advantage of big events and holidays to position your brand in your customer’s mind. 

Position your brand by giving away Christmas presents 

Holiday shopping tends to be the best period for many businesses, with average Americans spending almost 1000$ on Christmas shopping. A big chunk of that money could end up in your till. So reaching your target audience and convincing them to purchase your brand is one of your top priorities. Here’s how SPAR Botswana reinforced their brand positioning last Christmas. As part of their marketing plan, the supermarket chain launched a simple giveaway with registration in which they raffled a new mobile phone and store vouchers. 

Remember, brand positioning is the place you want to own in your target customer’s mind. By giving away presents and coupons right in time for Christmas SPAR differentiated themselves from competitors and reinforced customer loyalty. What do you think was the first supermarket the giveaway participants thought of when going shopping for Christmas dinners?

Differentiate yourself from competitors with a gamified promotion

Many of your target customers turn to social media for entertainment. So it seems quite obvious that one way to differentiate yourself from similar brands and product providers is by offering your customers some high-quality content to engage with! 

Gamified promotions are the most recent trend in digital marketing and let us tell you – they work! 

This radio station from Texas – Candy 95.1 – gamified their marketing plan. As part of their Easter campaign, the brand launched an online egg hunt in which participants looked for hidden Easter eggs. Imagine coming across this promotion on social media channels. What would be the radio station you’d search for next time you’d be getting in your car? Because we’d look for Candy 95.1!

Apart from creating solid brand positioning digital promotions tick off many other objectives from your marketing plan. All Easypromos applications come with integrated entry forms for expanding your mailing list and can be fully customized to reinforce brand and product awareness. 

There are many other holidays that you can take into account when putting together a marketing plan. Launch games, contests, quizzes, and giveaways to celebrate events like:

• Mother’s Day
• Father’s Day
• Summer/Winter/Fall/Spring
• Valentine’s Day
• Singles’ Day
• Halloween
• Black Friday & Cyber Monday 

Let’s not forget about all the smaller events like World Environment Day, World Animal Day, or International Cat Day. Any event is a great excuse to work on your brand positioning! 

Change the way online communities perceive your brand through sponsorships

Consumers trust companies that have authority in their market and one way to gain it is through sponsoring local events and sports clubs. Sponsorships put your brand right in front of new audiences and potential customers. Your business automatically gains recognition when tied to high-profile events and brands. 

Here’s an example of an Entry Form Giveaway organized by Joma, a Spanish sports clothing manufacturer that happens to be one of the sponsors of Swansea City AFC. 

Joma regularly raffles tickets to Swansea City’s football matches. By doing so, the clothes manufacturer positions themselves in a differentiated situation. Football clubs tend to have very loyal fans whose perception of Joma changes as they realize they’re the sponsor of the ticket giveaway. 

Sponsorship is the perfect tactic to get your name and logo out there. 
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Here’s another great example, this time of event sponsorship. Garmin was one of the sponsors of The Valencia Trinidad Alfonso EDP Marathon. The event organizers along with Garmin launched an Instagram Giveaway to promote the event and its sponsor. Interested participants entered the raffle by following the organizing accounts and mentioning one person friend in the comments section.

More than 8,000 people participated in the Instagram promotion, boosting the social media engagement of both brands. Garmin improved their brand positioning and occupied a better place in the target customer’s brain as they came across as a well-established brand giving back to their community. 

Read more about the promotion organized by Garmin and The Valencia Trinidad Alfonso EDP Marathon.

Celebrate brand anniversaries to reinforce your brand positioning

Celebrating milestone anniversaries is a great way to reinforce your brand and build credibility. Apart from celebrating the achievements, it’s also a perfect way to recognize your customers and thank them for choosing you over the years. It’s also a great opportunity to improve the way your target audience perceives your brand. 

Collect user-generated content to build credibility

Here’s an example from Live The Dream Travel, an Australian travel agency. The company launched a Photo Contest to celebrate their 10th anniversary. The plot twist? Only the previous clients of Live The Dream Travel could participate in the contest. 

Photo Contests provide brands with very valuable user-generated content, which tends to be one of the most authentic content pieces brands can share on social media. 

By organizing a promotional campaign available only for your existing customers you reinforce their loyalty and trust and strengthen customer relationships. These then lead to your brand occupying a better space in your target customer’s brain. Next time they need something they’ll walk through your doors instead of your competitors’.

Boost sales while converting new customers

Who doesn’t like sales, discount codes, or vouchers? We all do, and so do your target customers. Freebies and special offers quite often convert social media followers into loyal customers. 

Can you already see what we’re about to say? By celebrating anniversaries you build credibility and trust, and by distributing sales and prizes you convert customers. Is there a better way to reinforce your brand positioning? 

Here’s an example of a promotion created by us to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Throughout a whole week, we distributed free Easypromos subscriptions with the use of our Spin the Wheel app. 

Another example comes from GoGreen. The diving school took it to social media to celebrate their 2nd anniversary with their audience: divers. The brand raffled a bunch of fantastic gifts for any diving enthusiast. Such generous promotions improve brand positioning as customers think of the brand with a bit of more emotional attachment. 

Promote core values to better brand positioning

The XXI-century customer is more conscious when it comes to choosing a brand to purchase. We’re more concerned about the environment, sustainability, animal welfare, and gender equality among others. Customers want to purchase from brands that share their views and opinions. 

Another great way to better brand positioning is by sharing your core values with your customers. Organize social media giveaways in which you promote your brand values, launch a branded mini-game to educate your audience about your approach to sustainability, or simply launched a quiz in which you educate your audience about the environment, the way ByHours did.

The brand prepared a series of questions about the impact we have on the environment. It was a great tactic to position themselves as an environmentally conscious brand. 

Is improving your brand positioning part of your marketing plan? If so we hope to have helped! But don’t worry if any doubts or questions arise, contact our Support Team via our Online Chat.

So just how do branded games raise brand awareness? There are several factors in play.

First of all, when someone starts playing a game, that means they’re spending time with your branded content. You might see this referred to as dwell time or brand exposure. In other words: the more someone plays, the more they’re exposed to your branding and marketing.

Next, there’s the interactive effect. When we interact with a piece of content, we have to focus harder. It’s like the difference between scrolling passively through the internet, and actually pausing to click, like, or comment.

Branded games are a powerful marketing tool because they require even more attention than a simple “like”. Instead, players have to understand the game, respond to events within the game, and develop their own strategy to win. Even simple games – such as a branded Memory game – can have this effect. And all that focused attention means better brand recall.
Finally, we know that consumers value fun, interactive content. More than anything else, people go online to be entertained. If your brand offers that entertainment, then people will see you in a positive light. You’ll stay top of mind and improve brand reputation.

Examples of branded Memory games

This all sounds pretty good, right?

Now let’s talk about how to execute a marketing strategy with branded games.

In this post, we’re focusing on Memory games in particular. Why? Because they’re easy to create, easy to play, and are a powerful way to improve brand recognition and product recognition. In a branded Memory game, the way to win is by recalling images of your brand, products, or related interests. 

Your individual game design will vary based on your industry, target demographic, and brand style. We’ve tried to include a variety in these 5 examples, covering a range of industries, audiences, and marketing objectives – so you’re bound to find something to inspire you.

Show off your products with a branded Memory game

As we’ve discussed, you can use branded Memory game to hammer home product recognition with your customers. As people sort through the cards in the game, they’ll see your top products over and over.

You can also show your brand logo or a message on the back of the cards, to make an even stronger impression.

Are you interested in creating your own Memory game but you’re unsure how to do it? Watch this 5-minute tutorial to see how easy it is to launch a branded Memory game with Easypromos!

Launch a Memory game to inspire your customers

Here’s a related idea which can also help drive sales. If you want to inspire more sales, without focusing too much on your own products, you could choose images which inspire your customers.

For example, this florist put together a branded Memory game with some of their favorite flowers. Their followers could play, discuss which flowers they enjoyed… and eventually, be inspired to order a bouquet:

To sweeten the deal, the brand also offered an exclusive coupon to players who won the game.

Entertain and add value for customers

Although branded Memory games can increase sales, you don’t have to go for the hard sell every time.

Instead, you could focus on entertaining or educating your customers. This is an especially popular tactic for brands aimed at children and families.

For example, this community trust created a fun Easter game for kids who were stuck at home during the 2020 pandemic:

Instead of marketing specific products, the game just focused on traditional Easter symbols. But because the game was fun, relevant, and easy to share with friends, the trust still boosted their reputation and awareness in the community.

To motivate sharing even further, they offered multiple prizes for different age groups, and published a daily ranking of all the players:

Can you think of all the marketing objectives you can achieve with a branded game? Try our Memory DEMO to understand the real user experience.

Organize a branded Memory game to appeal to your audience’s interests

Another way to build your brand reputation is by sharing in your customers’ interests. When you build a game that matches their interests, you demonstrate that you understand your audience and share their values.

Here’s an adorable example. This babywear brand knows that new parents love nothing more than photos of cute babies. So they created a Memory game based on exactly that:

Promote a sponsor or event

Branded games are a great way to work with a sponsor, partner, or upcoming event. Both parties have the chance to boost their brand with the game.

For example, this Spanish cinema boosted ticket sales with a branded game based on the latest Frozen movie. And of course, they offered some Disney merch as extra motivation:

You could build your own branded game based on a seasonal event or partner brand. This is also a fun option for influencer marketing: ask your brand ambassador to share a game which shows off the best of your brand.

How to build your own branded Memory game

The best part about branded Memory games? They’re easier to create than you think.

All you need is a simple Memory game app. You can add your own images, choose the difficulty level, and set up online rewards for players. You’ll also have the opportunity to include a lead registration form in the game so that you can collect contact details and follow up with those potential customers.

Ready to build your own branded games? Contact us to talk about your options!

The Word Search app is a perfect tool for brand and product promotion; if you’re looking to promote your brand values you can organize a Word Search game with your core values hidden in between random letters; if you want to promote your bestselling products you can ask your audience to look for them in the Word Search; it’s also a perfect tool to launch new products. 

A branded Word Search app can be created and launched in no-time as it’s easier than you think! Many customers turn to us for inspiration or examples of successful mini-branded Word Search promotions. And that’s the reason for this post!

Today we share 7 ideas for a branded Word Search game. Let’s take a look!

Branded Word Search game to entertain and engage online communities

We’re all fans of classic or blockbuster movies or we’re currently binge-watching the newest series. Let’s be honest… We love movies. Eden Cinemas identified a perfect way to connect with their audience during the recent lockdown. Cinemas were closed while people were stuck at home with loads of time on their hands; this led Eden Cinemas to launch a gamified promotion for their online community. The organizers shared an online Word Search game with 13 classic movie titles hidden in the grid. 

The above example was a hard challenge for the confined audience but the players responded very positively as it was great entertainment in tough times!

Tip for your promotion: if your cinema is looking to promote a new movie release why don’t you organize a Word Search with the names of main actors? Or you could promote a new release from a popular director by creating a Word Search with their most popular movies. The options are endless!

How to collect leads with a branded Word Search

A lot of brands are starting to positively embrace interactive content. Some of them have already made gamification an inseparable part of their marketing strategy because of the results gamification delivers. 

One of the main objectives of many businesses is lead generation. However, some customers are reluctant to share their contact details because of their previous negative experiences with a bad approach to data marketing. So how can you convert your social media followers into high-quality leads? The answer is simple: with gamification. 

Here’s an example from Lovemore Music, a South African music store that has turned to gamified promotions more than once. In this case, Lovemore Music looked to promote their best-selling products and also bring more attention to their Octopus Mahogany Ukulele. They invited their online community to participate in the promotion for a chance to win the promoted ukulele. Participants looked for 12 products hidden in between random letters. Upon completing the challenge the participants filled in a registration form to submit their entry, appear in the final ranking, and enter the prize draw. 

Remember, that participants are more likely to share their contact information if the promotion is incentivized and even more if the prize is attractive. Free products, product samples, and discount codes and vouchers tend to be most popular with customers. 

Launch a branded Word Search to reinforce brand awareness for your flower shop

You won’t succeed if the public doesn’t know about you, that’s crystal clear. That’s the reason why brand awareness – and product awareness – is so important for any business. Quite often the main problem is the number of similar businesses in one place, for example on a high street you can find a different bakery every 10 meters. So how do you ensure the customers come to you? 

Flower shops can sometimes face the same problem as bakeries, and that’s the reason why working on brand awareness and recall is so important. And branded mini-games can definitely help. Here’s a Word Search game organized by Adelaide Florist. The participants simply looked for the names of popular flowers.

Once the players completed the challenge they filled in the entry form submitting their participation and entering the prize draw. One random winner walked away with a bunch of flowers worth $50, while Adelaide Florist’s mailing list expanded and brand awareness was reinforced. Next time the participants want to buy some fresh flowers they will definitely think of Adelaide Florist. 

Use a branded Word Search to strengthen customer relationships

Strong customer relationships are essential for any brand, simply because customer loyalty and trust result in repeated purchases and positive word-of-mouth. 

Pet-themed promotions always tend to be very popular with online communities, so you can imagine how positively the audience responds to pet-themed games! MyPetBuddy is a membership-based community connecting pet owners with local varified pet walkers.

MyPetBuddy launched a branded Word Search as part of their Christmas campaign. Participants looked for hidden words as quickly as possible as they had a chance to win a husbandry and horsemanship program for two. Once again, a prize that attracts your audience’s attention is one of the most important aspects of any online promotion!

Retain customers with an interactive Word Search

Retaining customers is often a hard task. A client made a purchase and they walked away. So how do you get them to come back? Gamification can definitely help. 

Imagine opening your email inbox and seeing a new message from a brand you purchased from before. Imagine the message saying “play and win”. You’d click through, wouldn’t you?

Liam&Lilly is a British online baby store often launching playable promotions. In this case, the brand created a Word Search looking to promote their most popular essentials groups. The organizers introduced the names of the essentials groups into the app and create this interactive Word Search:

The brand then raffled three gift sets valued at $75 each among all registered participants. This was a fantastic action to improve customer loyalty and trust and strengthen the already existing customer relationships. 

Playable promotions are also fantastic to attract new potential customers, as online users enjoy interacting with high-quality content. So if you’re looking to retain customers make sure you share the promotion link with your database, and if you’re focused on grabbing the attention of new customers share the link on your social media and invite your followers and social media users to participate in your Word Search or any other game. 

Promote your online store by distributing discount codes with a Word Search

You might be wondering how to convert the engagement generated with a game into sales. And here’s some great news: it’s easier than you think! 

Discount codes and vouchers convert many leads into paying customers. It is because discounts and vouchers create urgency and quickly drive customers into your store. The clients also get excited about the possibility of saving extra money and they’re more likely to commit to a purchase. 

Here’s an example of a Word Search promotion that could be organized by any clothing store and for any occasion. In this case, the Word Search was created as part of a Father’s Day campaign. 

Customers looked for names of perfect Father’s Day gifts that they could get from the organizing store, and in return, they got a chance to win a present for their dad. 

Wondering how you could boost sales even further? Throw in some discount codes! Imagine giving a 10% discount to all registered participants. They would be over the moon and their trust and loyalty would be strongly reinforced. 

Boost customer brand engagement with an interactive Word Search game

Customer engagement leads to many other goals that brands set in their marketing plans. One of these is the fact that it forms a strong relationship between the brand and its customers that encourages long-term loyalty and trust. And here’s a great example of how to boost customer brand engagement and achieve a variety of other marketing goals. 

If you’re looking to boost engagement and provide a positive experience for your customers then the above example is for you. If you follow the same steps you will be able to firstly, connect and engage your customers by entertaining them with high-quality content, secondly promote your products and reinforce customer loyalty and trust by offering an attractive prize, and thirdly boost sales and driving customers to your store by distributing discount codes. 

It’s your turn

Are you ready to launch your own branded Word Search? Or maybe you still need to ideas, inspiration, or clarification? That’s not a problem! Contact our Support Team via our Online Chat and let them help you!

• “customer’s overall perception of a business”
• “an emotional commitment to a brand”
• “a relationship-driven by interactions between a brand and its customers”.

Here, at Easypromos we define it as the overall relationship between the brand and its customers. So to put it into simple words…

Brand engagement is when a customer interacts in any form or way with your brand or product. 
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Simple, right?!

Different types of brand engagement

Can you think of different ways in which customers can interact with your brand? Let’s list some examples. Social media interactions, newsletter subscriptions, user-generated content, purchases, loyalty programs, website and shop visits, recommendations. Contacting you and using your product is also brand engagement! 

Brand engagement is an important aspect for start-ups, but also for big corporations. Big and popular brands also rely on positive customer engagement. Good customer experiences lead to emotional relationships with the brand and a feeling of belonging. A survey conducted in 2017 revealed that 70% of Apple users wouldn’t even consider switching to another brand. Now that’s what we call real brand loyalty! 

Brands should be on a constant mission to improve their customer relationships. With the development of the Internet and the spread of news, it has never been easier to share opinions, reviews, and experiences with fellow online users. Therefore, let’s have a look at how you can enhance your brand engagement online! 

Giveaways to strengthen customer relationships and boost brand engagement in social media

In the age of social media, the word “engagement” makes comments, likes, and shares come running through your mind. If you’ve set up your social media profiles (if you haven’t, then go to do it right now!) you know certain posts attract more attention than others. Some brands make the mistake of sharing great pictures and videos, but they lack the effort of encouraging conversations. 

A study conducted by ODM Group found that 74% of customers rely on social media to help with their purchasing decisions. And even though social media engagement is not a metric to determine how many people convert into paying clients, it is sometimes a great factor to convert potential customers. If someone interested in your product ends up visiting your social media profiles, they will be more likely to buy from your brand if they see that your brand engages in conversations with customers, gives back to the community and replies to questions asked in the comments section. 

Instagram Giveaways

So to visualize it, here’s a great example of an Instagram campaign launched by Tombow. The brand was looking to boost its social media engagement over the Christmas season. 

The organizers opted for a series of 12 giveaways to celebrate the tradition of 12 days of Christmas. Over a period of 12 days, they were launching daily Instagram giveaways based on comments. The rules were simple; the brand asked the participants to follow their account, and answer a simple question. The questions varied daily, and here are some examples:

• Leave a comment letting us know why you’d like to win.
• Let us know why you love using dot grid journals.
• Tell us what is your favorite Christmas tradition

This kind of questions got people talking! And this is how Tombow achieved its highest-to-date social media engagement! 

According to an Epsilon study of social media trends in 2020, contests and giveaways are the most effective branded content on social media.
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Another way to increase your social media engagement is by asking the participants to mention their family or friends in the comment section. You can, for example, say “To participate, tag a friend who would also like to win!” or “Tag the person you would like to share the prize with!” This will automatically attract more attention and participants entrants for your giveaway! 

What would be the ideal prize? Anything from your range of products or services! In the end, you’re trying to promote your brand. 

Find out more about the campaign launched by Tombow, and discover the Easypromos tool to transparently draw random winners of your Instagram Giveaways.

Photo and Video Contests to collect user-generated content and build brand loyalty

User-generated content is powerful. Hootsuite found that customers are 2.4 times more likely to view user-generated content as authentic compared to the content generated by the brand itself. Sometimes you might be in luck and have some of your loyal customers share pictures or videos of them interacting with your brand. It could be anything, pictures of your merchandise, or products being used. 

But what to do when you want to gather appealing pictures or videos? Or maybe you’re looking for content with a specific product or theme? Photo and Video Contests are the answer! 

Let’s take a look at this photo competition organized by a keffiyeh producer (keffiyeh is a kind of scarves popular in the Arabic countries). The brand wanted to promote their products so they decided to ask their online community to share content with their product pictured. 

The incentive involved in the promotion motivated the audience to join the competition. The lucky winner got to visit Jordan! 

To facilitate the participation process, but obtain more participants, the organizer enabled entries from Twitter and Instagram, so the interested users could join the competition by using a specific hashtag and brand mention. In this case, the chosen hashtag was #KeffiyehChallenge. 

Promotions aiming to collect user-generated content encourage brand engagement. The interested participants interact with the brand and content while participating in the competition. Let’s also add that you because of the integrated entry forms you get to obtain new leads for your future marketing purposes!

Do you want to find out some more about successful Photo Contests? Check out this success case of an annual Photo Contest organized by Miss Diving Specials.

Photo and Video Contests to promote brand values and generate engagement

Don’t worry if you don’t have a product that your audience can easily photograph. If you’re a service provider, ask your audience to share pictures with a different theme. Ask them to share pictures of their favorite spots in their city, or the best holiday experiences they’ve ever had! Contests to collect UGC are also great to promote your values. So if your brand is a retailer of vegan and cruelty-free beauty products, ask your audience to share pictures of their pets on World Animal Day! This is great to raise awareness and promote your company culture. But the most important thing is to reward their participation!

Photo and video contests are great to build brand loyalty and trust. By sharing the best user-generated content on your social media pages you will also increase your audience’s feeling of belonging with your brand.

Gamification will entertain your audience and create a positive customer experience

One of the most recent trends in digital marketing is gamification. Gamifying your marketing strategies is a great way to engage your audience with branded content. Mini-branded games are perfect tools to expose the audience to your corporate image, but also to complete a variety of different marketing objectives. Let’s have a look at this Match It game launched for Valentine’s Day.

Devonshire Hotels & Restaurants wanted to celebrate Valentine’s Day with their online community, so they gave them a chance to win. All the users had to do was complete a challenge and register for a random prize draw. The lucky winner got an overnight stay in one of the brand’s hotels. 

The Match It game by Easypromos allows you to fully personalize the game so it can match your branding or current campaign, and users look for connections between the images to pair them. 

The main advantage of using games in your marketing campaigns is that your audience is constantly exposed to your brand (logo, products, branding colors, etc.). Playable promotions create rivalry and entertainment, which increases engagement and converts more customers. Entertaining and high-quality content also boosts brand awareness through word-of-mouth, as people like to comment and share interesting promotions with their friends. Also, in order to enter the prize draws users have to leave their contact deals, which brings you new leads to target in the future.

Are you planning to gamify your next marketing campaign? In this website, you can find out more about gamification, fully adjustable mini-branded games and learn how they can increase brand engagement and help you achieve other marketing objectives!

How does gamification enhance brand engagement? Throughout the whole time of game playing your audience is being engaged with your brand. They get entertained (sometimes also educated), they get a chance to win, and the overall customer experience is definitely positive! They might even visit your social media pages or website in search of new promotions! 

Discount codes and vouchers for newsletter subscribers

Newsletter subscriptions and website visits are also types of brand engagement. Offering exclusive discounts and offers to your subscribers is a great way to increase the number of people receiving your promotional emails. If a user visits your website it is very likely that they’re considering a purchase, therefore they will be more likely to convert into paying customers if you offer them some sort of discount. This is where you might want to add a popup window informing about a discount code or voucher for subscribing to your newsletter. The visitor won’t mind leaving their email address if they get to save some money!

Another way to motivate a bigger audience to subscribe to your newsletter are giveaways for your subscribers! 

Here’s a fantastic example of a travel blogger who launched 13 giveaways to celebrate the 13th anniversary of her blog. The main aim of the organizer was to gain more newsletter subscribers. So to motivate more people she decided to give away 13 different prizes. 

Find out more about how the travel blogger used Entry Form Giveaway app to convert followers into newsletter subscribers. 

However, if you want to give a chance to win to all newsletter subscribers – not just the new ones – you should use the List Giveaway! 

Boost brand engagement at events, conferences, and seminars 

Are you about to organize an event and want to dynamize the audience? You might be wondering what is the best way to keep your audience engaged at a conference, seminar or team-building activity. It is quite common to see bored and expressionless faces after a couple of hours of constant talking. So the answer to your question is… with a Live Giveaway by Easypromos! Ask your audience to take out their phones… and you’re good to go! 

This is the perfect tool to distribute merchandise and any other sort of gifts you might think of, the best thing is that you can draw winners of different prizes at the same time. Sound and visual effects will add to the positive experience and the event attendees will definitely seem to be more awake! The audience will be left with a fantastic experience and it will keep people talking for daaaays! 

According to Investopedia, brand awareness is “the degree of consumer recognition of a product by its name”. If consumers recognize your products and view them as different from the competition, then you have more chance of making a sale.

Brand awareness is the degree of consumer recognition of a product by its name.
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Brand awareness can make or break a brand. Products with high brand awareness enjoy the “moat effect”: because they’re so well known, it’s hard for any competition to break through. And in some crowded industries, brand awareness is pretty much the only thing that differentiates products. For example: are you really, 100% sure that you could tell the difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi with the labels taken off?

In this post, we’ll take a look at different digital marketing strategies to boost brand awareness. Each strategy has a different approach. But they’re all designed to improve brand recognition, position your brand with consumers, and ultimately increase sales.

Boost brand visibility and awareness on social media with a consistent stategy

Let’s start with something obvious: if you want people to recognize your brand, then they need to see it. The best brand awareness campaigns will get plenty of views for your products and brand online.

However, you still need to strike a balance between showing off your products and interacting with consumers. Social media is meant to be interactive, fun, and relational. So you need a way to highlight your brand and products – interactively. Sharing informative and entertaining content, highlighting your core values, and showing the people behind your product (or social media strategy) makes your brand seem more humane. Here’s an example of how Mango’s social media strategy. Apart from regularly publishing content that is relevant to its audience, the brand also shares and emphasizes its values.

However, note that Mango’s community managers work very hard on creating and fostering customer relationships. Apart from liking most of the comments left on Mango’s post, the brand also actively replies to all comments, providing better customer service and expanding positive brand perceptions.

Digital marketing strategy for brand awareness: run social media giveaways

Social media promotions are incredible for generating engagement, visibility, and awareness. But social media giveaways are not just about promoting your products with random raffles; social media users like to be seen and appreciated, and therefore, social media sweepstakes are a fantastic opportunity to reward your followers’ support. At the end of the day, they’re often the ones that reshare your content or recommend your account to family and friends.

This is why we recommend social media giveaways as a brand awareness marketing strategy. For example, here’s an Instagram giveaway by Snüz, a high-end brand for babies and parents in the UK.

The basic idea is very simple. When someone commented on Snüz’ Instagram post and tagged a friend, they joined a prize draw for a bundle of babywear goodies. Can you see the trick here?

Instagram is one of the only social networks where you can ask for likes and follows. Learn more with our ultimate guide to Instagram giveaways.

Now let’s look at how that giveaway boosted brand awareness for Snuz, and hit some key KPIs.

• Encouraging comments: Doing something interactive, like leaving a comment, makes the brand stick in people’s minds better. Consumers also feel a personal investment in the brand, because they’ve shared a conversation together.
• Increasing reach: Comments, likes, and follows will all help to surface a brand awareness campaign on social media. The more interactions you get, the more people will see your posts in the Explore tab.
• Brand positioning: Snuz has chosen a prize that targets their key audience and shows that they care about families. Plus, they tied the giveaway to the winter holidays, giving them an extra boost.

Of course, not everyone might convert to a paying customer right now but who knows, maybe one day they will look for this trendy crib or white noise teddy bear that they saw while participating in the giveaway.

The most important metric for a comments giveaway is, naturally, the number of comments your post receives. But you should also be checking other KPIs such as follower counts, likes, shares, and unique views.

Visit La Croix’s Instagram account to see how often they run comment giveaways. Take a look at how many comments each giveaway generates for the brand; isn’t it an amazing, and cheap, digital marketing strategy for brand awareness?

Boost brand awareness with gamification: the new digital marketing strategy

What normally catches your attention while scrolling through social media feeds? Is it static content? Or is it interactive and dynamic content that sparks your interest? We bet it’s the second option!

An average social media user sees hundreds of posts every day and it’s your task to make sure that your brand’s message stands out from the crowd. Images of products and information about discounts and deals are important to spread, however, they don’t necessarily entertain the end user. But gamification does.

Branded mini-games are especially effective for brands that look to generate new leads. Users participate in a mini-game, like a puzzle, or a switch and match type of game and once they complete the game, they can leave their contact details for a chance to win attractive prizes like product bundles or tempting gift cards. The trick here is that the game is customized with your corporate image and logos. This generates trust, making the user more likely to share their email address and name for a chance to win something that appeals to their likes.

We have dozens of mini-games demos and templates; go ahead and play to find the dynamic that best suits your brand and needs!

Here’s an example of a Timed Quiz organized by a Bosnian petrol station. The brand wanted to collect email addresses from the in-store customers, therefore, each paying customer received a code that they used to access the game. Then, they were asked to answer a series of general questions. In return, each participant had a chance to win fuel vouchers. The brand managed to retain customers, increase loyalty, collect new leads, and increase sales by attracting more traffic to its establishment.

Another brand that implemented gamification into its digital marketing strategy is Andrew’s Airport Parking. The brand regularly organizes Puzzle and Memory games, in which users interact with images with the brand’s corporate colors, as well as logos. Apart from being willingly exposed to the brand’s visual assets, customers share their contact details for a chance to win parking vouchers.

Find out more about Andrew’s Airport Parking’s successful campaigns.

Create a brand new experience to generate awareness and visibility online

What’s the hardest part of brand awareness and product positioning?

We’d say differentiation. Your brand, your products, and your efforts to promote them all have to stand out from the crowd. That’s why it’s so important to offer a unique experience as part of your brand awareness digital marketing campaigns.

And just to add to the challenge, let’s remember the tips we learned from our previous brand awareness campaign examples. A brand awareness campaign has to be interactive and demonstrate your values and brand positioning.

Here’s one example of a brand awareness campaign that really ticks all the boxes. It was created by two brands – TravelUp and Icelandic Air – to raise awareness of their shared products.

The campaign was interactive because it invited people to create, share, and vote for user-generated content. It highlighted the brand values, by focusing on family and the winter holidays. And it was original because it gave people something new: a creative challenge. Instead of passively looking at products or watching ads, consumers had the chance to interact with the campaign and create something of their own.

The response from consumers was huge. And you’ll notice that none of the designs were the same. Everyone who saw the TravelUp/Icelandic Air campaign had a totally different experience:

Digital Marketing Strategy: Generate brand awareness with UGC

Our first brand awareness campaign example focused on new views and followers. Simple, social media giveaways are a highly effective way to reach new audiences. But now let’s go a little deeper. When someone sees your product for the first time, it’s only the beginning of their journey towards making a purchase. You’ll need to guide them on that journey – through brand positioning and the growth of the brand/customer relationship.

We already know that getting people to interact with your brand helps with brand recognition. You can reinforce that effect by responding to what people share with you. So how do you reflect people’s interactions back to them?

Here’s a really terrific example from another baby-centered brand, the Australian Nappy Association. They asked parents to post a photo of their child wearing cloth nappies each day during October. There was a huge range of prizes on offer, with one awarded each day.

There are a ton of reasons to love this campaign – even beyond the cute baby photos.

• User-generated content. Whether you collect photos on social media or set up a photo contest webpage, those images are now yours to use. That’s free content – and it shows followers that you value their contributions.
• Doubling down on interaction. In this brand awareness campaign example, people could vote on the photo entries. So they had two opportunities to interact: posting photos and voting for their favorites.
• Boosting social media reach. Because the contest used multiple brand-relevant hashtags, the Australian Nappy Association received a huge boost on social media.
• Encouraging customer loyalty. There were daily prizes throughout the contest, so users kept coming back. And every time they came back, they were exposed to more brand products. Additionally, photos shared by customers generated brand authenticity.
• Brand positioning. Just like our first example in this post, the ANA used the campaign to demonstrate their family values.

Let’s focus briefly on the final point: brand positioning. According to the Harvard Business Review, shared values are behind 64% of brand relationships. That means that customers are much more likely to commit to your brand if they believe you share the same worldview and mission – in this case, caring for young families.

So product positioning and demonstrating values are essential to brand awareness. Every part of a brand awareness campaign should tell consumers who you are: from the rewards on offer to the user-generated content you collect to the design of your logo.

Do you want to try any of these ideas? Our Support Team will help you and answer all your questions through our online chat. 

However, too many brands miss out when it comes to content marketing. Why?

Because it’s too complicated; or too expensive; or too slow. Or – even if they put in all that effort – people just don’t like the content they produce.

So in this article, we’ll take a look at how to build up your content marketing plan and add some variety. Content marketing can be simple, affordable and effective. You just have to create the right stuff.

What is content marketing?

First, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is “the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Please note that the venerable CMI doesn’t specify a particular content format. Content marketing can be an online blog, in print, an ebook, a video, an image, a game, a sensory experience… anything you like!

But whatever form it takes, your content marketing should be relevant, accessible and engaging. If you want to maximize its impact, then it should also be shareable and interactive.

Take a look at this graph from Google Trends. After years of bumbling along, the phrase “content marketing” suddenly spiked in the early 2010s… just around the time that social media and smartphones took off. 

New technology and new ways to communicate have enabled content marketing to the extent that we could never have previously imagined.

Those same innovations mean that consumers are no longer happy to just watch ads. They want to interact, personalize and share the content you produce. That’s why I say that your content marketing needs to be mobile-friendly, interactive and shareable.

Not sure if your social media and content marketing strategies align? Check out the Definite Guide from Bulk.ly and learn how to integrate the two strategies.

How to spice up your content marketing plan

Every brand has a different approach to content marketing. That’s fine! Depending on your products, services, and style, you’ll have preferred ways to communicate.

For example, many B2B brands share quality content in the form of whitepapers and ebooks. B2C brands are often happier sharing tutorial videos, customer reviews, or the story behind their products.

But whatever your brand sells, you don’t want to get stale. If your content marketing plan consists of “every three months, we upload a new pdf”… Well, your audience probably doesn’t thrill at the sight of your emails.

Successful content marketing means creating outside of your comfort zone and occasionally taking risks. (One of my favorite examples is MailChimp’s movie studio.)

u003cbru003eu003cstrongu003eSuccessful content marketing means creating outside of your comfort zone and occasionally taking risks. u003c/strongu003eu003cbru003e
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Content marketing is also about staying up to date with new formats. Five years ago, that meant designing a cute Instagram grid and organizing Facebook seminars. As I type this article, it means getting comfortable with TikTok, Twitter threads and mobile games. Five years from now – who knows?

Sadly, one article is not enough space to cover every single form of content marketing out there. Today, we’re just focusing on one type: mobile games and gamification.

Why mobile games matter for content marketing

Let’s go back for a second, and look again at the essential characteristics for content marketing. We said that content marketing has to be:

• relevant
• accessible
• engaging
• shareable
• interactive
• mobile-friendly

And ideally, it will be easy and affordable too! Sounds like a tall order, right? Here’s the good part: mobile games fulfill almost all of those content marketing criteria.

They’re relevant: mobile gaming dominates both the game industry and our phone usage. They’re accessible, in the sense that mobile games tend to be simple (although there is a lot of work still to be done in making games truly accessible to all users). They’re mobile-friendly, engaging and interactive, by definition. They’re shareable through mobile phones and social media.

“OK,” you’re probably thinking, “but what about being easy and affordable? I don’t have the time or the resources to build a game engine from scratch!”

That’s where mobile game apps come in. These are ready-made games, where you just have to edit the design and details to fit your brand. That means you can have your content up and running in just a couple of hours. 

3 examples of gamification in content marketing

So far, we’ve talked about content marketing in broad terms. However, your content marketing plan probably gets a little more specific than that. Different content works for different customers at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

u003cbru003eu003cstrongu003eDifferent content works for different customers at different stages of the buyer’s journey.u003c/strongu003eu003cbru003e
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So, to help illustrate how useful games are for content marketing, I’ve broken down the following examples into three different goals.

Read on for examples of mobile games that demonstrate brand values, link up with major holidays, and help guide customers to the checkout with product recommendations.

Mobile game #1: Demonstrate brand values

Content marketing is really useful for demonstrating your brand values. The content you produce, the format you use, even the tone of voice and the font choice – they all say something to customers about who you are. 

One way to demonstrate your brand values is to produce content around issues that you care about. For example, International Women’s Day is celebrated every year on March 8th. If you care about equality, cater to women consumers, or employ women, then this is a good opportunity to share those values with your audience. 

Here’s one example of a mobile game for content marketing around social issues: a quick quiz to mark International Women’s Day.

You could adapt the format to your brand by focusing on women from a particular industry, country or time. The game is fun and challenging for your followers, raises awareness for gender equality, and clearly demonstrates your values.

You can super-charge the effect of this type of content by making mobile games more competitive. Offer a prize that appeals to your target audience; show rankings in a public scoreboard, or even give extra points to players who share the game with their friends.

Try the game yourself, and then create your own promotion using our tools!

Mobile game #2: Celebrate holidays and events

Major holidays, seasons and events are another fantastic opportunity for content marketing. Think about it: the theme, colors, and symbols are already decided for you. That makes it super easy to fit your content into the template of the holiday and reach an eager, interested audience.

For example, every B2C marketer knows that Christmas is a key time of year. And because Christmas is the season of giving and goodwill, it’s the perfect time to run giveaways, share special offers, and encourage people to share with friends.

In this example, the brand appeals to their audience with a classic game. Christmas is a family holiday, so old-fashioned games always play well. 

They’re also offering a generous prize to the winners, which will appeal to consumers during an expensive time of year. 

And, as you can see in this Wordsearch, everyone who plays will get a quick reminder of the top tech brands and gifts available. You can also try the DEMO yourself!

Mobile game #3: Product recommendations

Product recommenders are becoming the golden child of content marketing. They’re an easy way to give every customer a unique, personalized experience… while increasing your sales and reducing cart abandonment.

Did we mention that they’re also a fun, interactive form of content marketing?

Here’s a tasty example from a cheese store:

Once again, you’ll notice that there’s a financial incentive on offer. Games for content marketing work best when you combine an exciting experience with a tempting incentive.

Players just have to answer a few simple questions…

… and they’ll get a personal recommendation in their inbox, plus a coupon to nudge them towards the checkout. Participate in our Product Recommender DEMO to discover how it works!

Get started with games in content marketing

If you’re ready to spice up your content marketing plan, then the Easypromos game apps are an easy way to start. Try out some product demos or chat with our sales team today!