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Promoting Your Website or Online Business with Competitions

By Mika Hamilton

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 01Feb2008 Word count: 434 Viewed: 306 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

A lot of business owners use competitions as a type or reward for their current customers, but competitions can also be very effective in bringing in new business, especially online.

There are two main benefits to running a competition. You will almost certainly get an influx of people visiting your site, looking around and joining the competition. Which can create good awareness of your site in visitors minds so that next time they are in need for the product or service you offer they may think of you and return.

The second benefit is that you can start to build yourself an opt-in list. Many sites running competitions actually require entries to sign up for their ezines or newsletters which they can always unsubscribe from later if they wish. And some sites just have it as an option, put an additional check box at the end of the entry form and ask people if they want to sign up to receive your newsletter.

A successful competition campaign can easily build you a list of a 500 to 1000 people or more depending on how you market the competition. Most countries have local websites that list competitions for their countries, which you can often place ads on for free or for a very small advertising fee.

Some people don't like the idea of spending money on marketing the fact that you are giving away something for free, but the reality is that by doing so you can exponentially expand your market reach, and get a lot more eyes on your site.

Not sure what to give away? Well the best tip is to make sure that its not something that you sell. For example if you sell TVs on your website, and you run a competition giving away a free TV, then some people might put off buying from you in the hope that they may win one instead. So its usually better to give away something that compliments your products or just something that you know your target audience would appreciate.

iPods and MP3 players have become a hot prize over the past few years, but many other things can work just as well. Shopping sprees', DVDs, CDs etc and of course cash or gift cards are always a good choice.

So what are you waiting for? Launch a competition on your site today, make it a yearly promotion or even monthly if it works for you. Remember to always operate inside the laws that your competition will be running in, which you will need to look into for yourself. Good Luck...

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