How to Use Social Media Challenges to Generate 660 New Leads in One Week
Social media “challenges” are favorite. In fact, they’ve been popping up everywhere. While you want to take advantage of its popularity, there are some things you should consider before jumping on the bandwagon. Mainly, you want to ensure you’re using the right strategy.
Otherwise, you’ll just be doing a lot of work for little or no results. When I interviewed business visibility and growth strategist Jenn Scalia, I learned her approach. She’s achieved some outstanding and consistent results with social media challenges. For example, a recent trial generated 660 new leads and 40 new customers.
This added $60,000 to her revenue in less than one week. According to Scalia challenges are an outstanding way to create engagement in your community or generate buzz during a launch. Here are three things you must do, to get it right.
1. Make Your Challenge Relevant and Original
Your social media challenge should involve something your target market wants. Discover their biggest struggles and most pressing needs, then use this information to create a problem.
The challenge should help your target market solve a problem. It can’t just be fun. You want your audience to have something at the end, which might be a particular skill, confidence, a game plan, or a physical result.
2. Keep Your Challenge Short and Sweet
A challenge can run from three days to over a month. According to Scalia, the best results are achieved when you keep it brief. If the problem is drawn out over an extended period, people will start to drop off.
Scalia recommends challenges that last from 7 to 10 days. Longer than that is overkill. People won’t be engaged, forget it, or drop off. For example, Scalia’s Gutsy Girls challenge was seven days long.
This challenge generated 660 new leads, and there were 130 active participants. Since the trial included social share components, including a custom hashtag (#gutsygirls).
There were over 85 videos and 550 social media posts created by the community. In less than a week, they received 40 new customers; this resulted in $60,000 in coaching sales.
3. Follow the CASH Equation
C – Cohesive – Make the challenge Step 0 or Step 1 before a person buys your product or works with you.
A – Actionable – Don’t overcomplicate the process or give your participants too many things to do. It’s best to have one actionable step.
S – Sharable – Offer something that can be used on their personal social media platform or for their business. Make sure everyone in the challenge uses your @ tag and uses your problem hashtag when sharing.
H – Helpful – Each prompt will take them one step further along. They should be useful in getting them to their goal, which is who they want to be or what they want. Your challenge should give them a nudge in the right direction.
Of course, you may amplify the impact of a challenge on your bottom line when integrating this strategy by using Facebook ads. This is one way to benefit from the social proof elements and viral nature of organic shares.
They may also generate highly targeted traffic to your challenge and website. Both of these can help you meet your long and short-term business goals.
