Engagement is always one of the most important, and hardest to achieve marketing objectives and it happens to be generated by high-quality content. Engagement then leads to brand exposure, brand awareness, and increased sales. Now here’s an important note to take: seasonal marketing should always be an important aspect of your marketing plan.
So what is high-quality content? How to create it? At Easypromos we believe that user-generated content is the most authentic content that you can share on social media. Pictures, videos, and texts generated by your customers show their loyalty and create a sense of customer-brand relationships.
Is that something that you need to reinforce? If the answer is “yes”, then it’s time to obtain user-generated content! But do it nicely; organize a contest or giveaway and offer attractive prizes in return for UGC. And remember… When it comes to Valentine’s Day photo contests, the only limit is your imagination. So to help gather some ideas, in this blog post we talk about different types of Valentine’s Day competitions. Choose the one that best reflects your brand, audience, and aims.
- Classic: collect sales leads by converting social media followers with a branded app, and share a public photo gallery.
- Creative: have fun with your followers as they decorate Valentine’s Day photo cards and share them with their family and friends.
- Viral: challenge your followers to Valentine’s Day contest on Instagram or Twitter, and collect user-generated content ready to repost.
Valentine Contest Idea: classic photo contest for Valentine’s Day
The classic Photo Contest app is the simplest way to run Valentine’s Day competition for your followers. Simply set up the app with participation instructions, introduce the main prize, and personalize a registration form. Then share the Valentine contest link on your social media channels or on your website, and convert followers and website visitors in new leads!
Ready to launch your Valentine’s Day photo contest? Download our pre-configured Valentine’s Day photo competition template to collect user-generated content and contact details as part of the most romantic campaign of the year!
Here’s a great example from a health and beauty brand. The organizers shared three luxury product hampers for Valentine’s Day. And because they had a range of prizes, they could use the opportunity for some market research, as participants chose their favorite hamper when registering for a chance to win the hamper of their choice. What’s in it for the organizers? They got insights into which products were most popular and found out how to send out more personalized offers to their new database members.
Above you can see two other examples of Valentine’s Day photo contests. The first one was organized by a local restaurant that wanted to reward one lucky couple with a free dinner, while the other contest was set up for paying customers by a Spanish shopping center and an association that the center belongs to. They gave away three shopping vouchers to the participants with the most votes.
Remember that Valentine’s Day is about incentivizing your audience, but also about working towards achieving your marketing objectives! This is why it’s so recommended to run Valentine’s Day contests with registration forms. You get to collect new leads by converting followers into leads, and you can then target them in the future!
Finally, don’t forget to share the results of your Valentine’s Day competition. And we don’t just mean the winners! You can publish all the photo entries in a public online gallery. Users can share their entries, vote for their friends, and spread the word about your Valentine’s Day promotion.
Creative Valentine’s Day competition with extra fun
Valentine’s Day is an iconic holiday – quite literally. Red and pink hearts, flowers, Cupids, and chocolates are all instant symbols of the holiday. All these elements make it the perfect moment to create a themed and branded Valentine photo contest.
Use the Easypromos PhotoFun app. It starts just like a classic photo contest but it provides more entertainment, generates more engagement, and brings about more participants. First, your followers can upload their own pictures. This fun photo contest application allows you to customize a registration form to collect contact details, and the promotion link can be shared across all your social channels to target as many participants as possible.
But here comes the fun twist: the entrants don’t just upload their photos. Instead, they decorate their pictures with fun and Valentine’s Day-themed frames and stickers. You can choose from a free library of Valentine’s Day embellishments, or you can even upload your own stickers. For example, you could create a photo frame with your brand logo, or add stickers featuring your products. Extra brand exposure is guaranteed with this Valentine competition!
Try our Valentine’s Day PhotoFun DEMO to see how easy it is to collect user-generated content as part of your Valentine’s Day campaign.
Apart from just submitting their entry, the participants can also download the decorated pictures and share them on their social media channels. This is great news for you, as your logo will be exposed to a wider audience, just like in the following example from Centrul Comercial Carrefour Brasov. The popular supermarket had a creative Valentine’s Day photo contest idea; they invited participants to share their favorite Valentine’s Day memories and decorate them with branded stickers and frames.
One lucky couple won a Valentine’s Day trip to Oradea.
Your Valentine’s Day campaign just wouldn’t be complete without social media. The biggest spenders on V-Day are 25-34-year-olds, who make up a key demographics on social media. Plus, the visual content of a Valentine’s Day photo competition is designed to go viral!
So what’s the best way to create a viral contest for Valentine’s Day? Easy: run a contest that takes place entirely on social media. Invite your followers to share photos with your
#campaignhashtag on Instagram and Twitter. Then connect the Hashtag + Entry app to collect the posts and pick a winner.
Collecting photos through the app has extra benefits for you, too. When people sign up, they share image rights and permissions with you – even if they set their Instagram account to private. So you’re free to use, share and repost user-generated content as much as you want.
Just like any other photo contest, you can automatically create a Valentine’s Day competition gallery. But all those photos will be plastered across social media, too – with your name and hashtag attached.
Want more? Visit our Valentine’s Day campaign hub for more ideas, free graphics for social media, and templates for your PhotoFun contest.
Do you need help organizing your competition? Or maybe you have some great Valentine’s Day contest ideas that you’d like to share with us? Don’t hesitate to contact our Support Team!
