It’s for this reason that T-shirts have become the staple part of online contests for clothing brands looking to garner some traffic and attention. For any online contest to succeed, you’ve got to get people talking about it and for that to happen, it’s got to fulfil at least these three criteria:
- It’s gotta be easy to engage with. Nothing takes the fun out of a contest more than having multiple hoops to jump through just to get to the first step of taking part or submitting an entry.
- You have to involve the social community. This is key and isn’t too hard to satisfy, given the prevalence of social media these days. What better way to spread the word and reap some hype than to get folks sharing, tweeting and commenting about it?
- It’s gotta offer a sense of accomplishment, whether in terms of fun, recognition or in the form of an award. No one’s going to take part if the trade-off simply isn’t worth it!
As a clothing brand, here are some other ways you can consider to draw in the crowds!
Contest Idea #1 – Retweet, share, follow
No designing required to win! All people would need to do is to spread the word to win! Re-tweeting a T-shirt design or a current promotion, sharing it on Facebook and following you on social media are all that’s required. It draws traffic to your social media accounts and in turn, your brand! It’s so easy for contestants – the chance to win is just a few mouse clicks away!
Contest Idea #2 – Vote to win
Put up a few designs of your merchandises and have people vote on what their favorite one is to get an opportunity to win anything from a free T-shirt to a voucher to spend at your store to a chance at designing their very own T-shirts and getting featured! This promotes interaction and is also a great way to gather some feedback on your products! Plus, it’s extremely easy to get it up and running on Facebook or even your blog. Once voted, the activity is automatically posted on their Facebook profiles with an invitation for friends and families to take part – a great way to spread the word!
Contest Idea #3 – Photo contest
One advantage of this is that it’s accessible with all smartphones, with which even the most amateur photographers could snap National Geographic-like photos! Simply create a theme – party, wildlife, city life or anything and get it going! It could be as simple as – “submit a photo of yourself in your favorite T-shirt in a creative pose”. A picture speaks a thousand words – you don’t need to write an essay to win like some contests require! To judge, you could, within your company, pick a few you like and share those shortlisted photos on Facebook/Twitter. And very simply and obviously, the photo with the most shares/retweets wins!
Contest Idea #4 – Quizzes
This is a fantastic way to gain awareness for your brand, and is doubly-effective when paired with any ongoing promotions. You could ask anything from “what’s the code to the current promotion we’re running?” to “when’s the closing date for submission on our contest?” Repetition is an important feature to making anything stick and this sure proves to be an efficient way to drill your promotion details into contestants!
