Vancouver BC – Media Specialist, Eric Haaranen is using a Facebook contest to launch his new site SureCited.com. Haaranen cites a simple error made by Amazon.com as a major inspiration to how the contest is being conducted.
SureCited.com is a site dedicated to helping already successful entrepreneurs, consultants and professionals get major media exposure. Haaranen has proven initial exposure can then spring-board into further media opportunities, differentiation from competition and ultimately, more sales and referrals.
To launch the site, Eric Haaranen decided to begin with a contest hosted on Facebook. “While our services can help practically any professional we were faced with a couple of challenges,” states Haaranen. “The first was that we began with no social media presence whatsoever. The second was the fact that our services target a business audience and not the type of content that people generally share on Facebook.”
So given these challenges why would Haaranen go ahead with a contest on Facebook to launch a new site? “Having run successful marketing campaigns on Facebook for two years now I believe that there is an audience for anything on Facebook,” he replies. “You just need to find the right way to position your offer and then get it in-front of the right people.”
If there is a right way then by definition, there is also a wrong way. Haaranen cites a case study outlining a Facebook contest run by ecommerce giant Amazon.com (AMZN). “At the time that Amazon ran their contest they had over 23 million fans yet less than 1,000 people liked their contest post,” Haaranen points out. “That shouldn’t even be possible. But what happened was that Facebook determined early on that there wasn’t enough engagement (liking, sharing and commenting) on the post so they didn’t even show it to the vast majority of Amazon’s fans.”
Learning from Amazon, Haaranen’s contest is different. Apart from attractive prizes (the winner will receive SureCited.com’s Platinum services package valued at $2,997 and two runner-ups will each receive a Gold services package valued at $997), this contest is designed to go viral right from the beginning.
“When designing the contest we wanted to make sure we would get good engagement so we wouldn’t face the same issue Amazon had to deal with,” explains Haaranen. “Part of that is choosing a great prize and the other part is rewarding contestants for liking, sharing and commenting on our contest. I think we’ve done a good job at hitting these points and we’re excited to see the results.”
Anyone wishing to enter the contest may do so at: http://surecited.com/fbcontest
To learn more about Eric Haaranen and his media consulting practice please visit http://SureCited.com