80% of marketers agree that contests are proven to capture your target audience’s attention and generate leads when compared to other forms of content. That’s why it’s important that you add Facebook contests to your marketing strategy.
But once you’ve sorted out the details for your Facebook contest and it’s ready to go, what’s the best way to promote it?
The answer: a Facebook contest ad! Granted you’ll have to pay to play, but when it’s done right the results will be worth it.
But before you go on clicking in your Facebook Ads Manager, here are 12 Facebook contest ad examples you can steal that are proven to get you more clicks.
Let’s get started.
1. Facebook Contest Ad Example: Go Golfing Travel
Go Golfing knows their audience. For their Facebook contest they offered golf gear valued at $1,279 to encourage their followers and potential golf lovers who might be interested to participate.
This Facebook contest post/ad engagement got 125 likes, 27 comments, and 18 shares. This type of engagement proves how much it’s resonated with their fellow golfers.
Go Golfing Travel decided to go with an image instead of a video. They placed their contest details along with and nice product image so the viewers could see exactly what they could win.
They did a great job keeping the copy very simple.
Pro tip: For any successful ad, keep your Facebook contest copy short and sweet, for most people reading long copy can feel like a chore..
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2. Facebook Contest Ad Example: Meadow and Marrow – Giveaway
Meadow & Marrow is a bone broth company in Australia that prides itself on its ingredients and health conscious community. They decided to give their fans a chance to win a six months supply of their delicious bone broth. That’s a whole lot of broth.
This contest ad got a total of 111 reactions, 18 comments, and six shares since going live for five days. Not too shabby!
Meadow & Marrow used an image showing off their delicious broth along with benefits and features entering the contest.
The copy for this ad was fairly long, but it works because it appeals to people looking for products with health benefits, their target audience. Listing the benefits helps users to understand why it’s worthwhile to win a 6-month supply.
One popular marketing trick is stating the value of the product.
People naturally love to save, but more than that people love to win free things. When Meadow & Marrow added the value of the product, it encouraged people to enter to win $180 of free products. This sales technique is called “value selling”.
When it comes to sales and marketing you can put a price on happiness.
The best Facebook ads always add a sense of urgency to get people rushing to enter. This add used the phrase Hurry; this contest ends soon!
Main Takeaway:
* List your contest prize’s benefits and features (give people a reason to enter)
* Add a dollar value to your product
*Try to foster a sense of urgency to encourage people to enter (i.e. by adding countdown timers, and stating the contest end date).
3. Facebook Contest Ad Example: The Barre Code
Barre Code is a cardio fitness gym backed by a loyal community of women who love to work out. Barre Code has a Facebook ad to promote their free gym membership contest to three lucky winners.
They received more than 14 shares and five comments along with 196 post reactions, including likes.
Barre Code uses a variety of images for its Facebook contest ad campaign. All of the images include real members of Barre Code exercising.
What we’ve found is the most engaging contest ads generally include images or videos of real people using a product or services.
That’s one of the most effective ways to get more clicks on your Facebook ad.
The copy for this ad is not too long, not too short, just right. Using the power word “free” in bold caps. The CTA for the ad is also simple asking people to enter with a hint of urgency with the word “now.”
4. Facebook Contest Ad Example: Mary Lee
Marylee MacDonald hosted a giveaway for six people to win one of her six favorite books. Her Facebook contest ad raked up a whopping 182 likes, 37 comments, and 12 shares.
From the looks of her Facebook page, she engages a lot with her followers and persons who commented on the ad, which proves just how strong having engagement before running a contest can be.
Apart from the amazing contest engagement, I think it could have gotten more if they used a more enticing contest image — something with a bit more color and excitement.
5. Facebook Contest Ad Examples: Original Bag of Poo
I know, who wants to win a bag of poo? Well apparently the 33 people who liked this contest, 11 commenters and eight people who shared this Facebook ad contest.
Despite the name, The Original Bag of Poo is a tasty cotton candy company with a loyal following, which is why they received so much engagement when they decide to host a contest to give three lucky winners five free bags of their favorite original poo cotton candy.
They use an eye-catching graphic for their Facebook ad. If you notice most of these ads relay the same information in their copy. This is a good practice to steal for your own Facebook contest ads because 65% of people viewing your ads are visual learners.
The copy was short enough; they listed each flavor to clearly show what the winners would be getting when they completed sign up. The used “This is a limited time offer-enter today”, a marketer’s favorite line to push the fear of missing out on viewers.
6. Facebook Contest Ad Example: Awaken the Night
Awaken the night published a Facebook contest ad where one winner and five of their friends would win free tickets to Sonic Bloom Camp Music Festival. Contests that include more than one winner tend to get more engagement, when compared to contest with a single winner, because more than one person get to benefit from winning.
On social media, people always want to share experiences (particularly millennials). When a brand allows followers to share an experience with friends, they’re 38% more likely to engage with that brand’s content or contest. Incorporating multiple winners into your contest helps to improve your chances of going viral. This could be why most of this contest engagement where mainly shares when compared to likes and comments.
If you look closely at the caption for this Facebook contest ad, they included a CTA like “click the link and win”. Adding a link to your caption may seem redundant to have especially when there’s already a clickable Facebook image, but it’s pretty smart.
About 60% of people on the internet skim content rather than taking the time to read it all properly, when you add a link to your caption you accommodate the people who skim over details of your copy, people who click first and read later.
This helps to increase your click-through rate because you’re giving viewers more than one way to enter your contest. The more clicks you get; the more likely people will enter your Facebook contest, ultimately the more potential leads you get for sales.
If you noticed Awaken the Night used an image with a few contest details and a colorful look to grab their target audience attention. This graphic is also perfect for skimmers who prefer pictures over words.
Just makes sure to follow Facebook’s 80/20 rule. Facebook’s ad guidelines state that image to words ratio should be 80:20. If you aren’t following this could be one of the reasons Your Ads Might Not Be Running or Approved.
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7. Facebook Contest Ad Example: Bumpboxx
Bumpboxx is a brand that loves music just as much as their fans. They create specialized personal home and outdoor audio equipment. For years they’re used contests and giveaways to grow their social media following.
Bumpboxx is known for hosting contest all year round which helps to bring in constant engagement. Adding that to well-written copy with emojis and a targeted audience and it’s no wonder this Facebook contest ad got 300 likes, 49 comments, and 55 shares.
The ad above is their go-to Facebook contest, enter to win a free Bumpboxx. The first line of their copy is an attention grabber and speaks to music lovers right off the bat.
The rest of the copy is to the point with a list of the product features to showing off it’s worth winning qualities. You’ll notice some music emoji were added in the caption. As simple as it sounds Facebook post with emojis can increase your number of likes by 57 percent and comments and shares by 33 percent. A smiley face emoji goes a long way.
At the end of the copy, there’s a hint of urgency with “Hurry, offer ends soon.” It’s always important to give people a little push to enter, if there’s no urgency there’s no need to click and enter.
As any good Facebook contest ad would have the image used for the ad shows the winning prize, a custom Bumpbox.
8. Facebook Contest Ad Example: Spacefoam
For Spacefoam, sleep is the name of the game. Space foam offers one of the world’s best pillows with researched and tested memory foam. To get the word out they hosted a Facebook contest giving away some of their sleep worthy products.
The majority of this Facebook contest ad speaks about the amazing products and features while the ad image is positioned to promote the contest CTA to enter, even more showing the value of the prize at $200.
Here’s something I’d like to point out that most people overlook when they’re creating their Facebook contest ads. The description text, this text appears below the headline and above your CTA button.
A description text acts as a simple way to expand on your headline. It also helps with re-informing anyone that skimmed over your previous copy or caption. It’s not a must have so you don’t overthink it but it can help to redirect your audience to your CTA.
9. Facebook Contest Ad Example: Juice It Up!
Juice it Up is a foodies paradise offering fruit & veggie smoothies yogurt bowls for a healthy lifestyle. So when they decided they wanted to collaborate with a brand to host a Facebook contest it only fitting that they partnered with Sambazon, an Acai fruit bowl company that raises funds for endangered species in the Amazon rainforest.
Before you’ve even read the text, the image for this ad jumps out at you with the question* “Want a free bike?”*, now that’s sure to grab anyone’s attention. Questions are one of the most clickable headlines copy, adding them to your images can be the difference between 100 clicks and no clicks at all.
Your Facebook ad image, headline, and caption can turn away people from clicking your contest ad. Juice it Up’s ad shows how you can perfectly balance all three. Wondering if your copy is turning contestants away?
Here are 5 Reasons Why Your Headlines are on Life Support.
The two brands decided to give the winner a custom purple beach cruiser. Purple to promote their #PurpleForThePlanet hashtag for a cause to help save 30 species in 30 days for Earth Day, it’s also the color that most fans of the two brands sport in with fashion or hair dyes.
ONE. MORE. DAY!!! We’re overwhelmed by everyone coming together to make a difference, but it’s not over yet! We have until tomorrow to post purple haired selfies tagged #PurpleForThePlanet @sambazon to protect 30 species in 30 days. What are you waiting for?! ??? pic.twitter.com/BDUU1tpDG6
— Sambazon (@Sambazon) May 21, 2019
Further analyzing the copy for the ad, it starts with a sense of urgency by stating that viewers only have ten days left to enter to win this contest. Again this is to inspire FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), people naturally don’t like to miss out on good deals, so adding this to your caption helps to drive some click your way.
Juice It Up added a few emoji’s to their caption (which we spoke about earlier that helps with driving engagement to your post), they tagged their contest co-host Sambazon and added a link to the contents caption for ease of access to the contes.
Need help with your contest ads?
Book a free call to learn how our team of contest experts can help you create high converting contest ads today.
10. Facebook Contest Ad Example: National Geographic
The National Geographic came together with Omaze, an organization that allows people to donate money for a good cause for a chance to win a date with celebrities, travel the world, and more.
National Geographic decided to use a video for their Facebook contest ad rather than a static image. Using videos for your contest ads drives clicks and entries because people gaze five times longer and engage up to 40% more with video ads than Facebook ads with images.
11. Facebook Contest Ad Example: WooBamboo USA
WooBamboo is an eco-friendly oral health product company, selling bamboo brushes for adults, kids, and pets alike.
In fact they’re proud winners of the EcoExcellence Awards for Best Pet Products, so it should come to surprise that when they hosted an “Eco-Pawsome” Giveaway” pet, the engagement and entries were high.
The caption for this ad has an exciting opening to stop anyone from scrolling on Facebook; it includes clear and simple instructions so that anyone can enter right off the bat.
The image for this ad has touch humor, and it works because it connects with the target audience and pet loves. Funny enough pets are more popular than people. Having pets in your ads drives more clicks and engagement than real people. Brands saw up to 295% more engagment on content on pets when compared to other forms of content.
12. Facebook Contest Ad Example: PATH WATER
Path Water sells purified water in a reusable BPA-free aluminum bottle. Their eco-friendly with a mission statement to end plastic bottle pollution.
They’re known for promoting influencers, and celebrities like Hailey Bieber, Kyle Jenner and more that use their products, to grow awareness and sales.
For their Facebook contest/giveaway, they used the musical artist and influencer Just Dax during the Game of Throne season finale to promote their giveaway.
70% of millennial consumers are influenced by influencers. That’s why using influencers Facebook ads drives so much engagement and clicks.
Thinking of adding Influencers to your next Facebook contest? Here’s an Essential Guide to Getting Started with Influencer Marketing
Key Takeaways For Your Next Facebook Contest Ads
Majority of these Facebook contest ad examples were successfully created and managed by our amazing Wishpond Management services. They also had most if not all of the following below in common.
Here are the key ingredients to creating Facebook ads that drive more clicks for your contest:
- Use images with visuals and graphics
- Always use a CTA (call-to-action)
- Add your contest link in the caption
- Follow Facebook 80/20 Rule for images
- List your contest prize’s benefits and features ( give people a reason to enter)
- Emphases with power words
- Place a sense of urgency in your caption
- Engage with your audience before, during and after your Facebook contest
- Use images of real people in your Facebook contest ad
- Make use of your Facebook description text
- Add value to your product
- Keep your copy short and sweet
- Incorporate influencers in your Facebook contest ads
Summary
It takes some hard work to fine tune your Facebook contest ads. At the end of the day you don’t just want contestants, you want an increase in sales and brand awareness. Don’t just create your ad and forget it. Monitor it, A/B test it and use what you’ve learned on the next one.
Are you Facebook ad pro with tips or a beginner with a few questions? Drop a comment below and let me know what you think.
Related Readings
- 13 Facebook Ads We Got That Were Right on the Money (and Why)
- 3 Examples of Landing Pages Optimized for Facebook Ad Traffic
- How to Use Facebook Ads for Local Businesses (And Why They Work)
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