Almost 9 percent of today’s companies are marketing on social media. But there are only a few specifics that work when it comes to raising your brand awareness on social media. Your marketing strategy will depend on the goals in question, the niche you’re in, and the target audience. Also, the timing of your campaign. New demands, new competition, and new algorithms require constant adaptation. There are number of factors to include in a social media marketing strategy. Nevertheless, there is a new, effective method that has a big social impact on purchasing decisions. It’s called reward-based marketing. In other words, rewarding your followers as a marketing strategy.

Rewarding your followers should be part of your marketing strategy

With this marketing tactic, customers can often feel motivated about sharing their favorite brands with their followers and friends on social networks. There is a reward for doing so. With leverage over such incentives, brands can increase exposure. They can also boost sales simultaneously by only employing one marketing strategy.

The advantages of reward-based marketing

Social media is the greatest source of inspiration for customers purchases, with 37 percent of customers searching for purchase inspiration through these platforms. At the most basic level, offering a chance for a reward to your followers can make them willing to share that information across different social media networks. If only one person shares this, there is a chance to expose your brand to people following that person. If your reward is big enough, the greater the chance of more shares. Thus, you can adjust your marketing efforts to offer more rewards for more shares on different networks.

It is an easy-to-do method for reaching to several, dozens, or even hundreds or thousands of new customers who will not only learn about your brand or product for the first time but also engage for a chance to win something. Ultimately increasing your visibility, brand familiarity, and sales leads across these platforms.

The giveaway

Start with a giveaway. Its premises are simple. Something valuable is given to the brand’s followers. In return, their engagement with the brand increases, the brands’ visibility increases, and the brands attracts shares, links, and likes. Most importantly, the attention of the target audience.

There are a number of ways to implement this, such as offering promotional products with your brand on it. Promotional products, besides increasing brand awareness and recognition, are easy to combine with a call to action through a giveaway and offer better return on investment (ROI) and bigger brand impression.

Or you can offer your services and products as a prize for a better showcasing of your brand in the future. People will try your product and what it about, a promising feature in the long run.

At the advanced level, you can go for the big social influencers on the platforms. Offering giveaways to these influencers is an effective tactic for getting them to share their opinions and emotions about your brand or product. At least making them mention it in a post or two.

Although not a big deal at first look, the advantages of reaching these influencers thousands of followers will be clear as your visibility over them increases. Search for an influencer or two that likes your product, then reach out to them and present a free giveaway. Just don’t ask directly for a share or mention, if they enjoy the product, they will do it themselves.

Rewarding individual followers

One cheap method of rewarding and recognizing individual fans is to showcase an individual follower on your brand page. You can select a follower of the week, interview him, and the post it on your brand page. Encourage the dialogue around the person, not the brand.

It will be a pleasing reward to those who constantly contribute to your brands’ page or who are the most loyal customers. This can show that you care for your individual fans and reward those who are a part of the community. The followers are thrilled with the surprising rise to fame. In turn, the brand will have more preferences from the customers.

Just remember to give them some other title instead of calling them fans. A title that unique, cool, and rememberable. It will make them feel more special, and they deserve that feeling. Let’s face it, they found the efforts to like your page.

A second tactic would be to create a loyalty program. Your followers are awarded points for following your brand on different social networks or are awarded for reviewing, sharing and mentioning your brand. These points can then be translated into a giveaway, promotional products or a discount at your business.

Giving rewards increases brand visibility

In summary, giving rewards to your existing and new followers on social media is an effective way of increasing brands visibility. Rewarding your followers should be part of your marketing strategy. The giveaways can range in price. Even a small gift can go a long way if it’s interesting and original. Use this on both the influencers and your usual fans and your marketing efforts will do wonders in the future.

This guest blog post was written by Elaine Bennett who is a digital marketing specialist focused on helping startups and small businesses grow. She’s a regular contributor for Bizzmark Blog. Elaine writes hands-on articles about business and marketing.