Social Media Marketing for Business

Valley-Hi Toyota is part of the family-owned Browning Auto Group, located in the High Desert of California. For the past two years, they have won Best Car Dealership of the Desert, because they keep their customers in mind.

The team at Valley-Hi Toyota was looking for a way to get their customers excited and engaged with their fan page without making them feel like they had to buy a car. In turn, Brian Ortega, Heyo customer and Media Relations Manager at Valley-Hi Toyota, was looking to expand Valley-Hi Toyota’s email list and fan base on Facebook in order to build up brand loyalty.

So, when Brian found that more and more of Valley-Hi’s customer base was sharing that they lacked a vehicle to get around, the Valley-Hi Toyota team chose to participate in the Valley-Hi Used Car Giveaway – an event spanning all of the Valley-Hi dealerships, giving away a used car to one lucky winner.

As Brian didn’t have a huge marketing team or budget to work with, he turned to Heyo to bring their giveaway to life.

Brian set up his Facebook Contest using the Heyo Sweepstakes Template and clicked the nerve racking publish button. The results stunned everyone. Over the course of the contest, the campaign attracted 2,240 views and 1,154 new email leads for Valley-Hi Toyota.

…For those of you doing the math, Valley-Hi Toyota was celebrating a 51.5% conversion rate!

The success of the Heyo Sweepstakes template was not a coincidence, because the template takes into account 6 simple steps to capture emails.

6 Things Every Facebook Contest Needs to Capture Thousands of Emails

1. Strong Incentive: Give away something that is directly aligned with what your potential customers and followers are interested in. In Valley-Hi Toyota’s case, they listened to their fan base and offered a used vehicle as a prize.

2. Brand recognition: By dragging and dropping the Valley-Hi logo into the Heyo Sweepstakes Template, Brian made sure Valley-Hi Toyota’s brand was highly visible. This branding is critical to quickly build trust with potential contest entrants.

3. Countdown widget for urgency: At any point in time a Facebook user could get distracted by a new notification or other social distraction. Brian was smart to include a countdown in his Facebook Contest to drive the user to take immediate action. This was critical to getting a 51.5% conversion rate.

Pro Tip: Only run your Facebook Contest for 7 days or less (7 days or less on the countdown). If fans see “45 days” left, they may leave the contest and never come back.

4. Easy to follow opt in form: Most folks mess this up. Making sure your email form is highly visible and easy to enter is key. Using Heyo’s Facebook Sweepstakes Template, you can link up the opt in form with ConstantContact, Mailchimp, Aweber, or other email marketing platform to easily manage Facebook Contest opt ins.

Pro Tip: Put them in a drip campaign to build a deep, long lasting relationship!

5. Clear Facebook Contest entry steps: Brian made it crystal clear how to enter the Valley-Hi Toyota’s Facebook Contest. Using the Heyo text widget, he told people that in order to enter they needed to follow steps 1-4 on the left side of the Facebook Contest. Make sure you make your entry rules simple and clear.

6. Smart URL: Heyo automatically created a Smart URL for Brian so that when Valley-Hi Toyota’s fans saw his update about the Facebook Contest in their Facebook mobile app, they could easily click and enter. You’re likely missing out on at least half of your total potential conversions if you don’t use Heyo to make sure your Facebook Contests also work on mobile devices.

Bonus tip: By asking fans to “like,” “share,” and “tweet” using Heyo’s Sweepstakes Template, you’ll get free traffic to your Facebook Contest from your fans social networks. Brian got 2,240 views with little advertising spend.

Conclusion

Leveraging Facebook as a key part of your marketing plan doesn’t have to be a mystery. Following the 6-step system above, you’ll be well positioned to capture thousands of emails just like Valley-Hi Toyota using the Heyo Sweepstakes Template to launch your Facebook contest.

Meet Emily Goodrich

Emily Goodrich is a Technical Writer at Heyo. She is a Senior studying Creative and Professional Writing at Virginia Tech.