Creating Awareness With Raffles

This past week I attended the Grinspoon, Garvey & Young Entrepreneurship Conference at the Mass Mutual Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. The conference was created and has been held annually "to encourage innovative thinking and entrepreneurial acumen in young people." At this event I met other students from local colleges and sat in on two speaker sessions. The speaker session I want to mention is a social media speaker session. I heard three professionals speak and answer questions in regards to social media and business.

Prosperity Candle

One of the topics from this session which sparked my interest was given by Kim Hutt, the Director of Marketing for Prosperity Candle, a company which provides handmade candles and jobs for women rebuilding their lives. During her talk, she discussed what she is doing for the social media of Prosperity Candle. One of the sites they utilized for promoting the brand is called Rafflecopter. Rafflecopter is a site which provides a service of setting up giveaways for your company or product. The slogan of the site is "Rafflecopter is the world's easiest way to run a giveaway." I found this to be an interesting way to easily offer and control a giveaway to your audience. In the image above, it shows Prosperity Candle's recent giveaway, as well as how Rafflecopter works. A company embeds their giveaway address to any or all of their social media. From there, their consumers must share the post in various social media sites in order to increase their chances of winning the giveaway.

When & Why Use Rafflecopter?

Rafflecopter is a great way to have a giveaway in a simple and easy to use format. It is a savvy way to get consumers to share your product and brand through the giveaway. If one consumers shares the giveaway via their numerous social media accounts, many of their followers will see the posts. This process gains awareness and interest into the product and brand. Kim Hutt explained the best time in which her company utilizes Rafflecopter. They tend to have giveaways, such as now, right before holidays. If they increase awareness before big purchasing periods, people will think of their company when going to buy gifts for the Holidays or Mothers' Day, for example. In the consumer pathway, creating awareness is the first stage. It is important to create this awareness for consumers to recognize and know what your brand is. Overall, I find this site to be useful for companies in creating that promotion through social media and initiating that awareness a brand needs.

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Sites mentioned in this post: https://www.rafflecopter.com/

                                          http://www.prosperitycandle.com/