A 135% MoM Instagram Audience Increase Through Social Contests

Key Takeaways

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Social Contesting Tactic — Brand Awareness & Engagement: Automotive brands are using social contests to increase brand awareness & engagement on their social accounts. Brand awareness contests focus on increasing follower size and top-of-mind awareness. Engagement contests focus on increasing likes/comments/shares and encourage followers to upload more user-generated content (UGC). 

Brand Awareness Tactics:

• Partnerships: Audi, Chevrolet, and Volkswagen all partnered with other brands (e.g., Lego, Tim Hortons, etc.) to reach new audiences and amplify their giveaways.
• Follow Required: Most brands required entrants to follow their account, as well as tag a friend (who also had to follow the account) in order to boost their audience size. 
• Large Incentives: Jeep used their Instagram to promote awareness of their “Win Your Wheels” contest where the winner receives a $70K dollar purchase voucher. A large incentive is highly motivating for entrants to complete all of the required entry steps. 
  

Engagement Tactics:

• Contest-Specific Hashtag: Volkswagen and Ford both used contest specific hashtags to encourage their audience to upload their own content and engage with the brand. 
• User-Generated Content: Ford ran a contest that encouraged their audience to submit photos of their own vehicles with the winner getting their photo professionally edited. This allows Ford’s audience to feel like they are part of a community while also allowing Ford to collect a bunch of UGC.
• Influencers: SeatGeek partnered with David Dobrik to run a contest to win a Tesla. The giveaway resulted in 2M new followers for SeatGeek and garnered over 7M+ engagements. Partnering with an influencer for a new model release can also be a great way to spread brand awareness amongst the target demographic.

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Automotive brands are running social contests with the objective of raising brand awareness and generating engagement amongst their audience.

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To increase brand awareness, Audi Canada partnered up with LEGO for a giveaway where 5 winners received a 1985 Audi Sport Quattro S1 LEGO set.

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As a result of this giveaway, Audi Canada increased their number of new followers on Instagram by +135% MoM in June of 2020.

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To raise awareness of BMW’s virtual auto show, BMW hosted a giveaway where participants had to enter their email address and register for the virtual show for a chance to win 1 of 200 giveaways.

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BMW used four different pieces of creative with similar text overlays to drive awareness of the contest.

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Both Chevrolet & Volkswagen partnered up with other brands for giveaways to amplify the contests and reach new audiences.

Chevrolet partnered with Hockey Canada & Volkswagen partnered with Tim Hortons.

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Jeep ran two contests where both prizes were gift cards/vouchers that could be used towards the purchase of a car or on Amazon.

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Volkswagen ran a #BeTheChange contest, where the audience had to comment and share what they are doing to #BeTheChange in their own community.

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Ford encouraged their followers to create UGC, by asking them to post photos of their Ford vehicles to win a professionally edited version of their car photo.

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Car giveaways hosted by influencers have proven to be successful, David Dobrik gained 1.2M followers by hosting a Tesla car giveaway

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The ROI for SeatGeek from the partnership with David ended up being quite significant compared to the estimated cost, gaining 2M followers in three days.