“Win free textbooks for a term!” This type of message will have a line outside your door because the prize has a high perceived value.
The “Find Free Textbooks" hunt is your resource to drive traffic through your doors. We will help you tease your promotion, offer a high-value prize with minimal-to-no impact to your bottom line and build a multi-day promotion, which will generate buzz around campus and your community.
Encourage students to find an item specific to your community on campus and post pictures on your social media pages to rejuvenate interest in the contest. Your event will benefit a single student, similar to a Towson University contest and achieved great attention on social media.
Process:
- The item will then be hidden on campus, in plain sight so nothing is damaged by searchers, but hidden enough that clues will be needed to find the location
- Customers will search for an object, preferably something school branded
- Each day, you will create clues, which are harder at first and become easier as the hunt goes on
- The clues for each day will be posted in your store, directing customers through your door
- To generate social media attention, you will photograph the object in its hidden locale, being careful not to give away too much as to where it is, and post images to social media
- Winner brings the item to the store when they find it and you have an amazing photo opportunity
Your steps to success:
- Tease the event – Building excitement around the event will motivate people to play. Use these flyers to let your customers know how they can win free books, when the promotion starts and where to look on social media is important to any promotion. Emailing your customer list, using social media and adding the event to your store website are all useful.
- Prizes – Textbook rentals have a high perceived value. If adding anything to the grand prize bundle, whether it be supplies or logo wear, keeping the prizes valuable and relevant to what your store is plays a major role in the success of the promotion. Make customers keep their “eyes on the prize” by displaying them during the promotional period and week of the event.
- In-store – Driving traffic through your doors is the goal of any promotion. While social channels are great to drive engagement on the go, the in-store experience needs to offer information not accessible elsewhere. Place the provided poster in a prominent location within your store and recap the clues from prior days. Add your clues and hang your posters daily and let students know they can only view clues in your store. Keeping these available in-store only increase foot traffic.
- Social – Use your social media channels to promote your event and keep the players up-to-date about whether or not the prize has been found. Connecting with your customers and generating new followers is an opportunity social media engagement provides. Your Facebook page is a resource to connect your customers with the contest in more detail, Twitter allows you to give quick contest highlights and Pinterest provides you with the visual medium to showcase photos of the prizes and the item contestants are looking for. Use these examples as a guide:
Your “Find Free Textbooks" scavenger hunt is going to bring customers and increase your store's social media recognition, affording you the opportunity to generate more business.
