Don't Miss These 8 Tips If You Want to Host An Incredible Giveaway (And Avoid Possible Marketing Fail!)
If you want to grow your audience online, hosting giveaways is one of the quickest and most powerful ways to drive quality traffic – without spending money on ads.
Why should you host giveaways?
A giveaway can grow your followers 70% faster in three months than if you don’t host a giveaway at all. (Christopher) When done well, you can use it to reach hundreds and thousands of people who are your target audience and are your potential customers.
(Need a little help finding who they are? Learn the 7 questions every modern entrepreneur should ask to narrow down your target audience.)
Why have many businesses tried giveaways but failed?
Because most people come up with something generic, like Starbucks, Apple, or Amazon gift cards, to give away for free, and they don’t have a well-thought-out strategy to announce and run their giveaways.
Then they end up with either barely new followers or a bunch of followers who just want free stuff and who aren’t their target audience or potential customers. Because none of their new followers is their target audience, these followers don’t stay engaged or stay around. And all the marketing efforts that went into planning for the giveaways go to waste.
If you’ve experienced this with giveaways in the past and want to turn it around, or if you want to avoid a potential marketing fail,
here are 8 pro tips for hosting a successful giveaway that bring you quality leads and get you seen by people who are your target customers:
1. Set a clear goal for your giveaway
To host a giveaway successfully, you need to set a clear goal so you know what to track and how to measure your success.
Most people think running giveaways are only good for growing followers, but there are many more strategic goals that you can achieve with an effective giveaway. For example:
Grow your social media following
Give back to your community
Promote a product or service launch
Boost brand awareness
Raise awareness of a social issue and reinforce your brand mission and values
Increase social media engagement
Utilize the audience’s affinity and association with another brand
Build hype for an event
Promote a sales event or special promotion
Increase email signups
Driving traffic to your website
Get more user-generated content
Depending on your goal for the giveaway, you figure out what prize to give out, what actions to include as part of your instructions to enter the giveaway, and which partners are more suitable for the giveaway.
2. Find the right partners for a joint giveaway
Because most people assume that giveaways are only good for getting followers, so they focus on getting partners who have a big following or audience on board.
However, as a business owner, if you want to make the most of your giveaway and want to make sure you’re attracting the right people who are your target audience and who will be interested in what you sell later, find partners whose target audience and customers are similar to yours. This is how you multiply marketing synergy and this is key to any successful collaboration.
As you and your partner(s) announce the joint giveaway to each of your audiences, you drive quality leads and potential customers to each other.
So, it is very important to look beyond the number of followers and likes when you choose partners to do a joint giveaway with. Focus on working with people, businesses, and accounts that have an engaged audience of people who are your target customers. Otherwise, you’ll get followers who will never become your customers.
Also, consider partners who are outside of your industry and focus on what your target audience and customers want at this season in their life or career. For example, if you’re an Instagram marketing coach, you can also collaborate with a web designer who also serves small business owners. And if you sell stationery with fun designs, consider other brands in other industries with similar design styles that your target customers might also shop from; don’t limit yourself to partners in only the stationery market.
3. Don’t forget this is for marketing
A giveaway is a marketing effort, so it’s important to showcase your product, service, and/or expertise through the prize(s) you’re handing out. And depending on the goal of your giveaway, this prize may also be related to a cause that you support, a value you stand for, or an upcoming event that you’re promoting. Instead of offering generic gift cards, come up with prizes that help you market what you do and that align with your goal for the giveaway.
4. Make your giveaway a no-brainer to enter
First, your giveaway prize should be something your target audience and customers really want, not just a product or service you have readily available to give away for free, or a generic gift card that usually attracts people who just want free prizes and coupons. Keep your target customers in mind and figure out what would be so valuable to them that make entering and going through with your giveaway a no-brainer.
Usually, the more actions you're asking people to take to enter your giveaway, the more valuable your prize should be to incentivize people to go through all the steps you want them to take. Here are some examples for your giveaway prize:
An existing product or service
A special product or service collaboration
A limited-time offer or opportunity
Gift card(s)
A product collection and/or service bundle
Access to an event
Make the giveaway as simple as possible for people to join. Avoid complicated instructions and prioritize the key actions you want people to take. The more difficult and the more steps it requires people to enter the giveaway, the less likely people would want to participate. Make your instructions straightforward and precise.
5. Plan your marketing content ahead of time
For many people, their giveaways didn’t generate the results they wanted because their partners did not promote the giveaway to their audiences as much as expected. This happens because expectations weren’t set clearly during the planning stage.
To make sure every partner that is hosting the giveaway with you is on the same page and will put in the same level of effort to market the giveaway with each of their audiences, lay out a clear content schedule for promoting the giveaway. Along with the content schedule, provide any content assets, such as social media graphics, video, and text content, that you want your partners to use to promote the giveaway in advance.
With detailed planning, your giveaway partners would know when to promote the giveaway, what content to share, and on which platform. It helps every partner involved stay on the same page and be clear about everyone’s responsibilities, which helps maximizes the success of your joint giveaway.
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6. Build excitement with your audience
Tell people that something exciting is coming up before you announce the giveaway. Give people snippets of what you prepared without giving out the full detail. Similar to anything you promote in your business, think about your giveaway as an online party, and start driving momentum and excitement before you officially announce it. This way, when the giveaway is announced, there is already anticipation around it which helps boost participation.
When your giveaway is open for people to participate, email your subscribers about your giveaway, announce it on different social media platforms, and add it as a website popup or announcement bar to let all your visitors and audience know about the giveaway. Also, remind your giveaway partners to do the same to maximize exposure to this joint marketing effort.
And as more people enter the giveaway, continue to share behind-the-scenes, updates, and reminders with your audience online before your giveaway is closed to keep drawing attention and telling people to participate.
7. Include an option for bonus entries
Give people the option to get additional entries to increase their chances of winning the giveaway. This is a great tactic to incentivize people who are hesitant about joining because they think that the chance of winning is slim. Include an additional action or encourage participants to share more or tag more people to get the bonus entries.
8. NURTURE YOUR LEADS AFTER THE GIVEAWAY IS OVER
Once the giveaway is over, you’ve attracted many new people and leads to your online community. Don’t leave them hanging, make sure you have a strategy to keep nurturing your leads. Engage them through your valuable content, get them to sign up for your emails, and turn them into loyal customers!
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Work Cited
Christopher, David. “How to Do a Giveaway on Instagram Successfully (+Ideas!).” Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tips and News, 22 June 2020, www.tailwindapp.com/blog/instagram-contest-ideas-that-will-grow-your-followers-70-faster. Accessed 24 Oct. 2022.