Introduction
A giveaway is an act of giving away goods or services for free as a gift or premium. The most important elements of a giveaway are that it is free and doesn’t expect anything in return. They are luck-based as the results are chosen at random. Thus, every participant has an equal chance of winning. When you decide to run a giveaway, you need to understand every element of it. Everything about the giveaway should be designed to drive massive traffic to your website and increase your follower base. Ultimately, it should also result in generating targeted leads for your business.
How To Run A Giveaway In 7 Steps
Set Goals for Your Giveaway
To start, it’s important to set clear goals before you launch a giveaway. Think of what do you want to accomplish with this contest. If you have several goals in mind, prioritize the most important ones. If possible, assign a number that can be measured to each goal.
Setting a primary goal will help you determine your giveaway’s success and measure the results. For instance, if your number one goal is gaining new email leads, set a goal of gaining 300 new emails. This way you will know whether your giveaway helped you reach your marketing goals.
Giveaways can help you:
- Generate sales
- Boost brand awareness
- Increase user engagement
- Drive traffic to your website
- Get more email subscribers
- Gather user-generated content
- Get more social media followers
Choose a goal for your giveaway contest that lines up with your business and marketing objectives. Once you’ve chosen a goal, it will be much easier to run a giveaway. Consequently, you will achieve the results you’re looking for.
Choose The Prize For Your Giveaway
Before you start the giveaway, you need to be clear about what to offer. The most important thing to consider is how attractive your prize will be to your target audience. Thus, be sure to choose a high-quality grand prize that will attract a lot of people. Additionally, make sure your giveaway prize is relevant to your target audience and your brand image.
For instance, you can offer a free consultation as a giveaway prize. If you already have a social media following, you can poll your audience about which prize they would like. This will ultimately help you select an enticing prize. It will also create excitement about the upcoming giveaway and increase audience engagement.
Some of the most popular ideas include:
- Money
- Gift cards or gift certificates
- Free products/ services
Determine The Giveaway Rules
The next step is to plan out the contest rules and logistics. To start, choose what type of a giveaway you’ll run. There are several different types of giveaways you can choose from. For example, will you require something from people who enter? Accordingly, you could giveaway to get more user-generated content. Consider the following details as well:
- Who can enter? Are there age or location limits?
- Start and end dates: What is the length of time people can enter?
- Giveaway Entry methods: How can someone enter your giveaway? How often can they enter?
- How to pick the Giveaway winner: Will you use a random draw, vote, or another method?
Make sure that the entry methods you use align with your goals. For example, if your goal is to grow your email list, it should be required to enter. . In addition, pay attention to the rules of the particular social media platform you choose to run your giveaway from. There are federal and state laws that govern how you run your online contest. Platforms like Facebook state in their terms and conditions not to ask participants to like and share your giveaway contest.
Launch And Promote Your Giveaway
A good giveaway marketing strategy will help your giveaway to go viral. Accordingly, you can grow your audience and generate as many leads as possible. To maximize the success of your giveaway, promote it to reach the largest number of people in your target audience. Before launching, make posts like “Going live in 24 hours, turn your notifications on”. This will make people want to follow you and engage with your profile. After a launch, make sure you promote your giveaway across social media platforms. Ultimately, there are several ways to promote your giveaway. One of the easiest ways is to share it on social media platforms. Moreover, you can ask people to tag a friend in the comments section.
Additionally, you can also promote your giveaway by:
- Creating a blog
- Radio / TV promotion
- Creating a website popup
- Creating an email newsletter
- Adding a link to your website home page
- Adding relevant giveaway hashtags to your post on social media
- Submitting your giveaway post to contest and sweepstakes directories
- Reaching out to relevant bloggers and influencers to mention your giveaway
- Partnering with another company that offers a complementary service
Don’t forget to add a sense of urgency. When the giveaway is about to end, send out one last reminder to get more entries. There are also FaceBook groups centered specifically around giveaways that could give your brand that extra audience boost when you post. Some groups to follow are:
Choose A Giveaway Winner
The easiest and most popular way to select a winner is by a random draw. Additionally, many websites can help you pick a random winner. All you have to do is assign a number to each valid entry. An easy way to do this is to assign a number in the order the entries were received. Then use a random number selection website like Google’s Random Number Generator or Math Goodies Official Random Number Generator to randomly select a winner. Don’t forget to take a screenshot of the result so you can document how the winner was selected.
Another option is to select from comments on a post. You can filter entries by the “correct” answer and then select the winner randomly. Woobox’s Pick A Winner tool makes it easy to select winners for contests run on Facebook. Business owners can sign up for a free account. And Easypromo’s Instagram Sweepstakes App provides similar services for Instagram contests. However, you can also allow people to vote for the winner. These giveaways are often fun and have high engagement levels.
Follow Up After the Giveaway
Lastly, it’s important to follow up with everyone who entered your giveaway as well. Following up with them will allow you to form better connections and mention your contest one last time.
You can follow up after the giveaway by:
- Social Media – Announce the winner and the prize on your social media accounts.
- Email Newsletter – Send an email to announce the winner. In the email, you should also thank everyone for participating and invite them to join you for your next giveaway.
Offering a consolation prize is also good form. For example, a 10% discount for your service. You’d be surprised how many people sign up for your email list, just so they don’t miss out on more free stuff.
Measure The Success Of Your Giveaway
One way to measure the success of your giveaway is to determine if you’ve met your goals. It is important to count the number of leads generated by your contest because the purpose of running a giveaway is to grow your audience. Social activity metrics, website analytics, shares, and tags provide insight into how many people you reached with the contest. You can use platforms such as RafflePress or MonsterInsights, that give you insights into your giveaway data. Consequently, you will see what you need to improve for the next time.
Conclusion
Giveaways are a fantastic way to boost engagement, drive traffic, and find new customers. Additionally, they are a smart way to increase brand awareness and grow your business. Moreover, they will help you engage with current clients and attract new customers. When used as part of your marketing plan, they can give you the desired ROI. Follow the steps above to learn how to run a giveaway or save this post for later.