Are you wondering how to get people's attention to your product or service? Do you have trouble increasing brand awareness or generating leads with your branded content? Struggling to reach more people on social media? The good news is there is a solution that ticks off all of these boxes simultaneously: an influencer giveaway campaign.
People love free stuff, so if there's a small chance to win a prize with minimal effort, they enter a contest. Social media giveaways can function as a one-time independent campaign for a well-known brand to introduce a new product. Alternatively, it can be the first step in a more complex marketing strategy for a new business looking to break into the market and expand brand visibility and reach. In either case, successful giveaway campaigns require thorough planning and precise execution.
So how does a giveaway work? Our article will walk you through the most important aspects of developing the best social media giveaway campaigns and mention techniques that will help you drive participants and deliver significant results.
What Is a Giveaway Campaign?
A giveaway is a promotional marketing campaign type where a business or an individual offers free prizes for social media users or email subscribers to win in exchange for a particular engagement-related action. These typically include liking or sharing the content, commenting on the post, following the band, tagging a friend, or participating in a creative challenge.
What channels are the most popular for creating a giveaway?
If the brand wants to increase brand recognition and the number of social media followers or extend its target audience to various customer groups, it should opt for a social media platform, such as Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or Facebook.
Companies, however, have several other options to choose from based on their goals. To maintain loyalty and engage with existing customers, brands can run email campaigns and offer valuable gifts for them. Email referral giveaways can be incredibly effective if the brand wishes to increase its subscriber list and customer base. Thirdly, a blog giveaway can help businesses generate leads and grow traffic by bringing attention to specific products and services.
Who can host giveaways?
Basically, anybody can host a giveaway if they offer participants a free gift and set clear entry rules. Individuals, including content creators and celebrities, can promote their own merch or work with businesses to gift away their products. Or brands themselves can reward their loyal followers and customers with exclusive items or free services.
Most Popular Giveaway Ideas for Brands
Milestone celebration
Social media giveaways are an excellent way to celebrate key moments in the life of a business. Whether it's celebrating a company anniversary, winning an industry award, or reaching a certain number of clients, social media followers, or sales, brands can thank their loyal customers by giving away freebies. Milestone celebrations aren't just about acknowledging a brand's success; they are also a great opportunity to engage consumers, grow sales, and strengthen a brand’s image.
Limited edition products and exclusive events
The goal of these campaigns is to generate buzz about items that aren't available to the general public or to provide early access to products. You may offer participants access to special events, like VIP parties or behind-the-scenes tours to keep up the interest. Having rare products and services on offer can create a sense of exclusivity and attract collectors.
Creative contests
Contests are extremely successful, whether they focus on taking photos and videos, writing captions and poems, or building something with Legos. The greatest advantage of these campaigns is that they provide the company with distinctive and unique user-generated content. In turn, the winner's work is acknowledged with a free gift and showcased on various platforms.
Games and quizzes
A fun, educational, and interactive way to engage users in your giveaway. People can learn more about a brand's history and values through trivia and guessing games, or they can gain a deeper understanding of a specific industry or topic through quizzes.
Refer a friend
Referral programs offer incentives to users, such as free services, gifts or discounts, in exchange for referring family or friends. This promotional strategy takes advantage of word-of-mouth marketing and can be deployed across most social media platforms and email campaigns. For example, a shopping app can generate a unique referral code for each user which they can share with their friends. This code includes a deep link that takes users to the sign-up page with the code already applied. Or, if the new user hasn’t installed the app, it will direct them to the app’s download page. Once the new user signs up, the referrer earns a reward. This is an ideal method of increasing brand exposure and attracting new customers. As an added bonus, brands could discover new brand advocates among the most active participants.
The wildcard of giveaways: a gift card
An easy way to entice people to engage with your content or play your games. Gift cards are perfect for businesses of all sizes and industries, but their value must be high enough to convince people to participate. Depending on the type of service and company budget, gift vouchers can range in amount from $50 to $500.
How to Do a Social Media Giveaway?
Based on what you've seen so far, it seems like running a social media giveaway is a no-brainer. You just have to offer a few gifts and post about them on Instagram, and people will flock, right? The truth is, every marketing campaign needs a plan. Along with thinking about the purpose of your campaign and who you want to reach, giveaways require precise entry rules and you must establish how you'll choose and announce the winner. Here are five things to keep in mind when creating a giveaway:
Define your goals
Sweepstakes and contests have several benefits. Keeping your business top of mind and retaining customers is one thing. But you can also grow your email list, and social media followers, create excitement around product launches, amplify UGC, and boost your sales.
Select the right platform
Want to get as many people as possible to enter? Then pick a channel where this can be done. Email giveaways are the best option for service-based businesses, while Instagram and TikTok are ideal for industries, like fashion and beauty, where visuals play a major role.
Choose a relevant giveaway prize
Your prize must be valuable, interesting, and meet the needs or desires of your target market. Free items are most appealing to people. Providing a free gift allows you to reward your existing clients, as well as give newcomers the opportunity to experience your product or service, which could lead to them becoming customers.
Set straightforward entry rules
Giveaways require minimal effort from participants, and if you offer something valuable to them, you can bet they will enter it. Hence, it is essential to establish clear, easy-to-follow rules that don't leave room for misunderstandings and don't lead to arguments between losers and winners. Specify the start and end dates, what people must do to enter, and how the winner will be selected and notified.
Promote your giveaway
When your contest is only visible to social media followers, email subscribers, and customers, how can you broaden your reach? Fortunately, you have a number of choices. First off, referral programs spread the word about your brand by people who already love it. Secondly, partnering with influencers will put your business in front of relevant audiences. Finally, you could stipulate in the rules that participants share the giveaway using specific hashtags associated with the campaign to increase the potential reach and impact of the campaign.
Best Practices for Boosting Your Giveaway’s Success
Stay creative
From tailoring gifts to your target audience to challenging users with puzzles and quizzes, creativity can take many forms. The point is to stand out and encourage as many people as possible to join. Creating a series of games and selecting a winner each day might be a good idea. Or you can ask users to get creative in order to enter. Just be sure to keep the campaign aligned with your niche and offer participants relevant prizes.
Offer consolation prizes for losers
Winners will be happy, but what about people who didn’t win? Thank them for their participation in an email and create a memorable experience for them. Better yet, offer them a discount of 5-15% if they purchase from your online shop or a smaller-value gift card. Combine this with a limited-time offer to encourage buyer interest. This is easy to accomplish with email contests. For giveaways on blogs and social media, an email address must be provided as part of the entry.
Partner with influencers
Getting several influencers involved with your campaign will give it a huge boost. Influencers already have a steady following and can likely sway their decision if they endorse a product or brand they believe in. Have content creators share the giveaway with their followers and take advantage of their authority and credibility.
Team up with other brands
Co-host sweepstakes with a compatible business by offering complementary products. A sportswear brand can team up with a gym, just as a travel agency can team up with a brand selling hiking products. This is a budget-friendly method of reaching out to new customers and growing your business.
Use giveaway tools
Numerous online platforms and apps help brands streamline planning, building, executing, and promoting giveaways. Using these programs helps with tedious tasks such as managing entries, ensuring that participants have completed the required tasks, and choosing a random winner. Take a look at all the options and choose the one that makes the most sense for your goals, and budget and provides the features you prefer.
Wrapping It Up
Giveaways are a win-win for brands and consumers. They are entertaining enough to draw many people and easy to adapt to changing market trends. With social media giveaway campaigns and the integration of digital signage, brands can gain exposure, re-engage customers, and expand their reach all while showcasing their best products or emphasizing their best values. They keep people engaged in a creative, playful, and competitive way and give them exciting and valuable gifts. Contests can help businesses interact with their intended and existing customers in a unique way, develop authentic relationships with them and leave a lasting impression.
