Are you looking for a way to grow your business fast? In most cases, a business, especially a new one, has to spend months to build content and carry out continuous marketing activities to build a following and get enough traction to make good sales.
But if you’re looking for explosive growth to take place in a very short time, then you need to leverage giveaways.
What are giveaways?
Giveaway campaigns or contests are where you offer something for free to your audience for participating in the campaign.
Why do giveaways work?
They work because we all love the idea of getting something free. People experience hope, excitement, joy, and other emotions at the idea of winning an item or an experience. And because news about giveaways are shared and celebrated, it also engages more people and leads to the giveaway reaching a wider audience.
Done well, businesses can leverage them to do several things at once:
- Build a brand’s social media following
- Get attention on social media and go viral by asking participants to share posts
- Drive more traffic to a website
- Build an email list by making subscribing to your newsletter a part of the campaign
- Build brand loyalty and create a positive brand image
Let’s now look at how you can practically make a giveaway for your business. And in the process, we’ll break down how a giveaway works to achieve your business goals.
Use the right tool
Unless you have technical expertise in coding a giveaway campaign, it’s recommended that you work with a tool that does all the work for you. If you run a WordPress site, it’s as easy as setting up a giveaway plugin.
By using a giveaway plugin, you can do the following with a few clicks of your mouse button:
- Create a mobile-optimized landing page for your giveaway
- Create conditions for people to enter your giveaway so that you link your audience’s participation in the giveaway to your marketing goal
- Link your social media profiles to the giveaway
- Randomly select a lucky winner
- Integrate with CRM and email marketing service providers
You can always create a giveaway without the use of a plugin by sharing a post on social media with hashtags for contests and giveaways. And you can send an email blast informing your users about the giveaway.
However, you’ll likely find it difficult to integrate different platforms and marketing tools. And you won’t get in-depth analytics to help you get insights to improve your next giveaway.
And if you’re a small business or a new one that wants to create rapid growth, investing in a giveaway plugin is the right choice to make since it can make the whole process seamless.
Set goals for your giveaway
To get the best results from your giveaway, it’s critical that you set goals before you launch it. Your goal can be to grow your social media following, to get more sales, to boost your brand awareness, or to get user-generated content.
It’s when you have a clear goal that you can focus on the design and implementation of your giveaway campaign correctly.
Your goal determines your giveaway appearance and functionality
You can get multiple positive results from your giveaway. For example, if you set up a giveaway to grow your following, you’ll automatically increase your brand recall and awareness. However, don’t lose focus by trying to meet several goals at once. Your message will get diluted and you won’t know what outcomes to measure.
Choose a great giveaway prize
Using the right goals and tools and carrying out other functions related to your giveaway form the nuts and bolts of this entire marketing campaign.
But for your customers, the main point of attraction is the giveaway prize itself. So, you should keep your audience’s interests foremost in mind and pick the right type of giveaway.
Start by learning about your audience. What age group do they belong to? What kind of professions are they in? What do people in your industry value?
If your audience consists of B2B customers, then generic prizes that appeal to direct consumers won’t appeal to them. Likewise, gifts that appeal to older, career-oriented professionals won’t be attractive to young graduates. Know your audience better to choose the right giveaway for them. And here are some giveaway prize ideas that you can use for inspiration:
- Cash awards Gift cards to popular retail outlets and online stores
- Free products from your catalog
- A gift certificate for a service like a spa experience
- Lifetime access to a tool Free digital downloads like books, videos, online courses, and others
Your giveaway prize will be the main draw of your campaign. And it’s the lynchpin that drives excitement and other emotions that make it more likely your campaign will go viral as more and more people engage with your campaign.
Create contest rules and entry methods
The entry methods you make available for your users matter very much because they will help you achieve your specific goals.
Creating an entry method where users need to sign up for your newsletter will help you grow your email list. Adding social media buttons as means of participation will grow your following online.
You also need to include rules or conditions that will give your audience information on how to participate in the contest and what to expect. When adding contest rules, let people know about:
- The contest’s start and end dates
- Participant restrictions like the minimum age, location, number of entries a person can use, and other details
- What the entry methods are
- When the user will be picked and how you’ll contact them
By adding information like this to your giveaway, you’ll let people know what to do and what to expect. It will create clarity and avoid confusion and disputes in the future.
Promote your giveaway
As naturally engaging as giveaways are, you still need to let your audience know about it by promoting your giveaway.
Send an email with contest details to your subscribers. Create social media posts with hashtags. And if you can, collaborate with other bloggers, brands, and influencers to share your giveaway online.
The more buzz you create, the better your chances are that your giveaway contest gets attention. And with enough participation and engagement from your viewers, it’ll take off on its own.
Carry out post-giveaway marketing
Once your giveaway is over, you can still generate a buzz by picking a contest winner and celebrating their win on different channels.
Ask your contest winner to share their win by posting prize images and their experience on social media.
You can also thank your other participants with an email. But how about creating a surprise and giving the participants who didn’t win a surprise gift like a downloadable file or online tool?
At the end of your giveaway, you should have achieved your marketing goal, whether it was to get more email subscribers, more traffic, or more social media followers.
Stay in touch with your new audience by communicating with them using emails and social media. And over time, you should be able to drive conversions with careful nurturing.
Make sure you analyze your results by using analytics and reports from your giveaway. By tracking the results of your giveaway, you can improve your next campaign and carry out experiments to see what works.
Conclusion
Giveaways engage your audience and create excitement and other emotions around your campaign. And you can leverage this buzz to grow your business by gaining more followers and newsletter subscribers.
This type of marketing campaign is especially useful for new and small businesses that want to grow their online presence fast. If you’re looking for explosive growth, then a giveaway contest is something that you should try.