Contests and giveaways have long been used to promote products and services. They are great for attracting a lot of users and potential customers, especially when the giveaway itself is highly targeted. Giveaways are also relatively affordable when used as part of a marketing campaign, plus you can track the results of your giveaway campaigns rather easily.
Running a giveaway alone isn’t enough. To really maximize the impact of giveaways and using them as a marketing tool, you need to plan and execute the campaign correctly. There are some tips and tricks from experts who have been running giveaways for multiple products and brands, and we are going to discuss them in this article.
Nail the Planning
Planning your giveaway correctly is important. It is always tempting to run a giveaway campaign to get a sudden boost of traffic or exposure; it’s okay to do a giveaway for these short-term objectives too. However, you can benefit from an even bigger impact by planning the campaign better.
Start by determining the target of the campaign. Understand how that target market segment sees giveaways and how they will react to your own giveaway campaign. Not all market segments will automatically engage your giveaway campaign, which is why understanding your target is important.
With the insights you have gathered, work on a communications campaign around the giveaway itself. How should you promote the giveaway? Will you be attracting the right crowds by promoting via Twitter and Facebook?
The further you go in the planning stage, the more refined your campaign will be. Executing a well-planned campaign and hitting the objectives set in the beginning are so much easier when you have the right data and a clear plan in mind.
Set Your Objectives
Knowing the objectives for giving away your products and services is another thing you need to know. Defining a clear set of objectives is not only important but also highly influential in the way you design and execute your campaign.
There are many objectives that can be achieved through giveaways. You can aim to simply promote your products and services to more users. Giveaways allow new users to try your products directly. You will also be generating a lot of buzz around the giveaways, as well as the products you are giving away.
Aim for more exposure. As you promote the giveaways to more audience segments, you expand your reach exponentially while promoting your products and services at the same time. Make sure you also integrate branding into the campaign to further boost the impact.
Decide on Prizes
Don’t forget that the items you give away to winners and lucky users matter just as much as the campaign itself. Any good organizer will tell you that different prizes have different impacts on the market segments you target.
A good way to attract actual customers is by giving away prizes that complement your own products. If you are a company that sells hot tub spa and bath aromatherapy oils, for example, running a campaign that gives away hot tubs to lucky users is a great way to promote your products.
You can choose the most popular hot tubs on the market with the help of review sites like Hot Tub Advice. Popular hot tubs attract the best participants, so you know the campaign will be popular. Add a touch of marketing to the campaign, and you are all set.
Winners of the giveaway can then use your products whenever they use the hot tubs you gave away. Be sure to include an assortment of the hot tub aromatherapy oils you sell when delivering the prizes to lucky winners so that they can enjoy a first-hand experience too.
Build Excitement
This next tip is pretty straightforward: build excitement. Don’t just announce the giveaway when it starts. Create a buzz around the fact that you will be giving away big and exciting prizes in the near future. Have people follow your social media accounts to get more info.
By the time you start the campaign, you already have a lot of excited users ready to engage with the campaign itself. You also have more chances of turning the giveaway into an online sensation.
Go Viral
There is no actual recipe for going viral. You can’t simply follow a set of rules and have thousands of people entering your giveaway. There are, however, certain things you can do to increase the chances of your giveaway campaign going viral.
One of the things you can do to start is rewarding social sharing. Depending on the way you execute your giveaway, you can allow participants to earn more entries by sharing your giveaway on their social media pages.
Another thing you can do is formulate the content around your giveaway to be just as shareable. You can work with social media influencers to get the words out, and then tailor the content so that more of their followers are encouraged to share the campaign further.
Lastly, make the giveaway interesting. Using the previous example, giving away portable hot tubs is the perfect campaign. The prizes are substantial, and they complement your products. The prizes alone can turn the campaign into an online sensation.
Follow Through
Many giveaways and contests end when the campaigns end. They end with winners receiving their prizes. Many brands actually move on to the next giveaway as soon as the previous one is over. This may seem like a great thing to do, but it isn’t always the best approach to take.
You want to follow up on the winners and capture their experiences with both the giveaway itself and the prizes they won. Add more actions to the terms of your giveaway so that you can generate content after the giveaway is over too.
For more professional content, send a team of creators or videographers and have the winners share their excitement with the rest of the world. You are not only validating the giveaway, but also producing more content for future giveaways.
The next time you run another giveaway or other marketing campaigns, use stories from past winners to get people excited. You’ll be surprised by how many more people pay attention to the next giveaways you run when they see past winners and the prizes they received.
