Contest Giveaway Ideas
If there is one word to answer all the questions you might have about contest giveaways, that word is “numbers.” Whether you are growing a fanbase or building links to your website, your objective will always be related to engaging as many people as possible. In other words, by setting up a campaign with giveaways, you basically trade a prize for an interaction with your brand.
For years, social media platforms have been introducing tools that simplify the management of contest giveaways. With Facebook’s “promotions,” “Facebook Live,” and Twitter hashtags, engaging users in giveaways has become a piece of cake. Obviously, due to ever-changing advertising regulations and data protection concerns, the landscape of contests has also changed. So, where do we stand now, and what social media giveaway ideas can provide the best value to your business today? Let’s start from the beginning.
What is a contest giveaway?
In contrast to online competitions where entrants are judged based on some qualitative indicators, a giveaway is a purely quantitative promotion activity. Basically, it’s a prize drawing focused on attracting as many entrants as possible in which winners are chosen randomly. Contest giveaways are characterised by a low barrier of entry and usually involve prizes tied back to a business. These two rules are pretty important because the easier it is to enter, the better engagement you will generate. At the same time, high-level engagement is worthless if entrants stop interacting with your business after a contest ends. This means that if your business goal is to sell cell phones, offering cups as a giveaway prize is probably not a good idea, unless they are branded cups.
Reasons to use contest giveaways
According to Hubspot, industries like entertainment, technology, and music view social media contests as a crucial part of their marketing strategies. Here are some reasons why strong social media contest giveaway ideas succeed across diverse industries:
- Traffic boost. Again, numbers are an important part of the game. Even though giveaways often bring your website only temporary traffic spikes, there might be people among those contest hunters who will find your product interesting. Thus, traffic growth is a good engagement booster that can potentially bring you new leads.
- Virality. According to a YouGov study, 36% of American millennials love going viral on social media. In other words, if your giveaway appeals to a millennial audience, they are very likely to share it on their timelines and with friends. Winner announcements can be particularly buzzy, so if you want to add some trustworthiness to your company page and gain exposure for your brand, contest giveaways can help you reach that goal.
- Ease. In contrast to paid ads and blogging, running contest giveaways is a simple and cost-effective promotion activity. In fact, to make it work, you should only need to invest some time into the development of a giveaway idea and its promotion. In terms of cost spending, it’s pretty much limited to a contest prize.
The best contest giveaway ideas for you
Even though the mechanism of running most giveaways is basically the same, there are a number of strategies you can experiment with. Here are three social media giveaway contest ideas that perfectly resonate with the business goals of organising companies:
- Regular giveaway campaigns on Facebook. You can reap benefits from contest giveaways by turning them into regular marketing activities. The main benefit of this approach is to build an audience that is constantly looking forward to engaging with your brand. Here’s an example of a perfect scheduled giveaway campaign from Super Jeweler:
What’s good?
- The entry method is a no-brainer. Like, share, and comment is the standard entry combination for building contest giveaway engagement. By using it, the company ensures there will be no difficulties for people wanting to get involved.
- On-brand prize. The goal of a jewelry shop is selling jewelry. Therefore, offering its products as giveaways is an obvious benefit.
- Link to past campaigns. One more important thing about contest giveaways is trustworthiness. While your existing clients won’t need to be assured that they will actually receive their prize, it might be an issue for your newer audience. SuperJeweler solved this problem by linking their contest giveaways to a page where past winners are featured.
- Educational contest giveaways. Especially for those trying to build their personal brands, educational giveaways that offer expertise can be a valuable asset. The main goal of running such campaigns is to collect a solid email list. The visionary behind Aspire Business, Ashlie Sharie, reaches out to potential clients by running a giveaway contest with a free strategy session as the main prize.
What’s good?
- Targeted approach. Obviously, if you’re not interested in a business strategy, you won’t bother to get involved. In this way, the organiser focuses only on users who can potentially develop into customers.
- Application form. To enter the contest giveaway, you have to fill out a form where you indicate your email address and explain your motivation in terms of winning a strategy session. Again, this contest approach is all about targeted marketing.
- Clear goal. The “Why?” statement is very important in this particular case, as it clarifies the purpose behind the contest. The organisers state that a winner will receive the same value as company clients who pay for it, which is pretty motivating.
- Cross-promotion contest giveaway. One of the buzziest giveaway techniques used on Instagram these days is profile linking. In exchange for a prize, entrants are asked to follow various other pages. As a result, several partnering profiles generate traffic from one contest giveaway.
What’s good?
- Catchy visual. The main prize you can win in this contest is a 4-day entry ticket to Disneyland; the benefit of this giveaway post is that users can recognise the value offer at first glance.
- Clear entry instructions. If your first glance relates to the prize you can win, your second glance should fall on the entry conditions. This is a great strategy to get people engaged without making them read lengthy pieces of text.
Conclusion
The landscape of giveaway ideas for contests is very diverse. The ways to engage people through giveaways will differ according to platform, the type of prize, entry mechanisms, and many more factors. No matter which road you choose, make sure your giveaway idea resonates with the business goals you are pursuing! Pick our contest management system.