You’ve seen other businesses do it, and you’re itching for some engagement, so is it time to try a giveaway? As a marketing strategy, giveaways can be a fun and successful way to promote your business. Executed properly, they can even help you target the right customers for your business and grow your email list. But far too often they fall flat and can tarnish your brand for potential shoppers.
We’ve learned a thing or two about effective marketing strategies, including how to do a giveaway correctly to reach customers, encourage entries, and capitalize on the exposure. If you’re considering this type of marketing, we can help you get it right with these tips.
How to Run an Effective Giveaway
- Brand First. Your company needs a solid branding strategy and reliable social media foundations. We don’t mean thousands of followers; we just mean a well-constructed website and social media platforms that clearly feature your information. Clicking through to a site that won’t load or an Instagram account with only two posts will deter participants.
- Target, Target, Target! It can be tempting to get the maximum number of entrants or go for mass appeal with the prize and barrier of entry. Instead, you need to think about who you want to target. Getting hundreds of people signing up, looking for freebies, and never actually learning about your brand won’t help you in the long run, but attracting people who are genuinely interested in your products or services can create a serious conversion, even if fewer people enter. Offer a prize that your ideal customers would love to win, not just a generic prize like an iPhone or cash.
- Promote Well. Getting a daily email about an ongoing contest is going to annoy customers and participants, and running a large number of paid ads may decrease your ROI. Find the right balance of promoting your giveaway in your normal channels (email, Facebook, on your website) and encouraging your entrants to share for more entries.
- Follow Up. Many businesses make the mistake of announcing winners publicly, but only contacting the winner. Months later, they may run an email campaign with their new list additions only to find that those individuals have forgotten about the giveaway (and your business) and assume it’s spam. Capitalize on the entries by emailing everyone who enters to let them know the giveaway has ended, which builds trust, and consider offering a gift or discount that they can use immediately.
- Track. Carefully measuring the data is the best way to see if a giveaway works for your business. Track the overall cost of your involvement and the increase in traffic to your website, overall clicks, engagement on social media channels, and quality leads added to your email list. We encourage a separate landing page for the contest to determine exactly how much traffic you can attribute to your giveaway.
The Bottom Line
When done right, giveaways can help you build an email list of interested and quality leads, increase your brand awareness, and establish a generous and trustworthy image. It takes careful planning, designing your giveaway around your ideal customers, and finding ways to track metrics. With the help of our marketing experts at REVITY, we can create a marketing strategy that fits your business, from giveaways to the email leads you gathered.
