Growing your business nowadays can seem like a lot of work and usually, it is. In many cases, it takes more than a couple of months to speed up your business, to improve your reach and to generate more leads.
Running a contest or promotional giveaway is a great way to connect with your customers but, while it may sound simple, there are a few things you should take into consideration if you want to create actual brand awareness and gain profit for your company.
Giveaway is one of the most popular tactics of social media marketing and a strategy that can instantly create buzz around your brand. But, if you don’t have a good plan behind it, it could easily turn into a failed marketing attempt. So, let’s take a look at what you should take into consideration before starting your own social media giveaway.
1. Have a Plan
Before you start to plan your social media giveaway, make sure you know exactly what your goal is. Figure out why you want to run a particular giveaway and what it will bring to your company. You should base your marketing campaign on your campaign objectives, some of which are:
- Building your audience,
- Product promotion,
- Growing your Email list or
- Boosting your reach on a particular product.
With the correct plan, you can even use the right partnerships to expand your reach.
2. Pick a social media platform
If you’re regularly not maintaining a strong presence on social media platforms, do you even have a company?
Today, for almost any business, your social media identity is quite essential. But, since there is more than one, you should take into consideration that not all platforms are created equal nor will they give the same results.
Based on your targeted audience and your niche, certain social media platforms will definitely work for your business much better than the other. So, figure out which platform your audience uses the most and – go for it!
For example, more than 50% of people who are active on Twitter are more likely to be the first to buy new products. Check our guide on running a Twitter Giveaway.
3. Decide on the prize
When you’re choosing the prize for your giveaway contest, you need to make sure that the prize will be appealing to your targeted audience and that people will actually participate to win. Keep in mind that the prize could be literally anything; from loyalty points to actual product.
However, I strongly suggest that the chosen prize is somehow related to your products or services so you can give your participants a taste of your brand and a reason to actually become your regular customers.
Also, make sure that the prize is proportional to the effort participants have to put in for your giveaway; for example, if participants have to like or share your post to enter the giveaway, it’s perfectly fine to offer a prize with sample products. But if you want your participants to take a picture or to create something, you should definitely raise the stakes.
Check out our guide on rocking giveaway prize ideas to help you with coming up with what you’re going to offer in your Giveaways.
4. Define the rules / Know the rules
Now that you’ve made some major decision about your next giveaway, it’s time to define the rules. It may sound pretty simple and obvious, but you would be surprised how often people make this mistake.
Here are some rules you need to define very transparently for your participants:
- Deadline,
- Eligibility (age, location, etc.),
- Judging criteria,
- Odds of winning,
- Privacy laws regarding the winner identity.
Last thing you want is to create any confusion while running a giveaway so it’s equally important for you to know the rules you don’t get to choose or create yourself (general social media platform rules etc.).
If you’re running a contest on a specific platform, make sure you’re also compliant with their rules and regulations. Also, depending on your location, rules may vary from country to country so it’s definitely helpful to know all the regulations.
We have also written an article on Must-Know Legal Contest Rules For Running an Online Giveaway that is a recommended read if you are not familiar yet with legal online contest rules.
5. Pick the right tools
It’s easy to get lost in lots of entries once your social media giveaway goes live. But, don’t worry because there are a lot of tracking tools that will make your job a lot easier.
For example, you can use Rafflecopter or VYPER as a tool which will allow you to easily track your tags, hashtags or photos and which will keep you updated about the new entries on your post.
Alternatively, if you use WordPress, you can save (and track) your contest on your web using the Simple Giveaways plugin.
Once you have your subscribers, do you have a plan what to do with them next? Read about some of the ideas on how you can engage with your new followers even more.
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
