Every business, large or small, can struggle to generate leads. Even with digital marketing tools and social media platforms, marketing tactics can easily consume a lot of time and money.
Giveaways are an excellent, cost-efficient way to drive leads to your business. But, overdoing any marketing strategy can lose value.
Every strategy needs to have the right mix of tactics to keep your potential leads engaged.
Keep reading to learn:
- How to run a raffle
- How to choose a giveaway frequency that supports your strategy
The Benefits of Running a Giveaway
When it comes to getting the best return on your investment, online giveaways are among the most effective marketing tactics you can use without eating up your entire budget.
The continued rise of social media usage means that your business has the potential to reach more leads than ever before come giveaway time.
If you’re considering using a giveaway promotion as part of your online marketing strategy, here are some of the top benefits it can provide:
- Build community. Giveaways encourage engagement and discussion from your social followers. Not only will your posts get a boost from the interaction, but you can also learn valuable information about your customer base if you create the right setup.
- Increase brand awareness. You have to find the right incentive to get people to share content. Since giveaways are incentive-based posts, they can result in higher sharing and overall awareness than traditional promotional campaigns.
- Save money. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a giveaway, especially if you use your product as a prize. And, unlike other tactics, it’s easier to predict how much you’ll spend on a giveaway.
- Reward your customers. Marketing isn’t all about finding new consumers. It can be much more profitable to show appreciation to your loyal customers. Giveaways are an excellent way to reward those who already support your business.
- Generate leads. The best part of giveaways is that they are beneficial for new leads and existing customers. When you provide follow and share incentives, you can increase your brand’s reach and create a new list of potential leads.
Contests and giveaways can help you grow your business. So, what steps should you take when giveaway time arrives?
Follow this simple process to get the most out of your giveaway promotions.
How to Do a Giveaway
- Set a Goal
- Choose a Platform
- Choose a Prize
- Set the Rules
- Promote Your Contest Announcement
- Select a Winner
- Track Results
1. Set a Goal
How can you measure success if you don’t know what success looks like? Every good marketing campaign starts with a goal.
Setting your goals and objectives at the beginning of a campaign makes it easier to make decisions later.
Although giveaways can benefit your business in several ways, it’s best to focus on one primary goal for each campaign. However, you can measure one or two secondary goals as well.
Here are some examples of goals to consider during a giveaway time:
- Generate X leads (email signups, social followers)
- Increase followers/subscribers by X%
- X% increase in website traffic
- Generate X posts of user-generated content
- Increase post engagement by X% (shares, likes, comments)
Your primary objective should be quantitative. Don’t just set a goal for generating leads. Pick a number or percentage increase to shoot for.
Most importantly, make sure you choose a platform that empowers you to measure your goal.
2. Choose a Platform
After you have created a measurable goal for your campaign, it’s time to choose the social media platforms where you’ll accept entries. The best part is that you don’t need to choose only one platform.
However, keep in mind that you want to be able to handle all of the entries. So, limit entry platforms to a number you can manage.
We recommend always including the platform where you have the highest following or most engaged audience.
3. Choose a Prize
Understanding your goal from step one can help you choose the best prize for your giveaway.
But, no matter what, your giveaway prize needs to meet the following criteria:
- It has to be sizable enough that people will take action.
- It has to appeal to your target audience.
Using your products (either best sellers or new releases) can help promote your offerings and reduce your giveaway cost.
Take some time to research your target audience for the campaign and learn which of your products is most appealing to them.
4. Set the Rules
Creating the right set of rules is one of the essential parts of a giveaway. When your giveaway time comes around, you want rules that support your goals.
For example, if your goal is to increase engagement, your rules should require participants to like, comment, or share posts.
Alternatively, if you want to increase your follower base, then you might require people to follow your account for entry.
Either way, keep your main rules simple. Choose no more than three actions to qualify for entry. If you have a larger prize, then you can use add-on rules that result in multiple entries.
You also need to set the length of the giveaway by creating a deadline for entry. You want to develop a sense of urgency and give enough time for your giveaway to collect entries.
For the majority of social media platforms, 48 hours is a recommended giveaway time. However, for larger prizes, you can extend your entry period for up to two weeks.
And finally, make sure to publish official contest giveaway rules and adhere to the legal requirements for giveaways and sweepstakes.
5. Promote Your Contest Announcement
Now that it’s giveaway time, you need to let your followers and potential leads know about your promotion.
To run a more cost-effective campaign, you can simply share your giveaway on all of your social platforms and to your email subscriber list.
You can also publish your giveaway on your website using tools like the Simple Giveaways WordPress plugin.
Remember, when promoting, don’t limit yourself to the entry platform. Even if your giveaway only accepts entries on Instagram, you can link to the giveaway post on other social media channels.
Since social platforms are regularly updated with new posts, we recommend creating multiple posts for your contest announcement schedule to ensure maximum exposure and engagement.
6. Select a Winner
Once you have captured all of your entries, it’s time to select a winner (or winners). It’s important to choose your winner promptly.
Ideally, you should select and share your winner within 24 to 48 hours of your giveaway time ending.
You can use free tools like Random.org to select a winner randomly.
Or, if you create your giveaway using a dedicated tool like Simple Giveaways, you just need to tell the software how you want to choose a winner.
7. Track Results
After you’ve run your giveaway and announced the winner, you can track the results of your promotion.
Compare your results to the goal you set in step one and see how well you measured up.
If you met your goal, look at the actions you took and use them for later promotions.
If you didn’t meet your goal, work back, and see where you can improve. Let your giveaway’s data tell you where you have opportunities to create better results next time.
Although you want to focus on your primary goal, pay attention to all of the data you collected during your giveaway. You just might uncover a new goal for your next giveaway.
How to Run a Raffle: Choosing Frequency
If giveaways are so useful, why don’t businesses run them all the time?
It’s simple. Giveaways are effective because they’re not run all the time. It’s their scarcity that creates a sense of urgency and increases engagement.
Additionally, giveaways are just one part of a marketing strategy. They are excellent ways to reward existing customers or generate new leads. But, after they’re over, you need new tactics to nurture your newfound leads.
Here are some factors to consider when choosing the frequency of your giveaways:
- Competition. Look at other brands for ideas on how to run a raffle, and see what frequency works for them. Depending on your industry, you might find that there are standard frequencies for giveaways and social contests.
- Size of the prize. You don’t want to give away big prizes continually. This might diminish the value of your product in a customer’s eyes. You also have to be able to fit giveaway prizes into your total marketing budget. In general, you can run more frequent giveaways if you’re promoting smaller prizes and vice versa.
- Your customer journey length. Giveaways generate leads, but then you need time to convert them. So, make sure that you give yourself enough time to nurture and convert existing leads before running another giveaway promotion.
As a general rule, don’t run more giveaways than you can handle. Making it an excellent experience for your participants should be a top priority.
Final Thoughts: How to Run a Raffle – Finding the Right Frequency
Some marketing tactics are more of an art than an exact science, which is true for giveaways. Experiment with your prizes, rules, and frequency to find the right balance for your business.
Let your data and results tell you when something’s working and when it’s not. To learn more about tools to make your life easier when giveaway time rolls around, explore Simple Giveaways for WordPress.
