Are you currently using giveaways to grow your business? If not, you’re missing out on a significant opportunity to enhance brand awareness, increase engagement, and skyrocket sales.
A whopping 3.96 billion people use social media, so that means there are plenty of ways to engage with your audience using online contests on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Consumers are interested in engaging with brands more than ever before. Creating a powerful, interactive giveaway is an excellent way to turn visitors into followers and followers into customers.
Today, we will go over some of the hidden ways you can get more value from your giveaway. The tips provided today are all tried and true strategies you can use to encourage more people to participate in your event.
Let’s get started!
Submit Your Contest to Giveaway Directories
One clever way to get more value from your giveaway is to submit it to directories across the internet. There are hundreds of sites that allow businesses to submit their contest. Some of these sites get tens of thousands of clicks every month.
Here’s the thing; this strategy is effective for boosting your brand awareness. You could see a massive influx of new traffic after sending your contest to one or more directories. If you’re looking for a way to break your company into a large market, this is an excellent starting point.
On the other hand, if your company is mature and looking for targeted leads, you may want to avoid this step.
Popular giveaway directories include:
-ThePrizeFinder
-SlickDeals
-AnyLuckyDay
-Contest-specific channels on Reddit
Seek out these websites and submit your giveaway. You may be surprised by the results.
Allow Multiple Actions for More Chances to Win
Now, let’s talk about a hidden way to get more value from your contest that everyone can use. We are all familiar with traditional raffles where a person takes a ticket and wins if their number is drawn. Online giveaways work similarly, but you have a little more flexibility when it comes to determining your contest rules.
Instead of just handing someone a ticket, you can encourage them to take multiple actions for more chances to win. For instance, if your goal is to grow your subscriber count, you may want to ask participants to subscribe to your email list for an extra entry.
If you want to enhance brand awareness and sales, you may want to also ask users to share your giveaway with friends and family. When you consider that 59% of people use social media for shopping inspiration, it’s easy to see how this strategy can get more eyes on your brand.
The rules you choose for your event will depend on your marketing goals and customer personas. Think carefully about what you hope to achieve with your online contest and include multiple entry rules that will bring you one step closer to your goals.
Create a Giveaway Landing Page
You can dramatically improve event participation by creating a giveaway landing page on your website. Essentially, a giveaway landing page is like many other landing pages. It’s a standalone part of your site that focuses on a specific offer, in this case, your contest.
Your objective is to create a compelling page that encourages visitors to go to your social media channel and participate in your giveaway. Depending on the tools you use, some users can enter directly from your website.
Use all of the marketing tips you’ve learned to build and customize your landing page. You’ll want to include plenty of details about the prize, including why users should want to win. When you create compelling copy that makes users want your prize, you’re more likely to see event participation.
We also like including videos on our giveaway landing pages. After reviewing our data and other studies, it’s clear that landing pages with videos get 80% more conversions than pages with text and images.
This addition to your website will help you reach people who visit your site but don’t follow you on social media. In a way, these pages help connect all of your marketing channels and make it easy to reach your leads, regardless of where they spend their time.
Encourage User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is an excellent way to build trust with your subscribers and get more people to participate in your raffle. Simply put, UGC is any type of content created by a user for your company. Common examples include reviews, product demonstrations, or public shout-outs thanking your company.
Research shows that 85% of consumers trust UGC more than brand marketing. This is because when consumers see content made by other people, it builds social proof. Social proof in marketing is the trend that consumers will take action when they see other people endorsing a product or company.
When you’re creating rules for your giveaway, you could include an option for users to submit content for a chance to enter. For instance, we like asking our existing customers to tell other new subscribers their favorite thing about our brand for an additional chance to win our latest product. This strategy has proven effective at maintaining relationships with existing customers while building trust with new followers.
Reach Out to Everyone Who Participated
Finally, you can add more value to your giveaway by reaching out to everyone who participated at the end of the event. We establish rules where users can subscribe for a chance to enter. Once we choose the winners, we send out an email to everyone who didn’t win. In the message, we include a special limited-time promotion and some of our best content.
We’ve used this strategy to skyrocket sales after an event. When participants find that they didn’t win, they may still take you up on your offer because they are genuinely interested in your product or service.
When you’re sending out these emails, don’t forget to include elements of personalization. Believe it or not, personalized emails see 26% more opens when compared to non-segmented messages. You could, for example, create an email subject line that says, “Sorry you didn’t win! Here’s something for being a good sport!” Many users will click-through because they will remember that they entered your contest and are curious about what you want to give them for participating.
Final Thoughts
Online giveaways will remain a powerful growth tool for businesses across all industries. The tips offered here today will help you get more value from your contests. We want to stress the importance of testing your various strategies and asking people for feedback at the end of each event.
If you continuously improve and find new ways to improve your online contests, you will see a significant boost in traffic, sales, and brand engagement.
