How to Run a Giveaway

run a giveaway

Every brand wants its products and services to receive significant attention. Although becoming viral is the goal, it’s only sometimes possible, especially if your industry has great competition. 

Giveaways are ideal for promoting your goods, reaching a wider audience, and offering customers fun activities. This article will guide you step-by-step through the entire process, from how to run a viral giveaway to which tool to use to succeed with this tactic.

How to run a viral giveaway

Even if you calculate the precise share-to-impression ratios or entrant-to-referral ratios, you will only reach those numbers if people want your prize. The main elements that help a contest become popular are:

Answer the “What’s in it for me?”

Start by addressing the “what’s in it for them?” to get people’s attention and make your contest more viral. Your strategy for encouraging individuals to enter involves clearly stating the prize that they will have a chance to win.

Offer a prize that will appeal to your audience and be impossible to resist. You can entice unqualified leads into entering by offering some generic incentives. However, if you give your audience something they genuinely want, chances are they’ll be more inclined to enter and spread the word about the giveaway to their friends.

Create a dedicated email campaign

It’s crucial to keep your participants up to their toes all the time to increase the chances of higher reach. Because of this, you should incorporate engagement emails into your campaign to guide them to take the next step.

Send updates to pique their interest in the prizes and encourage them to refer friends to get additional entries in the giveaway.

Here is an email sequence you could send:

  • The contest is halfway over; keep going.
  • There are just 5 days left; keep making referrals to raise your chances of winning the ultimate prize.
  • There are just 24 hours left, the last chance to enter and win!
  • There is a new bonus action introduced for action-takers.
  • For the next 48 hours, earn twice as many referral points.
  • Your next milestone reward is just 50 points away.

Having a similar approach will help you spread the word about the giveaway, and also you will help participants engage with your brand with various actions.

To make your life easier, you can always use an affordable email marketing service to put this challenging task on autopilot and concentrate on the other sections below.

Leverage scarcity

Many people have their mobile gadgets almost glued to their faces. On topics that interest us, there is a persistent “fear of missing out” (FOMO). And it’s disappointing to miss the opportunity to participate in a great contest or giveaway.

We want to use this psychology trick in our contests and giveaways. How?

  1. By stating the start and end dates of the competition explicitly. Even better, use a contest countdown timer to provide an additional visual cue for the contest’s end.
  2. Informing participants of the number of prizes being awarded or whether sharing increases their chances of winning.

Make it clear to your audience that there is a good chance they will win, but they had better enter quickly.

Transform the giveaway into a game

Even if a big prize might be enough to entice participants, gamification can make your contest more interesting and enjoyable. 

People feel more involved if you ask them to contribute by submitting a photo of themselves using your product or a testimonial video. Additionally, it encourages them to participate actively and promote your contest.

You’ll learn more about your audience and how your customers are utilizing your product or service by structuring your contest his way. 

Remember that not all competitions will benefit from gamification. Some contests perform better with a straightforward, one-step sign-up approach. 

In general, finding a good balance requires some experimentation with competition and depends on your understanding of your market.

Combine the giveaway with influencers

To increase reach and reputation in the current environment of intense competition, you need people to spread the word about you. Here is when something becomes truly viral.

Something as simple as adding social media sharing buttons to the entry and confirmation pages makes your contest go viral. The sharing message should ideally be personalized and extremely simple to distribute.

Building trust with your audience requires taking the time to identify and reward those providing you with more significant traffic volumes. Let them know how grateful you are that they came and shared. 

The success of your giveaway depends on influencers, so take some time to connect with them on LinkedIn and give them the incentive to share your giveaway with their audiences. Influencer marketing is an excellent tactic to boost your giveaway and help new audiences find your brand.

3 benefits of running a giveaway

Running an online giveaway on social media has many advantages, which we’ll go through one by one below.

1. Increase traffic and get qualified customers

When we discuss the benefits of hosting a giveaway on your social networks, this advantage is undoubtedly the first to come to mind. And the reason for that is that everyone wants to see their company’s sales increase.

Online giveaways are a simple, quick, and affordable way to increase brand awareness, boost website traffic and sales, and attract new users to your products or services.

This is because you selflessly provide something free to those who engage with your post, follow you on social media, or subscribe to your newsletter.

2. Spread the word about your brand

What could be better for your company’s reputation than a free giveaway where each participant has an equal chance of winning based on their level of engagement? 

Giving away a service or product creates a highly positive impression of your brand; therefore, you should take advantage of this. Many big brands worldwide use this tactic to engage with their audience and spread the word about their message.

3. Understand your target audience 

You may use a survey or several lead magnets with forms to find out your target audience, their preferences, and their needs when you want more than just traffic or visits to your page. 

Additionally, you may build an email list to give your customers promotions, updates, or offers as part of your digital marketing strategy. This knowledge is priceless to increase a solid customer base or brand exposure among new potential customers.

How to create a successful giveaway?

Ready to launch your first giveaway? This section will explain how to set up your first giveaway, give you an overview of some features, and offer advice on maximizing engagement with your campaigns.

Choose a platform to run the contest

Among other giveaway tools, Woorise is one of the top ones. Giveaways are an excellent method to engage your audience and expand your brand’s reach among consumers. Woorise provides every tool you need to create attractive and effective giveaways, whether you’re a blogger, an eCommerce brand, an agency, a marketing manager, or a publisher.

Woorise dashboard

 

Learn the main types of giveaways and set goals

With Woorise, there are many options for giveaways and contests. You can start with a basic or an Instagram giveaway, and as you become more experienced with the platform, you can create more sophisticated ones.

Woorise simple giveaway template example
Woorise giveaway and contest templates

When you understand which giveaway better suits your needs, it’s time to set your goals and expectations. You may need to attract new followers or drive qualified leads for your sales funnel.

Every business is different; thus, customizing a giveaway for your needs is essential to create successful campaigns. 

Create the giveaway

Starting with an optimized template, you can customize it to fit your brand’s personality and aesthetics. Leverage the drag & drop campaign and form builder; anyone can accomplish it in a few clicks without coding or technical background.

Woorise dashboard giveaway templates preview

Start by picking a campaign from the Woorise dashboard menu. Then, select a template to use by selecting the Create option. You are directed to the campaign’s edit page once you add a new giveaway. 

You can edit your campaign from this screen, check the changes before saving them, or save it to finish later. Another excellent feature is the preview feature, where you can see your campaign on various screens like mobile and desktop.

Woorise dashboard block editor Instagram giveaway

You can choose a catchy and appealing name, such as “Moosend Giveaway: Enter to win a Pro Subscription.” When sharing the campaign, you also have the choice to change the headline that appears on the Share page.

By default, the URL for your landing page is determined by the title. You can always use the right sidebar to customize everything if you need to change that to something more memorable.

Woorise dashboard campaign url customization

Next, you can use blocks to update the current content or add new stuff, including images, text, videos, and more. To add a new block, click on the plus sign in the position where you want it or in the top left corner. Here you can use any graphic design trends you like and adjust them to the template. 

Set a timeframe and incentivize participants

Set the campaign’s expiration date and the content displayed after the campaign. A highly suggested feature for boosting sharing and engagement in your campaign is viral share.

woorise viral share reward users with bonus entries

A unique URL sent to a user who entered your campaign is used to track bonus entries. After entering, they receive a URL they can copy or share using the buttons. 

Woorise viral share settings

Apart from this referral marketing tactic, you can expand your audience by using various social actions already built in and provide Bonus Entries to users that complete them.

The best part? You can create sophisticated combinations by using conditional logic.

Woorise Instagram Giveaway template

Publish and notify the winners

Send personalized emails to yourself, participants, or anybody else, or automatically receive a submission summary in your mailbox. After a user fills out your form, use conditional logic to automatically send personalized follow-up email notifications.

Apart from viral share, you can expand your audience by using various social actions already built in and providing Bonus Entries to users that complete them.

The takeaway

With this article you have everything you need to create your next giveaway. Whether you are searching for the right giveaway tool or tips on how to create virality, this is the blueprint you must have in your arsenal.

Remember to set goals with every giveaway you set up, you choose the right tools and make your best to drive traffic to your campaign. You audience will love this initiative so pay some time to think of an excellent prize and see these qualified leads coming your way.

Until the next one, keep creating more giveaways.

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