An online giveaway is a digital marketing strategy to promote products or brands. The idea is to offer a prize to people who sign up and for luck to determine the winner. This, which may seem like a game, is an excellent way to grow your audience and increase the sales of your business.
In this article we are going to cover everything related to how to run an online giveaway: the steps to plan it, how it differs from other actions such as contests or promotions, and 10 tips to make your free online giveaway a success.
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Before entering fully into the central theme that brings us together, online sweepstakes, we want to differentiate this term from two others that are similar or point to marketing actions with similar objectives: contests and promotions.
Let’s see the characteristics of each one and how you can use them to boost your business:
- An online sweepstakes involves a small participation of the audience. For example, you ask people to enter an email address in exchange for participating in a raffle for a product of your brand.
- In a contest people interact more because they compete. There are simple contests, like asking users to choose the name of a new product, and more complex ones, like encouraging users to upload a photo or video.
In both cases, the resolution of the contest could require that the other people vote for the most original content and that is the winner.
- The most common form of promotion is to offer a discount coupon to buy a product from your online store.
Each strategy has its particularities and the interesting thing about them is that they can generate good results at a relatively low cost, although that will depend on your objectives.
Here’s how to create quick and effective giveaways.
How to do an online giveaway?
Online raffles are carried out with applications that allow the dynamics to be carried out in a simple and safe way. Towards the end of this article we are going to share with you the ones we recommend for this.
In the following list, we tell you how to do an online giveaway step by step:
- Define the prize that your brand has to offer and capture the . There are many possibilities! From a product that you want to give more publicity to, one that you are launching now, to a discount percentage.
- Establish by what means you are going to implement it, which implies both announcing and disseminating the draw as well as public participation. For example, they are very common.
- Test and choose the online raffle app with which you are going to work.
- Think and write the rules, the requirements for participation, for what period of time it will be open and what day the draw will take place, how the winner will be notified and how the prize will be delivered.
- Publish your giveaway in the selected medium along with its terms and conditions.
- Strategically broadcast your giveaway so that more people see it and gain followers.
- Carry out your free online raffle and comply with the commitments assumed in the rules.
10 tips for creating an online giveaway
The time has come to share the essential tips for your online giveaway to be useful and effective.
Many times the lack of planning and a little methodical execution can lead to failure, thus losing a valuable tool. So that this doesn’t happen, let’s move right now to the 10 tips for running a successful online giveaway.
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1. Clearly define the objectives
To make your contest or giveaway successful, the first step is to be sure of what you want to achieve with it.
You have to define the objective as clearly and realistically as possible, and never lose sight of the target audience you are targeting, so you will be able to understand at the end of the process if you got what you were looking for.
Some achievable goals for your online giveaway can be:
- Increase your brand positioning: the idea is that more people know your brand and visit your . So, you are not going to focus on selling, but on getting more followers on your social networks.
- Generate more sales in the short term: here it is best to offer a . This will increase the value of your e-commerce.
- Promote a new product: since you are announcing a novelty, you can appeal to the creativity of your audience and launch a contest in which people have to create some original content (photographs, texts or ).
- Expand your email database: it will be essential that people register so that you can keep their email. Then, you will be able to send your communications through e-mail marketing campaigns.
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2. Choose the right platform
The next thing is that you choose the most appropriate platform to carry out your online giveaway, contest or promotion.
Depending on the goals you have previously set, you will have to choose between focusing on a social network or within your online store.
If what you are looking for is , then you have to focus specifically on that network and do giveaways in that way. You can also focus on your online store and try to grow the rest of your channels from there.
3. Think of a concept and offer a prize according to your brand and your customers
Once you have defined your objective and the platform, think of a theme to be able to establish the type of contest you are going to do and what you are going to offer in exchange for participating.
It is advisable that the prize consists of a product from your business before products from other companies, no matter how incredible they are. It is preferable to generate a sense of belonging and recognition of your brand!
In addition, the prize must represent the interests of your audience. If you offer something that doesn’t matter to your audience, they will opt out.
💡 You can even use a special date as an opportunity to promote your contest. Look at the following and plan your giveaways for the most important days of e-commerce:
4. Detail the bases and conditions to participate
Whenever you do a free or paid online giveaway, you will have to write some rules that regulate the participation of the audience. Although in each country there is specific legislation for these cases, there are a number of things that cannot be missing:
- the start and end date of the campaign;
- the way in which you participate (with previous registration, sharing a publication, etc.) and
- the details of the prize to be awarded to the winner.
Still, you can seek legal advice from a specialist to make sure you’re doing things right.
5. Set the duration and allocate the budget
Now that you know how and where your online giveaway is going to be, you have to decide how long it will last and what budget you are going to use to make the most of that time.
If you’re short on funds, you may need to rethink some of your strategy during this stage to fit your budget.
The money you allocate will be to advertise your contest (by or , for example). You may also need to hire a designer to develop the banner or promotional image.
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In terms of duration, quick draws are usually between 1 and 2 weeks. The important thing is that there is enough time for there to be an acceptable number of people participating and that they do not feel that there is a long way to go before they know the winner.
6. Use A/B tests to finalize details
If you are still not sure how you are going to do your online giveaway, you can do an A/B test to get a first impression of how it will work. Among the features you can test are:
- The contest prize. Offering a prize to group A of users and another to group B, in order to see which one has the best response.
- The design and communication you use. Testing a more complex and fun design with a group of users and a simpler and more specific one with the rest, to check which message got the most activity.
- The kind of record you ask people for. Dividing between the two groups a simple registration (such as asking only for your email) versus another that is more demanding (entering more data or using your Facebook account, for example).
If the results you got are not what you expected, don’t be discouraged! The good thing about testing in this instance is that you have time to fix bugs, though you may need to extend the start of your contest a bit.
7. Announce the launch and promote the contest
You already have everything ready! The most important thing now is that you focus your efforts on clearly communicating what the contest is about and start promoting it, so that it reaches as many people as possible.
Depending on the budget that you already have defined, you have to distribute the money among the different tools that are at your disposal, such as and search engines, e-mail marketing and , among other things.
It is key that you address the right people, otherwise, you will be wasting resources on people who are not interested in your brand.
8. Do a good follow-up
As much as the advertising you do is well targeted and you are receiving many entries to the contest, if you are not attentive during the process, the results may not be as good as they could be.
As you receive the emails, begin to establish a relationship with them. First, thank them for participating in the initiative, and then send them emails that suit their needs.
It is likely that some people will ask you questions about how to participate, so try to answer them in a timely manner.
9. Make the draw online and announce the winner
This is the moment your audience is waiting for! The announcement of the winning person. Therefore, consider this moment with the importance it deserves, respecting the day and time of the announcement and communicating the news clearly and transparently.
10. Measure results
Finally, you need to be able to measure the results to analyze whether you met the objective that you had initially set for yourself.
The number of people who participated is not the only important fact. Also pay attention to the geographical area of each one, the days and times that registered the greatest participation and the diffusion that the contest had on social networks.
All this information will help you to continue on the right path if you reached the proposed objective, or correct what is needed in case the results have not been entirely positive.
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