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What is a giveaway?
A giveaway is a promotional offer provided by a company to increase its number of customers and leads. There are many types of giveaways based promotional means, the most common of which is to provide a prize to a randomly selected winner from a pool of entries. In such a case the pool of entries serves as potential leads. A giveaway promotion allows a company to interact with the audience and also promote its own products. It is primarily a marketing technique that is used by brands of all sizes to engage, grow, and market their customer base.
Difference Between Contest, Sweepstakes and Lottery
Following are the three types of giveaways.
Contest
When the giveaway process involves a smalltask or game that needs to be performed by the participants, then it is knownas a contest. A number of winners are usually chosen from the participants whoare given prizes. A giveaway contest can be hosted by any brand through a quiz,a drawing or photography competition, etc.
Sweepstakes
Sweepstakes consist of participants entering a draw-based competition where a winner will be chosen at random. The prizes are usually new products that a company wants to promote. For example, if a magazine comes out with a new issue, it can provide a giveaway of an annual subscription to winner from amongst the first few buyers.
Lottery
In the event of a lottery, tickets are sold to participants from whom a certain few will win prizes. While the process is much like that of a sweepstakes, in a lottery the participant has to pay to enter the pool and the money is usually donated to a charity. A lottery works great for any charity-based run by a corporation. It allows them to promote a product while also adding value to their brand.
Also Read: What is Promotional Marketing?
Key Benefits ofGiveaways
Grow Your Network
A giveaway contest is one of the best waysto increase the size of your community. If a product is worth value and isbeing given away for free, word on the internet travels really fast. And sincegiveaways help increase engagement you can be assured that the leads yougenerate will not be wasted.
Generate Leads
While a good number of people only entercontests because of the free prize, giveaways provide access a large number ofleads for any company that can be followed up after the giveaway ends. Allforms of giveaway-based marketing generate leads.
Save Time and Money
Marketing a new product can take months ofplanning and a solid budget. But a giveaway is a quick way to let the customerbase know about any product that is being launched. It also provides a sense ofexclusivity which adds to the potential marketability.
Product Exposure
A giveaway allows people to actually cravefor a product instead of simply knowing about it. So, even if a participantdoes not get the prize, they might still want to buy the product because theywere anticipating it.
Liven Up your Community
You may have a target market at hand butthat does not devalue the power of engagement. Giveaways provide a direct lineof communication between a brand and their customers and this helps strengthenthe community feeling.
Have Fun
Lastly, giveaways are a fun event. They canbe tagged along with any major corporate event and will provide the space for afun recess for both employees and participants.
How to Run aGiveaway
What is the Goal
The type of giveaway one hosts will dependon their goal? Are they looking to create long term customers or generate a lotof leads? Or are they trying to capture market presence for a new product?Since each type of giveaway produces unique results one should first be clearof their goal.
Choose the Right Platform
When hosting a promotional giveaway, choosing the right platform is absolutely important since this will drive the participation levels. For example, a clothing brand should host their giveaway on Instagram whereas an IT brand should do it via Twitter or email. It’s important to remember that a giveaway is a marketing technique and thus it needs the right platform to operate.
Set a Deadline
Once the giveaway has been set up thedeadline needs to be reminded to all the participants multiple times. Creatingadverts that give occasional reminder regarding the deadline really help pushthe point into the applicants’ minds.
Make Sure the Rules are Clear
A giveaway needs to be well defined muchlike that of a sports event. No quarrels should occur between participants andthe winner(s) should be chosen ethically.
The Prize Needs to be Relevant
It’s important to give the audience something worthwhile in order to increase leads. The prizes for contest and lottery-based giveaways are usually higher in value than those for sweepstakes. The prize for a giveaway event should be useful to the winner and should hold monetary value as well.
Key Giveaways Ideas for Businesses
Giveaways are always a good idea toincrease your brand awareness, sales and to attract new customers. It isworth-mentioning that only in America businesses spend more than $20 billion ongiveaways. The reason behind this spending is that it always works and will bea successful marketing strategy in the future.
One thing marketers should keep in mind is to use the techniques strategically. Here I will discuss different giveaways ideas to promote your business.
Coupons
In marketing, coupon is a redeemable ticketfor discounts and rebates when customers purchase a product and service. It ishard for customers to resist a coupon especially for a product they reallywant. When creating a contest for your target market, use social media platformand it is up to you to offer 15% 20% or even more incentives.
Hashtag Contest
Using social media is an integral part ofany marketing campaign especially when it comes to giveaways ideas. In thisdigital age, you should always rely on social media platforms, for example,hashtag contest.
Always choose a unique #hashtag contest,revolving around your campaign objective in mind, ask the participants andfollowers to share a pic or make a post using the hashtag. Believe me, this isa great giveaway idea because people love to share and participate.
Photo Contest
Hashtag contest is a good way to reachpeople but one should not ignore the photo contest. Creative photo contestideas are the best strategies for those businesses who want to reaches thetarget markets.
Facebook and Instagram are considered to bethe social media platforms to sponsor the photo contest. For example, post aphoto on Instagram and ask your customer to like or comment and win. Tag afriend or photo caption contest is also a good idea for photo contest.
Gift Cards
When it comes to promotional giveaways,gift cards idea is an easy way to attain the promotional objectives. Thisstrategy is simple and everyone likes to participate. Gift card campaign is a good strategy becausethose who participate are interested in your product and mostly likely bepotential new or return customers.
Grand Prize
Grand prize giveaway always grabs theattention of customers. Make sure to excite the participants with small prizeswhich will lead to the grand prize. This strategy will grab the attention andmore people will enter. Building suspense is another element of this giveawaystrategy.
Limited Edition Products
Offering a limited edition product as agiveaway is always an enticing idea and customer feel excitement and the senseof exclusivity. Most of the time giveaways are valid for 24-48 hours and it isa perfect opportunity to promotion a limited edition product. For example, aspecial edition gaming console from Playstation is always a good opportunityfor gamers and parents, I must say.
Giveaway Examples
Nike giveaway
A clothing store marketing by giving awayfree Nike sneakers, what could be more perfect? Lapstone and Hammer chose togiveaway 5 Nike sneakers from their Instagram page during a live session andthis provided a humongous social media boost to their page. This is a perfectexample of using valuable giveaways to successfully market a brand. Every kid,teenager, and adult want to own a good pair of Nikes and if a store if givingthem out for free they are most likely to check back with the store for morediscounts.
Amazon giveaway
Amazon opened up its Prime membership category quite a while back and one of the constant benefits that it has provided to its Prime customers are weekly giveaways. This singular opportunity has helped them retain a number of prime customers and build up a larger base. A free giveaway from Amazon can potentially mean anything and this is a perfect value-based proposition to have for the price of Prime membership.
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