How to Do a Giveaway or Contest: The Easiest Way
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Hey there! I see you wondering “how to do a giveaway”. We love where you are going. Well, we have to say that is a good decision. After all, contests have a conversion rate of almost 34%, which is higher than other content types. They can help you activate leads by giving rewards to users who share your content.
Now, we understand that all of our readers might have different objectives for creating a contest or a giveaway. Some of you might be looking to generate leads or aiming to increase followers on social media. Meanwhile, others might be interested in increasing brand loyalty.
Whatever your reasons may be, interactive giveaways and contests are here to save the day. Have a look at how to create contests and giveaways without coding or any other fuss.
But first, here are some basics and tips to grab before you set out on this journey.
Giveaway vs Contest: What’s the Difference?
Oftentimes, we use the words Giveaways and Contests interchangeably. But one must note that the two terms are actually different from each other. And if you want to learn how to do a giveaway, you need to know the difference.
What Is a Giveaway?
Literally speaking, a giveaway is an act of giving away goods or services for free as a gift or premium. The most important element of a giveaway is that it doesn’t expect anything in return.
Giveaways are attractive because they are freebies! And, who wouldn’t like some free stuff? (We wouldn’t mind any :p) They are luck-based as the results are chosen at random and every participant has an equal chance of winning.
Look at this giveaway example that gives the participants a chance to win free protein powder!
What Is a Contest?
Now, a contest is similar to a giveaway except that it asks for something in return. And, that something determines the participant’s chance of winning. A contest, as the name suggests, is a competition where participants are supposed to do a task that decides their fate(in the contest).
Have a look at this fashion contest. It requires the participants to share their portfolios and they’ll win only if their portfolios are worthy.
Why Should You Do a Giveaway?
Before understanding the “how to do a giveaway” question, let’s understand “why to do a giveaway”. Engaging your audience isn’t as easy as it used to be years ago. That’s because people now want value addition.
While great content is a great way to add value, sometimes, material value addition is the way to go. That’s what giveaways are there for. They increase customer engagement, boost lead generation, increase social media following, and expand your brand value.
Moreover, an average of over 34% of new customers are acquired through contests and giveaways.
Isn’t that amazing? You bet it is!
How to Make a Giveaway/Contest on Outgrow
Selecting a Template
1. Login to Outgrow’s dashboard and select Contest/ Giveaways.
2. You can choose to start from scratch. Alternatively, you can select one of the various templates under ‘Select a Template’. The templates already include giveaways like the ‘Black Friday template’ and ‘feature on the blog’ template. They have been divided into different industries for your ease.
3. Once you have selected your template, you can head over to the Outgrow Builder. On your welcome screen, you can choose your preferred background image, heading, button text, and logo through the ‘Display’ tab.
Creating Your Giveaway/Contest
4. You can create your own heading, subheading, and button text through the panel on the right. Make sure you write actionable and enticing content that interests your prospects.
5. Select your giveaway timeframe. This is your chance to utilize one of the most effective marketing strategies called the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).
6. Include sections in your giveaway through the panel on the left-hand side. Describe the prize and rules of your contest here.
7. You can choose to include pictures/videos and descriptions as well. For instance, in this template, we have included 2 sections for prizes:
8. Design your preferred footer and include your social media handles for ease of sharing. You can also include the feature text that is displayed on sharing through the ‘share widget title’ option.
Entry Form: Lead Generation Form
Your entry form will ensure that you garner as many leads as possible from this giveaway. Include the optimal amount of fields to prevent dropouts. You can allow URL redirects and also ensure that duplicate leads do not get counted twice.
You can also choose to use the Clearbit integration to enrich your lead data. It will automatically update the lead’s data with information like their company name, size, location, etc. Consequently, you can use this information to segment and target leads.
Configure and Analyze
Once you are satisfied with your giveaway, you can customize a lot of things under the ‘Configure’ tab. You can:
- Choose the giveaway name and customize the URL
- Configure the SEO settings to make sure that your target keywords are present in the SEO title and the meta description
- Send custom emails to users once they enter your giveaway. You can modify your message and include attachments if you wish. A welcome or acknowledgment email always leaves a good impression and helps you nurture your prospects.
- Integrate with 1000+ tools
- Embed your giveaway in a pop-up, chat, greet bar, sidenote, or as a custom embed
- Now, go to the “Analyze” tab and see how your giveaway is performing. You can see the number of visits, number of leads generated, conversion rate, and more such statistics. Moreover, you’ll find a bunch of recommendations to improve your giveaway or contest
For a detailed explanation, head over to our support docs.
Things to Keep in Mind While Running a Giveaway
When you decide to do a giveaway, you need to understand every element of it. Everything about the giveaway should be designed to bring you maximum leads. And, we’ll tell you every little thing you need to keep in mind while deciding how to do a giveaway. Let’s start!
1. Choose the Prize for Your Giveaway
If you run a race, you’d want to know the winning prize. right? The premise of a giveaway or contest is a prize. Before you start the giveaway, you need to be clear about what to offer.
Decide the prize based on what your audience would want from you. If your prize isn’t attractive to your audience, the purpose of your giveaway remains unsolved. At the same time, make sure it goes well with your brand image.
2. Determine the Entry Procedure for Your Contest
Who is eligible to participate in your giveaway? If your giveaway has any restrictions with regard to age, location, or any other factor, specify them at the beginning.
Also, figure out the entry procedure. What do the users have to do in order to participate? Do they have to engage with your posts or do they have to create something of their own that aligns with your brand? This is something you need to define beforehand.
3. Consider a Brand Partnership
Partnering with a brand is a great idea when it comes to giveaways. When a certain brand partners with you, they’ll share your giveaway on their platform. And, when that happens, your reach will automatically increase, which means – wait for it – MORE LEADS!
You get the reach from their page, they get the reach from your page, and the audience gets a chance to win freebies! Win-win-win!
Since influencer marketing is the new cool thing, you can partner with micro-influencers to reach specific audience segments. That can be easily done with Microinfluence. Specificity means qualified leads and that means higher conversion rates!
4. Pick a Campaign Hashtag
Hashtags help your audience see your content exclusively. And, it gets easier for you to see who’s talking about you. Selecting the right hashtag is important for a giveaway as it’ll help you reach a wider audience and also keep track of the campaign’s performance.
It’s also important to make sure that your hashtag is simple and not heavy-worded. For example, if we had to run a giveaway to offer a free Outgrow quiz, we’d use “#outgrowquiz” as a hashtag and not “#buildingcustominteractivecontentwithoutgrow”. That was so long that you probably didn’t even read it till the end. So yes, the moral of the story: keep it short and simple!
5. Decide the Time Duration of Your Giveaway
Hosting an indefinite giveaway makes no sense. How would you feel if you were made to run a race that doesn’t end? Yes, okay, life’s a never-ending race, but let’s not get into an existential crisis right now, please.
Coming straight to the point, put a time restriction on your giveaway. The sense of urgency attracts more people. And, that’ll get you more engagement.
Giveaways created on Outgrow have a header that tells the visitor how much time is left for them to participate.
6. Launch and Promote your Instagram Contest
Before launching, create hype around your giveaway. Make posts like “Going live in 24 hours, turn your notifications on”. This will make people want to follow you and engage more with your profile.
After a proper launch, make sure you promote your giveaway/contest across social media platforms. Use Instagram ads to expand your reach. As said earlier, partner with brands and promote through their pages as well. Also, include this giveaway in your blogs as ads. Your visitors might get directed towards your Instagram profile and hey, that means new followers!
Learn more about creating the right promo graphics for your giveaway here.
Conclusion
So now, you can create the perfect giveaway/contest in the blink of an eye. What are you waiting for? Head to your Outgrow dashboard now and make use of the best kind of interactive content there is! Start your free trial now!
For more tips, suggestions, and questions on how to do a giveaway or contest, you know where to find us!