Promotions like giveaways are powerful marketing tools that can be used to achieve a number of different goals. At least, that’s the case if they are executed properly. Unfortunately, business owners often have little to no experience in setting up and running giveaways, and they often come away disappointed. If you’d like to enhance your existing marketing strategy by running a giveaway, there are things that you can do to dramatically increase your odds of success. Whether you end up handling everything yourself or turn to a platform like Text-2-Win, the following five tips will serve you well.
- Establish Clear Goals
Without having some sort of objective in mind for your giveaway, you’ll have no way of knowing whether or not your campaign produced viable results. After all, it’s not like you just want to give free products away for the fun of it; you should get something in return too. By establishing a clear goal from the start, you’ll be better able to assess the progress of your campaign as it progresses.
There are no rights or wrongs when choosing a goal for a giveaway. However, most businesses choose from a handful of popular options when establishing their campaigns. Many use contests to collect email addresses for future marketing efforts. Others use such promotions to cast a spotlight on a new product or service. Still others use sweepstakes to gain more followers on social media or to generate more backlinks to enhance their SEO campaigns. Before planning your giveaway in earnest, then, carefully select a clearly defined objective.
- Know Your Audience
Knowing who you’re trying to connect with is one of the fundamentals of marketing. The more people who participate in your giveaway, the more effective your campaign will be–right? That’s true to some degree, but participants shouldn’t just be random folks who merely enjoy winning freebies. Rather, they should be people who are genuinely interested in your offerings and who are likely to convert into actual customers.
With any luck, you already know your audience. You may have even gone as far as to set up persona profiles and the like. That’s all well and good, but the next step is ensuring that your target demographic hears about your sweepstakes and is able to easily participate in it. Do this by considering where they’re the most likely to be found. Is it on sites like Facebook? If your target audience is older, email might be the best bet. Put some thought into this to increase the odds of having a highly active campaign.
- Make it Easy
Even if you’re giving away something truly incredible, people won’t jump through a bunch of hoops to try to win it. Human nature is what it is, and people want instant gratification. That’s particularly true on the Internet, where people can click their way elsewhere if things become too much of a hassle. With these points in mind, make it as easy as possible for people to register for your contest.
Whenever possible, avoid asking people to fill out long, detailed forms. Ideally, entering your giveaway should be as simple as submitting an email address, liking or sharing something on social media or texting a code from a smartphone to a specific number. Your litmus test should be this: Can someone sign up to participate in a minute or less? If not, figure out a way to make the registration process quicker and easier, or risk having low “turnout” for your event.
- Cover Your Bases and Work Out the Kinks
Numerous laws apply to giveaways and the like. Needless to say, you don’t want to inadvertently run afoul of any of them, as doing so can land you and your business in hot legal water. For example, for a giveaway, no special skills should be needed to participate. No purchase should be necessary, or it’s technically a lottery. Official rules must be clearly posted and accessible. Those are merely the tip of the iceberg.
Before launching your giveaway, give it a few test runs. Have friends run through the entire process on their own, and then survey them to see how they fared. You can expect at least a few bugs the first few times–especially if you or someone from your company is setting it up and has little experience in doing so. It’s far better to catch issues during testing than after the campaign goes live.
- Use a Giveaway Platform
Like any business owner, you probably prefer doing things as affordably as possible and may be reluctant to pay someone to help you with your giveaway. However, the small investment that you make in a reputable, proven platform like Text-2-Win pays for itself in no time. For one thing, such platforms seamlessly incorporate mobile technology, allowing you to reach mobile users with ease. In turn, you can more easily tap into the power of social media sites like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Beyond the turnkey simplicity of using a giveaway platform, additional benefits include having your legal bases covered. However, it’s still best practice to have an attorney check everything over. Such platforms also incorporate testing, so you can rest assured that your campaign will be good to go upon launching. Unless you’re willing to pour huge amounts of time and effort into creating your own sweepstakes, this is the most practical and effortless way to go.
Now that you know the basics of setting up effective online contests, put your knowledge to work to achieve the goals that you’ve established. As you can see, you can easily handle a few of the steps on your own without having any prior knowledge of creating a giveaway. For example, you can define your goals and establish your target audience right away. For the rest, rely on Text-2-Win for a seamless, effective experience. Your contests will unfold more smoothly, and you’ll hardly have to lift a finger.
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