One of the best ways to increase your user engagement is to run a contest or giveaway. This is an effective marketing strategy to generate leads, increase sales, and grow your business. However, the success of your giveaway or contest depends on people’s participation, and their participation depends on how you promote it. Promoting your contest allows it to reach more audiences and gain more potential entrants.
It is easy to think that you don’t need to promote your giveaways or contests, and you need to post it, and people will engage it. This is not true, at least if you are trying to make the most of it to give your business more visibility and potential new leads. You don’t automatically get new website visitors or email subscribers because you are giving away things for free. Your giveaway or contest also needs an excellent marketing plan and well-defined goals to see the results that you expect.
One good promotion can get your new customers, increase your email subscribers, boost your sales and revenue generation, and increase your social media followers. This shows how crucial promotion is to giveaways or contests. So, here are a few ways to go about promoting your giveaway.
Start your promotion before you start the contest or giveaway
You can use social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter to get some engagement before you even start the contest. Here are a few ways to go about it:
- Ask your followers the prize that they want the winner of the contest to get. You could put up three to four prizes and allow your audience to decide through a poll.
- If you are using Facebook, use the Facebook reaction emoticons for the voting. So, users will determine the prize they want by reacting “Like,” “Wow,” “Love,” etc.
- Alternatively, if you’re using a Facebook group or belong to a group that relates to your field, you can use the “Ask a question” feature.
- Another way to do this is by running a poll through a simple form on your website for users to determine the price they want.
Giving your audience the chance to choose the prize for the competition is like running a mini-competition to prepare everyone for the contest. In addition, this will increase the level of engagement that you get on social media leading to the contest.
Partner with other businesses
Another way to make a solid start to your contest and potentially double the result is to partner with other businesses that run contests and giveaways regularly or plan for one at the same time as you. According to a college essay writer at the order a college essay platform, this partnership allows you to get more exposure and offer more prizes to your audience and participants.
In looking for a partner to run a giveaway with, make sure the business relates to your niche, but they are not your direct competition. They should be willing to offer their product as a prize for the giveaway or contest.
Send giveaway through a newsletter.
Take advantage of your email list to promote your giveaways. Send emails to your subscribers to announce your sweepstakes and add a link to take them to the page directly. Your email newsletter is an effective way to announce and promote your contests, especially since you already have a list. The fact that they are already on your list makes it easier for you to promote the contest to them. It is also more effective because they won’t only participate but also share it with their family and friends.
Send another announcement email when you are starting the contest to remind them and add a strong CTA to your email. Unfortunately, not everyone on your list will open the initial email, and some of those that opened it may not remember, so you must send a reminder just before the contest starts and during the contest.
Use ads to promote giveaways.
The more of your audience you can target using ads, the slimmer the chance of attracting people who are merely prize hunters. According to dissertation-service.org, PPC is an excellent way to promote your contest, and you can start with your current audience or fan base. However, some of the things you can also do are:
- Reach new people: make sure that your campaign doesn’t target the people that have entered the contest already, so they do not feel choked by your ads.
- Re-target past campaign participants: if this is not the first time you are running a contest or giveaway, then you should consider re-targeting previous participants to contest again and share with others.
Conclusion
If you want to make the most of your contests and giveaways, you must promote them to the right people. This article discusses a few ways to carry out your giveaway promotion.
