We assume you followed the amazing tips and tricks on this blog and launched your very own giveaway. LOL. Now would be the time to promote your campaign effectively. Our giveaway promotion ideas are the right place to get started!
We have heard feedback from many brands that failed to find the results they needed from their giveaways. Some brands also confessed to receiving messages from people who only found out about the giveaway when it was over.
Giveaways are viral and can generate tons of leads and exposure for your brand. However, you will still have to properly promote your giveaway, especially in the early stages of launch. If more people learn about your giveaway early on, the chances of the campaign going viral will increase.
We listed 9 giveaway promotion ideas, including ways to promote your campaigns and ideas for actual giveaways. These giveaway ideas will ensure you have a structured approach to marketing your campaign and creating brand awareness and recognition.
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9 Giveaway Promotion Ideas to Grow Brand Awareness
Want to boost brand awareness and recognition? Indulge in brand giveaway promotion ideas. Giveaways often play an important role in helping your business become known while increasing sales and engagement.
Giveaways can often act as exceptional marketing ideas to introduce your business to customers. A campaign can acquire around 34% of contestants, so it is advisable to use this number strategically. You may host the giveaway across different channels, from social media to the website and even more.
These giveaways have a huge conversion rate that often determines success and increases your brand’s visibility. Businesses of all sizes use brand giveaways to foster engagement and drive conversions.
Giveaways also help attract potential new customers, especially those who need to be made aware of your business. Let’s explore the different ideas for promotional giveaways to enhance brand awareness and make your business known to the target audience.
Promotional giveaways can be one of the best ways to create brand awareness among the audience. If you want to be known, you must show your audience what you have to offer. Know that different promotional ideas can encourage different types of audiences.
So, here are 9 giveaway promotional ideas you may adopt to foster brand awareness among the audience:
1. Hashtag Competition
A hashtag competition can be one of the perfect giveaway promotion ideas for social media channels. Encourage your audience to share posts with the contest hashtag on their social media networks, such as X, Instagram, and Facebook. Influencer collaborations or running ads can help drive awareness about the hashtag competition.
The more people use your hashtag on social media giveaway contests, the more visibility you will gain. This will increase your opportunity to promote your business on the platform and become known by the audience. The winner can either be chosen randomly or based on engagement on the posts.
It is advisable to highlight the contest’s terms and conditions initially. This will give clarity to the audience, and they should participate accordingly. Once the winner is chosen, the announcement should be made via social media channels only. The prize should be relevant to the competition or a brand goodie that the winner can share on their accounts, giving your brand a shoutout.
2. Brand Ambassador Contest
If you wish to increase brand awareness through user-generated content, opting for a brand ambassador contest is advisable. But who is your brand ambassador? In this case, your users or customers should be the only ones who are ambassadors. They must become advocates for your brand.
Encourage your followers or customers to actively participate in the contest by becoming ambassadors. Once they agree and meet the contest requirements, share the contest details and code with them. This referral code should be unique so that the ambassadors can share it with their friends, family, or anyone who is interested in making a purchase from your brand.
The respective ambassador will earn points for every purchase made using their referral code. Once the competition ends, the contestant ambassador who wins the most points will be eligible for winning. You may either keep a single grand prize for only the winner or some small complimentary gifts for the runner-ups. Either way, it will help you gain visibility through the posts and loyalty of the ambassadors.
3. BOGO (Buy One, Get One)
BOGO is one of those giveaway promotion ideas that often appeals to customers. The concept of getting one free for purchase often excites the audience, and they want to participate more in it. So, if you get an opportunity for the same, why let go of it? Use this as a bait to drive engagement and increase customer awareness.
Allow people to enter your giveaway for free (by entering their email). You can then offer those people more entries to your giveaway if they purchase a product from your shop (online).
As an appreciation and gratitude token, you may give a free product when the customer purchases. Top eCommerce giants and Shopify sellers often adopt this method to increase their brand awareness and remove excess inventory. Furthermore, this is also a solid idea to boost business sales.
You can host a BOGO contest via your social media page or website. However, regardless of the platform on which you promote the giveaway contest, you must be transparent and share all details. Make sure to include a cool pop-up on the website to win customers’ attention.
It’s also imperative that you understand the laws regarding giveaways in your country or state. It is most likely illegal to force users to make a purchase to enter a giveaway, which is why we recommend you allow people to enter your giveaway for free (like Ridge below), with bonus entries available for users who make purchases.
Ridge hosted an impressive giveaway that allowed users to enter for free and provided users with bonus entries when they made purchases. This entry method is in line with the law concerning giveaways.
4. Email Subscriber List Challenge
Increasing your email subscribers is also one of the best ways to boost brand awareness. To maintain an effective email list, utilizing data quality tools ensures your subscriber information is accurate and up-to-date. This helps enhance click-through and open rates, which can surely benefit your business.
For this challenge, you must encourage your followers or target audience to subscribe to your email list in exchange for a free gift or exclusive service.
Email subscription list challenges can also be combined with other marketing strategies. For example, you may consider asking your followers to subscribe to stay updated about future announcements.
Moreover, if you wish to win the audience’s attention, offering exclusive discounts to everyone who subscribes to your email list would be a great idea.
You may share special discount codes for the subscribers who didn’t win any prizes. This can be a type of complementary prize for everyone, resulting in a win-win situation for your business. Therefore, you can climb the ladder of boosting brand awareness through exclusive contests and giveaways.
5. Promotional Rewards for Referrals
Giveaways can often be limited to one person and may help acquire new customers to some extent. But what if you can use these giveaway promotion ideas to both retain and attract customers? That’s exactly what promotional rewards for referrals will help with. Around 37% of referred customers become repeat customers, which is a great way to spread the word about your brand.
Encourage your existing followers/audience to share a referral code with their friends or family to purchase a product from your business. As soon as the referred customer purchases a certain amount, send a gift to the person who was referred. This way, you acquire a new customer while retaining your old one.
You may set a bonus limit for the referring person. Several brands have a referral reward for their customers, both new and retaining ones.
6. Photo Contest
Social media is a great platform for becoming visible in the public eye and letting your audience know about your brand. However, a major challenge is getting the reach. Therefore, using the power of user-generated content can be an exceptional idea for boosting your brand awareness. As a result, you may host a photo contest with something related to your brand.
Photo contests usually work best for Facebook and Instagram giveaways, as they help increase visibility. You can ask your customers to share creative photos with your product on their social media channels and then tag you.
The most creative and unique photo showcasing the use of your product will eventually win a gift. These photo contests can play an important role in building a community for your business and driving engagement.
Several brands on Instagram often host a photo contest to get user-generated content. This plays an important role in generating awareness. You may spread the word about these unique contests using influencer collaborations or event photographers to capture high-quality promotional images.
However, too many followers or audience members will share these photos, so it is advisable to set a limit or deadline within which your audience must share the photos. This idea works best for small businesses.
Photo contests are particularly effective during high-engagement seasons like holidays. For instance, you could host a New Year’s Eve event planning photo contest, encouraging customers to showcase how they use your product to celebrate the season.
7. Quiz-based Survey
Want to know how well your audience knows you? Host a quiz-based survey. Well, this contest would also help you in another way in terms of learning more about your customers. You can set the quiz questions depending on the goal or outcome you wish to have.
Quiz-based surveys can be an exceptional promotional idea for educating your audience about your business or industry. Not many brands make the effort to inform customers about brands and industries, so some customers lack information. On the other hand, hosting a quiz-based survey can help inform or educate your customers about your industry or business, which they will surely appreciate.
You can share a small gift with all your customers for filling out the survey. On the other hand, you can also share a gift with the ones who answered the maximum number of questions. This entirely depends on the goal of your survey.
Some customers may be hesitant to fill out the questionnaire, which is why it is advisable to let them know its goal. Well-informed and well-educated customers will make a positive choice for your business.
8. Gift Cards
Most customers think of gift cards in the same way as Amazon. Well, why stick to one when you can have diversity? That’s right. It is a great idea to send out gift cards to your customers for a small contest. Businesses in the fashion industry should consider using the gift card idea, considering that it is appealing and can help grow their business easily.
Depending on your business size or ideal goal, you may choose the number and amount of gift cards that you want to give away. For example, you may choose either a single winner or multiple winners. If you wish to maximize your business’s engagement, you must have a gift card of good value. After all, when you do not add value to your customers, they will not follow you, which can be a significant loss for your business.
You should have a minimum value for gift cards. When setting the business’ gift card limit, you must ensure it does not harm the business scope. Therefore, your business should still be profitable. At the same time, for gift cards, you should target not only your existing customers but also new ones.
Gift card giveaways are low-cost and effective in creating brand awareness and boosting traffic.
Click here to learn more about Gift Card Giveaways.
9. Email Marketing
We felt the need to mention email as an excellent medium for promoting a giveaway, especially if your brand has an already established email list and marketing strategy.
When hosting a giveaway, consider sending out these emails:
- Giveaway announcement email – Announce that you will host a giveaway soon.
- Launch email – Send out an email to inform your list that your giveaway is live.
- Reminder email – Send out an email halfway through the campaign to remind people to enter.
- Last chance email: Email users on the eve of the giveaway’s last day. This can be a final push to find more giveaway entrants.
- Optional product/prize info email – Send out an email with the specifications of the prize or product featured in the giveaway.
The cool part about using email to promote a giveaway is that every email is an opportunity to grow your brand and increase traffic to your site.
For example, send out an email a day before the giveaway ends (last chance email). Ask recipients to go to your site to enter (increased traffic). Also, encourage users to learn more about the prize by visiting the product page on your site (more traffic, brand exposure, and product exposure).
Another excellent strategy would be to mail current email subscribers and ask them if they can refer friends to your giveaway. This way, you can use your current audience to grow a larger audience.
FAQ: 9 Giveaway Promotion Ideas
Photos and video contests, along with quiz and trivia integration in the giveaway promotion, can help to make it fun. Having a brand ambassador for the same is also a good idea.
Your brand goodies can be one of the best giveaway items for increasing awareness. Apart from these, you may use daily-use items or some exclusive ones to win the trust and loyalty of the audience.
You must know your goals and then target the audience accordingly for running the promotional giveaway. At the same time, ensuring the prize is relevant to the giveaway is important.
TL;DR: 9 Giveaway Promotion Ideas
Planning, selecting prizes, and launching the campaign are vital steps towards hosting a successful giveaway. Giveaway promotion is another crucial, if not most crucial, part of any giveaway.
We listed 9 giveaway promotion ideas in this guide. Here is a summary of those promotional ideas:
- A hashtag competition to build your brand’s list of hashtags on a social platform.
- Ambassador contests turn customers into advocates who help promote your brand.
- Buy one get one is an excellent strategy to entice customers to spend money to increase their chances of winning.
- Offer rewards to users who subscribe to your email list.
- Referrals can create viral growth. Offer an incentive to users who refer people to your giveaway.
- Build a collection of content related to your brand with a UGC contest.
- Use Quizzes to interact with an audience and boost engagement and brand exposure.
- Gift cards are great giveaway prizes and incentives.
- Use emails to reach your current audience to promote your brand and refer more people to your brand.
Author Bio
Ankita Malhotra is an outreach specialist at SaaSifypro.com. With more than four years of experience and communication skills, she develops and implements effective outreach strategies that deliver goal-oriented results.
Email ID: [email protected]
Jack Paxton is the co-founder of VYPER, a marketing tool that helps brands build email lists, social followings, and revenue using viral giveaways, referral, and reward programs. After millions of dollars spent testing different marketing strategies at his marketing agency. He then also co-founded Hyax a fast, conversion & design-focused course and funnel builder for creators.