Quick post today.
I happened to listen to two really good entrepreneur interviews over the weekend, and I was pleasantly surprised that both interviewees talked about viral giveaways as part of their promotional strategy.
The first one was an interview with Josh Payne on Mixergy. In the interview he spoke about how StackSocial used giveaways to build a $10m+ empire without touching any outside funding (they raised $800,000 but never used any of it).
I got one really great line from this interview. Payne said for giveaways to work, you should offer something that’s compelling + relevant. That’s a really good way to put it. One of the biggest issues I see from giveaways that don’t succeed is that they don’t fit with one or the other — even worse if they don’t meet both.
But finding that balance that can be tough. Giving away something that’s not super relevant will hurt the quality of your leads. Giving away something that’s really compelling might end up being too expensive. The tough part to giveaways is finding that balance. We wrote a series of blog posts that attack this topic (check out the blog posts re: the funnels).
He also mentioned that he gives away free products. That’s another feature built into the pro version of VYPER called “opt-in bribes” — we give you the ability to give away free stuff to people who won’t even win.
The second interview was with The Drip Club founders on the Growth Everywhere podcast, where they talked about giving away 6-figures worth of retail value through giveaways and how much it helped build up their brand.
The big takeaway from this interview was that you can giveaway 6-figures of stuff without actually having to pay for any of it. This is done by building up your brand. Once you have a big brand, companies are willing to give you free stuff.
If you’re looking to start your next giveaway, why not try VYPER?
