What is a Viral Giveaway?

Every business needs sales to survive but unfortunately it is getting harder and harder to convince people to buy a product the first time they see it or visit your website. True direct response is getting harder, especially for companies in SaaS where the product might take a long time to explain. To go from the first exposure to the sale usually requires 4-7 touch points.

One solution to this is using viral giveaways, which are used to incentive the behavior of sharing and increasing the exposure of your brand to get that introductory touch point with little effort.

Example Giveaway:

A viral giveaway works like this:

1. John has a shoe store and wants to giveaway a pair of shoes to incentivize people to sign up to his email list so he can send them deals every week.
2. Sam signs up and enters his email to get 1 entry to win the shoes.
3. On the confirmation page Sam is given a custom link to share with his friends and family, on social or via email for example.
4. When Sam’s friends or family sign up to also win the shoes through his custom link he will get additional entries.

As you can see above the methods allow for 1 entrant to refer a whole lot more people.

Why You Should Run a Viral Giveaway

• The cost per lead is super low (we have seen them as low as $0.05 per email).
• Using the right giveaway prize can draw in super targeted leads.
• The entrant is incentivized to share their email and the company gets cheap leads, win win.
• This strategy can be evergreen, some companies run a monthly giveaway and the giveaway page generates more and more authority month after month.
• With the use of paid media this strategy is easy to scale.
• NEW: Custom entries make your contests extremely powerful in building more than just emails. (Ask questions, get social likes on posts, drive purchases & much more!)

Giveaway Traps to Avoid

• Giving away prizes not relevant to your niche.
• Not promoting the giveaway. First 2-3 weeks need WORK!
• Being too self promotional when promoting.

How to Set Up a Viral Giveaway

1. Choose a prize that is relevant
   • This is extremely important and we see first time giveaway users choose prizes that do not make sense. For example a dentistry giving away an iPad. The prize needs to be complimentary to what you sell so your giveaway entries are aligned with your business and can be converted at a later date.
2. Plan your outreach
   • This step is extremely important. You will need to email other influencers and ask for their help in promoting your giveaway. It is usually best to send this out to your industry friends and remember that the favor will be reciprocal.
3. Leverage your current audience.
   • Just because you already have someone’s email, doesn’t mean you can not leverage this person further. Your email list and social media are a great place to start. If you have a segmented list of passionate super fans email them separately with a more person message (these are the guys that will make or break a giveaway). Even though you already have your email lists’ emails, they are likely to know others just like them who they can share the giveaway with.
4. Launch
   • This is the easiest step, hit the launch button, send out all your outreach emails, post to all of your social media and blast your email list. All of these steps have been pre planned so shouldn’t take too long.
5. Manage your entries
   • As the giveaway builds momentum, check-in on the types of emails you are getting. Look at the source referring most traffic and find other sites or influencers like that to reach out to.
6. Continue to promote
   • It is a good idea to start with a media spend on your giveaway. This gets the ball rolling and shows your giveaway to the right audience from the get go. The trick is to aim for a low CPC and use pixels or goals to track the sign ups a paid media channel is driving. We usually start out by publishing some ads on Facebook, Stumble, LinkedIn, Reddit and Twitter.

Ready to take the next step?

Create an account to get started, then follow the screen recording I made to take your through setting up a giveaway in under 10min.

Start your giveaway HERE

If you have any questions about setting up your viral giveaway or how to market it, checkout the below blog posts or shoot me an email.

• Using Facebook ads to promote a giveaway
• Using Facebook groups to promote a giveaway
• Using Reddit to promote a giveaway
• Using giveaway directories to promote a giveaway
• Further viral marketing tips

9 Thanksgiving Giveaway Ideas to Boost Engagement and Sales

Win a Cybertruck or $100K? The Unbelievable Ridge Wallet Giveaway

The Psychology of Giveaways: What Really Motivates Entrants?