Comment for a chance to win! Is a giveaway the best option for your company? Before you announce a giveaway online, it’s a good idea to think through what would make the giveaway most effective. After all, you want it to be successful and you’ll also want to be able to measure that success. Here are a few things to consider when crafting an effective giveaway campaign.
Identify Your Goals
What do you want out of the campaign? Answering this question might even inform what type of item you’re going to giveaway. Some goals include boosting engagement on your social media pages, gaining followers, driving traffic to your website, promoting a new product, supporting brand awareness or even building an email list. These are just a few of the outcomes that a giveaway can support.
Start thinking about what your brand needs most, and set that as your goal. Large and established brands might lean toward a general branding or engagement goal, while a brand that’s just getting started could really use support in growing their email list or promoting their new products. Either way, setting the goal and then picking a giveaway and strategy that best fits that goal will help ensure that your giveaway is worth it.
Create On-Brand Messaging
So, now that you know your goal and your giveaway item, how do you disseminate that information to your followers? The best way is to create on-brand messaging to promote the event. You don’t want the giveaway to sound like a scam or something separate from your brand, so make sure all communication reflects your brand’s personality and voice. If you’ve got a casual and funny persona, tap into that to spark interest. If your brand is more professional in tone, stick to that. Avoid being too salesy, as that could be a move away from authenticity and a turn-off to followers. Also, think about the many different types of communication that need to be in place. You need several different announcements throughout the event, such as the roll out, pre-event promotion, giveaway start, during giveaway promotion, giveaway end and a winner announcement. All of these pieces of communication need to be in line with your brand voice.
Measure Results
Since you’ve developed your goal and strategy, as well as an on-brand message, it’s now time to measure your results. Develop a plan in advance based on your goal for how you’ll measure results. What results do you need to see to call the giveaway a success? How will you measure them and determine ROI? For brand awareness campaigns, it could simply be measuring engagement and seeing if there was more engagement during the event. If your goal was to grow your email list, how many emails do you want to see for your ROI?
Additional Considerations
You’re on your way to launching your very own giveaway! In addition to the above items, don’t forget to review all of the rules involved in any giveaway. Certain industries have the own rules, and each social media platform has rules about giveaways as well. We also always recommend running them through legal just be extra diligent. With a bit of research and planning, your giveaway can provide some outstanding benefits and help you reach your desired goal.