Every week, we answer a common question about marketing or business. This week, our question comes from a fan who entered our giveaway contest for a Firestick and Echo Dot. Today, we will answer the following question: “how can giveaways help my small business?”
You have been running your small business for a while now and things have been going well. Yet even when things are going well, you may still seek to increase your engagement, sales revenue, page views, and more. So naturally, you ask yourself, “how can I keep growing my business?”
There are countless ways you can promote your business, but one our personal favorites at Pangea Marketing is giveaways. Today, we are going to talk about how to run one and what they can do for your business.
Giveaways 101
Giveaways draw a lot of attention. Consider the following: you’re on your phone one afternoon, scrolling through Facebook, and you see an offer from a company saying “comment on this post for a chance to win a Visa gift card.” I enjoy winning free things, and I’m sure you do, too! Giving people incentives to engage with your business works because of this very simple principle.
There are tons of different ways you can run giveaways. They can be as simple as asking people for the email address or getting them to like a photo on Instagram, or they can have 20+ ways to enter. You can give away $15 books or vacation packages to St. Lucia. Consider your audience, your budget, and what you want people to do. You can then build a giveaway around that.
Consider your business objectives, as well as your budget and your audience. Think of what you want your audience to do and craft a giveaway around that. Here are important things you want to get right:
- The prize needs to be attractive and perfectly suited to your target audience. If you’re an author, give away similar books. If you make board games, give away similar board games. It doesn’t have to be your own inventory – you can give away other companies’ items!
- Make it easy to enter the giveaway. If you have a single entry condition, make your giveaway as simple as filling out a form or commenting on a post. If your giveaway is more complex, use software like Gleam.io.
- Give people incentives to do what you want them to do. If you want emails, tie their odds of winning to them giving you their email. If you want Twitter followers, make them follow you on Twitter.
How Can Giveaways Help?
Growing your business doesn’t have to be a boring, stressful time! Giveaways are a great, fun way to show your audience that you aren’t just focused on yourself and your brand’s success. Running a giveaway is exhilarating! When you run a giveaway, your company will come across as a lot less stodgy and sales-oriented.
In addition to the branding benefits, here are just a few things you can get people to do in a giveaway:
- Follow/view you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, or YouTube.
- Listen to you on Spotify/podcasts.
- Give you their email.
- Watch videos.
- Answer questions for market research.
The list goes on and on and on.
Final Thoughts
Giveaways are a fun and creative way to market your brand. When you are looking for a way to grow your business and attract more people to your site, consider running a giveaway. Then once you do, let us know, so we can enter it! 🙂
