What is a creative, less-used approach people can use to encourage people to take part in a company-branded giveaway?
These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co.
1. Make It Easy to Enter
If you require users to fill out a long form or submit something like an essay or video in order to enter your company-branded giveaway, you won’t get as many entries. You should make it as easy as possible to enter your contest if you want it to be successful. Just ask for their name, email address and a follow on social media. Don’t make it complicated. – David Henzel, LTVPlus
2. Add Purpose to Your Giveaway
Money is not what makes people fire up. Think about the biggest impact you are trying to make in the world. There must be a greater cause behind it, like raising awareness about some issues your company deeply cares about, such as helping a local charity or fighting climate change — whatever makes people feel that they can help by taking part in your giveaway by simply sharing the post. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
3. Incentivize Sharing Across All Platforms
Every social media platform has a slightly different user base, and not everyone is an active user of every other platform. To encourage participation in your giveaway, incentivize sharing on all social platforms by awarding points for posts or actions that people perform on multiple platforms. Points can translate into multiple entries, increased prize levels, or coupons for future purchases. – Jordan Conrad, Writing Explained
4. Offer a Cooler Prize
If you’re just giving away a $50 gift card for your company-branded giveaway, consider choosing a cooler prize. An amazing prize is what will attract people to your giveaway and make them want to enter. Try offering a prize that has a little more value and that’s more relevant to your target audience. For instance, an e-commerce clothing company could give away a $500 shopping spree. – Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
5. Personalize the Prizes
The biggest mistake companies make when running giveaways is giving away generic prizes. Sure, a vacation or a new iPhone are great, but if your website is about hiking you’ll probably have better conversion rates when giving away the best hiking backpack in the world, packed with gear. Think about your audience’s core desire and play to that instead of giving away things that are convenient. – Karl Kangur, Above House
6. Leverage Gamification to Make It Fun
To get the best results, make your giveaway a fun experience. Gamification is a great way to boost your campaign and encourage more people to enter. It includes game design elements into your giveaway that make it interactive for users. If you struggle to garner enough attention or engagement for your giveaways, consider using gamification. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
7. Collaborate With Other Brands
You can really switch things up by creating a giveaway with another brand. Try to come up with a giveaway prize that brings together your product with another brand’s solution. This can make your giveaway unique and truly interesting. This will also make your audience feel as if they’re getting twice the benefit from being part of your giveaway. – Blair Williams, MemberPress
8. Co-Create With Your Customers
When you create a giveaway, you can do more than just offer them a reward for participating. You can make them feel like a part of your brand by co-creating your product with them. Hold a giveaway contest in which you’ll choose a winner and part of the reward is to use their ideas in your products. This helps you connect with customers and makes the contest more meaningful. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
9. Turn Your Product Into a Challenge
Nothing promotes involvement like a competition. Turn your product into an entertaining challenge where friends can try to outdo each other. Come up with a creative way to use, open or consume your product. Then encourage your customers to film themselves completing the challenge and share it on social media. Friends can nominate each other and spread the promotion naturally with funny videos. – Shaun Conrad, My Accounting Course
10. Incorporate User-Generated Content
Everyone has heard of a user-generated contest in which audiences submit pictures, videos or texts that feature a brand. Some companies might even add voting options to the contest. A twist to this is to recreate the best entry and then make it available in a mass form to all customers for a limited time. A company could even invite winners to help create products for the site for everyone to see. – Shu Saito, Godai
11. Hold Caption Contests
Caption contests are a great way to encourage people to take part in your giveaway. We all relate to the humor, and by encouraging your audience to make a funny photo caption for a chance to win a prize, you’ll see a higher engagement rate and increased traffic, depending on your followers. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
