Giveaway: What is it, Benefits, Disadvantages, Tricks to make it and Examples

Who doesn’t love gifts? Everyone, including your audience will expect it. Well, this gift can be a marketing strategy, you know. Giveaway is the term for it. Actually, what is the meaning of this terminology? Is there a trick in making it?

The answer is below. Read more, come on!

What is Giveaway?

Let’s start with the definition. According to EasyAcc, giveaway is a promotional strategy.

Technical implementation starts from registration. Well, from all the registrants, one or more winners were chosen.

They will be given a special gift. In the context of marketing, this gift is usually a promotional product or promotional gifts.

This marketing strategy is not just an activity to burn money for nothing, you know. It is not inferior to marketing in the form of online advertising.

This was revealed by the Advertising Specialty Institute. In 2016, they conducted a study entitled Global Advertising Specialties Impressions Study.

As it turns out, most people like to use promotional products. The average duration is 8 months.

Of course, this time span is longer than PPC or other online advertising. Because of that, the impact of promotional gifts should not be underestimated.

Giveaway Benefits

You have understood what a giveaway is. So, why should you make it?

Some of the benefits that can be obtained from the giveaway are:

1. Cheap advertising

The first advantage of the giveaway is the price. Especially if this is compared to advertisements on billboards and other places.

In fact, the basic principles of their goals are very similar. Both want the audience to know, even become customers of the brand.

Ideally, your gift product is used by many people. They will take it anywhere.

In the end, the product will be seen by many people. The hope is that this audience will be moved to become your customers.

2. Flexible

You don’t have much money? Want to distribute promotional gifts, but are afraid that your marketing budget will run out?

If so, giveaway is the right strategy for you. Because you can adjust the cost.

Turns out, you can only make 100 bottles of water? Even if it’s only a little, you can still distribute promotional gifts.

You just have to adjust everything to budget in your pocket. Pretty flexible, right?

3. Increase brand awareness

According to research from Outgrow, as many as 33% of giveaway participants want to learn more information about the brand.

By getting to know the brand further, it means that they are interested in the product and have the potential to become customers.

In addition, they can also spread information about this giveaway through social media or to the people closest to them.

From there, brand awareness can increase and even be able to reach more new customers.

4. Collaboration opportunities

Besides being able to make it yourself, you can also invite other brands to make collaborations giveaway, you know.

In fact, you can actually offer to be a partner of another brand that is holding a giveaway.

That way, you can reach their market, those who may have a target similar to your business.

In addition to mutual benefits, this collaboration can also be used to establish relationships with other business people.

5. Increase customer loyalty

Customers will always welcome the free items or gifts given to them.

You can use this giveaway as a form of appreciation to loyal customers, so they will be happier using your product.

Not only that, they will definitely talk about your brand and want to share their experiences.

So, the giveaway not only serves to widen the target market, but also increases customer loyalty.

6. Get demographic insights

If you want to understand more about customer demographics, giveaways can be an effective method.

Giveaway is able to attract high participation. That way, you can get more of the data you need.

How? It can be through a survey that you require when registering or after participating in a giveaway.

The insights that you can get are also varied, including about what kind of product or information is more in line with the target market.

Tricks to Make a Successful Giveaway

You have understood that giveaways are an important strategy. So, what are the tips in making it successful?

Summarized from shopify and other sources, below are the information:

1. Adjust to the goal

Each company or marketing team certainly has a different goal. Well, the promotional gift program must be adjusted to that target.

Want to increase Instagram follower engagement? Do you even want to take your Instagram followers to other social media?

You just have to adjust the promotional gifts with all of that. Remember, everything is flexible. Just create a team goal as a condition for participating in the sweepstakes.

For example, ask them to comment and mention their friends in your post. You can also ask them to review your product on their social media.

2. Choose the right gift

Of course, before the giveaway runs, prizes are things that you must prepare. Don’t forget, choose all correctly!

You can give them merchandise. As an alternative, there is also the option to create a gift in the form of a promo code.

Whatever you choose, make sure it’s interesting enough for your audience. In addition, don’t forget to adjust it to the company’s budget, OK!

3. Use Influencers

Influencers can also polish your promotional gift program, you know. They can encourage more people to enter this sweepstakes.

That way, your campaign can be even more crowded. The chances of people knowing your brand are even greater.

4. Make a social media campaign

Greeting the audience is certainly easier to do through social media. So, doing a prize draw there is the right thing.

Launching HubSpot, 80% of Instagram users follow business or company accounts. Therefore, you don’t need to hesitate to share promotional gifts there.

However, you have to be careful, Some social media have special rules regarding promotional gifts. According to RafflePress, one of them is YouTube, there are specific rules and guidelines that apply.

All of that, of course, you must follow. Don’t let your intention to strengthen the brand fail because of trivial things not obeying the rules.

Disadvantages of Giveaway Strategy

Like any other marketing strategy, promotional giveaway have some downsides. What are the disadvantages of the giveaway?

Launching from Crazyegg, here are some of the downsides :

• Audiences that are “out of stock”: for example, you require following your Instagram account when entering a prize draw. They will come and try their luck in your campaign. If they don’t win, they just walk away, instead of staying. This can certainly affect the company’s Instagram performance.
• There is fraudulent treatment from various parties: you ask participants to comment on the post as a condition of registration. It could be, there are people who write comments as much as possible.
• The duration of the draw to be considered. Pay attention to the time gap between registration, raffle, and announcement. If it’s too short, your sweepstake followers can be a few. If it is too long, the sweepstake participants can be disinterested, even impatient to wait. Who likes to be curious for a long time?

So, it can be concluded that even giveaway have their own downsides. However, there are several ways to deal with it, such as:

• Make a rule one account can only comment once to avoid spam
• Consider the duration of its implementation so that the announcement is not too long
• Deliver the date in advance or create a countdown as a reminder to the audience

Giveaway Example

Launching from Outgrow, the giveaway itself has several examples that companies generally do. Here are some of them.

1. Tag a friend

You ask your audience to comment and tag friends on your posts.

This strategy allows you to gain exposure not only to your audience, but also to their friends or their family.

2. Share a video or photo

You invite your audience to participate in a contest to share videos or photos related to your company or campaign.

This strategy itself can increase reach and engagement because it utilizes the network effect of the participating audience.

3. Download the app

If you want to increase the number of downloads of your application, you can give a giveaway on the condition that they have to download your application to be able to participate.

4. Follow, like or retweet, and comment

This giveaway idea not only increases engagement to your account, but also increases the number of followers.

Plus, this strategy also helps you reach new audiences, especially if you do it on Twitter.

5. Through influencers

You can also do giveaway by partnering with influencers.

For example, you give condition that everyone must follow your company account and influencer to participate.

With this strategy, you can reach the audience of these influencers who help you get new customers.

This is information from 99Giveaway.com about what a giveaway is. Apply this strategy to achieve your marketing goals, okay!

In addition to the promotional prize draw, there are still many marketing tricks that you can apply. Don’t you want to know everything?

Don’t worry, it’s all on the 99giveaway Blog. The variety of information will make you a reliable marketer.

So what are you waiting for? Check the various articles now, come on!