Having a relevant communication strategy in your social networks is important, because it will allow you to attract potential clients, but when it is the season of offers, your strategy must be more attractive because thousands of businesses want to stand out and the competition is stronger each season.
One way to stand out from the competition is through digital giveaways, also known as giveaways, which will help you boost your numbers on social media and most importantly: your sales.
What are giveaways and what to use them for?
Nowadays the meaning of a Giveaway is the strategy where raffles or contests are organized through social networks. The operation is simple, because the brand or business that organizes it establishes some rules for people to participate and the winner receives their prize.
As you can tell, the first word of this brief explanation is "strategy", so before implementing a giveaway on Instagram, Facebook or any social network of your business, it is important that you set your goals and avoid imitating other brands.
So that you can define what you want to achieve with a giveaway strategy, below we share different benefits that you can obtain, depending on the rules you want to establish:
Grow your fan base
Surely you have seen different brands that do something like this: They post a photo of the award, for example a kit of their products. They ask participants to follow the account, like the publication and ask to tag one of their friends in the comments of the post.
These types of dynamics help increase the number of followers, since you encourage people to comment, interact with your content. Consequently, the platform will recognize the publication as relevant content, at the same time that you get more people to see it and get to know your brand and your products.
Growing the base of followers helps more people get to know your products or services and later, one of them becomes a customer. Of course, in case you do not work very well with your followers, having too many will not do any good, so the best thing when you want to grow your audience, is to establish the following steps so that they do not lose interest quickly.
Increase the visibility of your brand
A second variation of the giveaway that we mentioned in the previous paragraphs is generating alliances with other brands or influencers. This will help the followers of both brands to be interested in other products and thus reach an important base of followers.
To give away my products or not?
Many times, as we mentioned, giveaways become gifts of your product or service so that the people who have them can promote your brand, but if you are starting out, should you give away your products?
It could be a two-edged sword, since many times the gift of products or services may not be of value. As human beings, we value things that have a price and that require a certain level of sacrifice. The more it costs to acquire something, the more it is respected and appreciated. But when something has no price or sacrifice, people do not become so attached to it.
So is it a good idea to implement a giveaway if I'm just starting out? It all depends on what you have planned for the contest, because if you have a budget to do so, it will not hurt to make these gifts. The best thing is that you do not go over that budget or you will end up with a debt and having followers will be of little use.
Steps to organize giveaways
Defining your objectives and defining what type of contest you want to do (and what rules you will establish for the participants) is the first step, but there is still more:
1. Set your goals
Once you evaluate what is most relevant to your brand (gain followers, gain more visibility or have your followers promote your producers), it is time to set your goals.
While it never hurts to aim for the stars, set realistic goals that you know you can achieve. It is far better to set realistic goals and exceed them than to set unrealistic goals and get discouraged when things don't go as planned. You can always take advantage of the experience of your first gift and raise expectations the second and third time.
2. Evaluate what prizes you are going to offer
This step is not only about deciding which products will make up the award, but it is also considered in the finances of your business. In the end, this is a marketing strategy that does have a cost, so it is relevant that it is reflected in the financial statements of your business.
Of course, think of attractive gifts such as a new product, limited edition products, a complete collection, gift cards, a unique opportunity or even a trip. You can think of a budget and that does not happen from there; We previously mentioned how difficult it could be to provide your products or services, but if that is what best suits your budget, go ahead.
When choosing an award, ask yourself if it is a strong value proposition. If the prize is extremely low in value, or not attractive enough to your audience, people will not be interested and will not take the time to participate.
To create a strong value proposition, the award has to be related to your business and it has to be something that interests customers. If it is too specific to your business or not very tailored to the wishes of the customer, the promotion will not work as well as you hope.
3. Choose in which social network you are going to carry out the contest
For this, it is important that you review the metrics of your social networks and see in which platform you have more contact with your followers so that the dynamics have better results and therefore more participants.
If you plan your contest in advance, you have the opportunity to promote it in many places, from a mailing list, at least once a week, use Instagram stories, tweet about it, encourage your followers to share the publications you make in all Networks will help you grow your fan base.
Keep in mind that the network you choose to make your giveaway goes hand in hand with your goal, for example if you want to get more traffic to your website and increase your email subscribers, then it is not a good idea to host your promotion on a platform like Facebook.
4. Follow up properly
It is necessary to establish a relationship with the people who registered or are participating in the contest, generate community and get others to participate. If they have already left their comments, photos or videos, you can comment on them, make them take their participation into account and convert this into a kind of community.
The least they want during the contest is for you to start selling your products or services. Take advantage of the fact that you already have people interacting in your publications and start telling them not to miss a surprise or announcing when the winner will be chosen.
Over time, the people who participated in your contest can become potential customers, since they were already willing to have your gift, only you could offer a special discount to those who participated or offer consolation prizes.
In conclusion, regardless of the dynamics you establish, contests on social networks are a great way to increase the number of people who interact with the content of your business and therefore this strengthens your digital presence.
In addition, if you plan the strategy very well to reach potential clients, you can bet that the participants will treat you with respect, even though they do not win they will value your services and in the future they will become clients by seeing that your business is authentic and unique.