Council Post: Tips To Keep Promotional Giveaways Unique And Appealing

By Kalin Kassabov, founder and CEO of ProTexting.com, a fast-growing enterprise-level text message suite of services.

One of the best ways to call attention to your business is to give things away. There are many ways to do this, such as handing out promotional products during a trade show or convention, giving items away with social media contests and offering incentives to generate leads. At the same time, not all giveaways are successful. You need a strategy that’s in sync with your goals and your branding. Drawing on my experience helping clients with giveaways and contests, here are some best practices to make yours a success. 

Determine Where To Host And Publicize Your Giveaways

Promotional giveaways may involve handing out items in person or online, or a combination of the two. For online giveaways, you need to choose the best platform and method. It’s easy to run giveaways on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and there are quite a few apps that can help you do so as well. The benefit of hosting giveaways on social media is that it’s easy to share them and encourage others to share them. 

There are also benefits to hosting a giveaway on your own website. While social media promotions are convenient, they also impose quite a few rules and limitations, and these can change at any time.

When you host an offer on your own website, you can set the conditions. You do have to stay within the law, of course, but you don’t have to contend with the rules of other sites. The best place to host your giveaway depends on your purposes and preferences. It also depends on where you get the most traffic.

Provide Something Of Value When Generating Leads

Giving something away in exchange for an email address is a very familiar online marketing tactic. In fact, it’s so common that you have to make sure that your offer stands out. Simply promising to send subscribers messages or even a newsletter doesn’t equate to an alluring giveaway. You need to specify a benefit or solution. A report, white paper or video can fill this requirement if it contains valuable information. Other possibilities include a free sample of a physical product or a free trial for a service. Streaming services have gotten people accustomed to the latter as you can sign up for a free trial to Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime and many other services. Smaller companies can offer similar trials with their apps and services. 

Tap Into User-Generated Content 

User-generated content is a concept that’s really taken off in the social media age. Photo and video contests are a powerful way to engage with your audience, and they often work well on visually oriented sites such as Instagram. A photo contest might require participants to show themselves using your product. Or it could be any photo with a theme, such as pets, vacation, holidays, sports or anything you choose. 

Keep Promotions Relevant

Don’t make the mistake of creating promotional giveaways that aren’t relevant to your brand. Many prizes are desirable, but if they don’t link to your business, you’re undermining the purpose. If you’re trying to generate leads, it’s especially critical to stay relevant. Otherwise, you’ll get subscribers who are only trying to win a prize but don’t care about your products. 

For example, everyone likes Amazon gift cards, but they can be used for almost anything. That’s why they make great personal gifts. However, they don’t connect with a specific brand or industry. The best approach is to stick to your own products and services. Another option is to have branded promotional items made. This is a way to turn items that may not directly relate to your industry (e.g., t-shirts and coffee mugs) into something brandable. 

Show Your Appreciation

Sometimes it’s nice to give items away simply to show your appreciation for customers or employees. This can be an exception to the general rule that giveaways should be relevant to your brand. If you’re gifting something to a long-term client or presenting gifts to your employees, you might provide tickets to an event, gift cards or anything they’ll appreciate. These are people who are already aligned with your brand, so there’s no need to remind them. On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with gifting people branded items as well. It’s just not as critical in such cases. 

Promote On Multiple Channels

Regardless of where you’re hosting the giveaway, there’s no reason you can’t promote it using many channels such as your website, social media, email and text message. Most of your customers are probably active on many devices and platforms, and everyone has their own preferences. For example, if you’re running an Instagram photo contest, you may have customers who use Instagram, but not frequently. If you let them know about the contest via email, they may log on to check it out. 

Giveaways Can Help You Grow

Everyone likes receiving something for free. You can tap into this natural human quality by providing people with gifts and helpful information. At the same time, it’s important to make your promotions relevant and to communicate them in a way that motivates your audience to participate. Experiment with various formats and track your results to find the right formula for your business.