A giveaway for your new website is an excellent way to create awareness and attract traffic to your new site. People love giveaways no matter how much money they make. That’s why brands that offer discounts, coupons, and giveaways are successful.
A giveaway is an online promotion/ contest where you ask users to do specific tasks for a chance to win a prize. The campaign uses viral and word-of-mouth marketing to grow your brand.
If you’ve been tossing the idea and wondering if giveaways can make your brand go viral at the initial stage, keep reading and find out what giveaways do and ways of making them successful.
Benefits of a Giveaway for a New Website
There are many reasons to have a new website giveaway. So let's talk about why it wouldn't be a bad investment.
Increase brand awareness – a free giveaway can trigger interest in your brand as people talk about the contest and the gifts.
Generate new leads - people will not mind filling out a form for a few minutes as long as what you offer them for free is worth it. Therefore, this could be your opportunity to generate as many leads as possible.
Generate buzz for your brand – generating enough buzz will make your brand go viral in no time. Giveaways will have people raving about your products and passing the word about your brand.
Cost-effective marketing - the investment amount into offering your customers giveaways may be less than you think. The buzz you create from the giveaway will contribute to your brand awareness efforts.
Increase your social media followers – social media is one of the top places to spread the word about your giveaways. The excitement will generate more followers on your platforms as people develop an interest in your brand.
And now to the tips we promised you on how you can create a successful giveaway for your new website
Define Clear Goals for Your Giveaway Campaign
In reality, a giveaway is a marketing campaign. Like all the other marketing campaigns you undertake in your business, you have to measure the campaign's performance to determine its success.
That means your first step should be creating clear goals. Who do you want to target? What budget are you willing to spend on the giveaway? These questions will help you set your goals.
You will probably want to determine the ROI for your marketing efforts at a certain interval. Therefore, you want to know how much the giveaway contributed to your marketing ROI.
The benefits highlighted in the above section are a good foundation for the goals you can create for your giveaway campaign. But since we are always generous with our tips, here are giveaways goals you can use:
Drive traffic to your new website
Create buzz for your new website, products, or brand
Generate new leads
Boost your brand awareness
Boost sales for a new product
Increase email subscription
Increase social media followers and engagement
Note: the giveaway goals you create should align with your strategic marketing goals. Also, ensure you have a way of measuring your goals.
Research Your Target Audience
At the heart of your giveaway campaign is your customers. An important rule of marketing is that your customer's needs come first.
It will be quite challenging to prioritize your customer's needs if you have no idea who they are or their needs. But do not worry because you can find all the answers by conducting market research on your target audience.
Once again, your goals for the giveaway campaign will determine your research parameters. You want to identify your ideal customer and create a profile that best defines their needs, preferences, interests, and other demographic attributes.
The data you generate from your market research will be vital in the next stages of your giveaway campaigns. For example, your target audiences will determine the ideal prizes for your giveaway.
Note: data on your current customers will offer valuable insights on improving your chances of success in your giveaway. For example, they will offer the best insights on the prizes your target audience may prefer.
Researching the target audience will also inform your decision to create enough buzz about the giveaway. For example, which social media platform(s) is best for running the contest?
Pick a Unique and Exciting Prize for the Giveaway
The prize is the most crucial element to your customers in a giveaway. Therefore, you are less likely to attract enough customers to your contest if they feel the prize you are offering isn't worth it.
Like in sports, you want your game to be competitive to attract a large crowd. Sports event organizers understand this, so they offer appealing prizes, including trophies and medals, at the end of the contest.
The same principle applies to your giveaway. The prize captures the target audience's attention and compels them to register for the contest. The trick is to ensure you have multiple prizes. That will motivate contestants to perform better and get top-shelf prizes.
Also, choose prizes relevant to your target audience and your brand. For example, if you are a business coach, your most significant target audience is the small business owner. Therefore, a full free course for the winner is a relevant and fantastic prize for your giveaway.
On the other hand, if you are a travel and vacation planning agent, a free cruise trip will surely get your contestants into a competing mode. The prize will also trigger an opportunity for plenty of post-giveaway engagement with your customers.
For example, you can create a whole cruise trips email series for all the new subscribers you received during the contest. That will generate enough interest and make others want to take advantage of your other offers for upcoming trips.
Define Your Giveaway Strategy
It may sound confusing when you could say all you have been doing is planning for the giveaway. But at this stage, all you will do is lay the strategy for actualizing the giveaway.
The decisions you will be making include the following:
The Giveaway Rules
It is pretty common for contests to have rules of participation. The rules for your giveaway should be clear before the contestants register for participation.
You also want to be sure you are not breaking any contest and sweepstakes laws set by the state. For example, where there is an age limit requirement, you should let the contestants know.
Type of Giveaway
Your prize should match your type of giveaway. Moreover, the type of giveaway you choose should appeal to your target audience. You can use giveaways such as quiz contests, photo contests, sweepstakes, or short video contests.
Timeline
An essential aspect of planning a giveaway campaign is setting its duration. The contestants have to know the key deadlines for your giveaway. For example, the registration deadline for the contest or making their respective content entries.
Also, indicate when you will announce the winners. The contestants will look forward to that day the most as they anticipate a possible victory from their end.
Choose the Right Platform
Researching your target audience should help you choose the right platform to host your giveaway. In your case, your new website could be the ideal place to host your giveaway.
The rationale is that you could use the event to launch your new website. However, you can adjust if you feel the platform may not have enough impact as your social media platform.
Choose a Giveaway Plugin to Create Your Contest
You don't have to struggle to create your giveaway widget, link, or landing page. You can automate the whole process with simple drag-and-drop builders. If you’re using WordPress, some great plugins to use include:
Rafflepress
WPforms
AgoraPulse
Wishpond
KingSumo
Create Content
The buzz you want for your giveaway will not automatically create itself. Engaging content about the giveaway will create enough excitement among your target audience.
Creating the content you need shouldn't be too hard now that you have identified your target audience. The most important thing is to ensure that you focus on creating lots of visual content for promoting the giveaway.
The concept is no different from how you prepare party invites. The visual aspects build expectations of how much fun the guests can expect at the party. You also want the word about your planned getaway to move first. So, use any of the following techniques to make this happen:
Use paid ads to promote the giveaway
Offer incentives for sharing on social media
Use an influencer
Announce the Winner and Follow up
At the end of a giveaway, everyone is eagerly waiting for you to announce the winner. If you are launching your website, the best time for the announcement would be the day of the site launch.
The idea is to create enough buzz for your website launch and attract a larger target audience. A public announcement and award presentation also adds credibility to your giveaway.
Finally, you need to conduct a follow-up on other participants. Explain to them how they fared; if you are generous, you can offer them a token for their participation. Such follow-ups help you cultivate and push new leads down the sales funnel. It is also an excellent way to develop future customer relationships.
Develop the Perfect Giveaway for Your New Website
Planning and implementing a successful getaway is not as easy as it may seem. But that shouldn't stress you. Contact our experts for help developing your giveaway for the new website.