In this article we look at why to introduce giveaways on Instagram into the social media strategy of our Businesses and Activities.
If you arrived at this article you probably have of typed one of these keywords into Google:
- how to make a giveaway on instagram
- how to make a giveaway on instagram
- how to organize a giveaway on instagram
- how giveaways work on instagram
Giveaway, translated from English “give away,” means tribute.
So if we hear about it, or notice a hashtag on Instagram like this:
#Giveaway
means that specific Brand, or that person, is going to give something to someone.
Recently, Giveaways have become increasingly fashionable. Especially among various web influencers, starting in the United States.
In fact, this particular method of engagement, aims primarily at increasing the number of active followers on one’s social channels. And a contest that rewards the most loyal follower appeals to many.
The Giveaway fad in social communication has also taken hold in Italy for quite some time, and users seem to increasingly appreciate this kind of content.
Why it is important to introduce them into our social strategy?
Giveaway Instagram what is it?
A Giveaway is a contest, a sweepstakes, made by a Brand or user, and spread on social networks.
Social media such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube are currently among the favorites of users who make giveaways for their followers.
And recently, TikTok is also beginning to gain ground.
With giveaways, followers of a particular brand, or influencer, have a chance to win special prizes simply by entering the contest.
And of course, to participate in the contest, followers will have to perform certain actions, decided by the giveaway promoter, within a time frame.
In fact, giveaways are notorious for not being eternal. In fact, they are characterized precisely by limited time.
And in this limited time, users will have to perform specific actions in order to try to win the coveted prize raffled off by the Brand.
Why launch a giveaway?
Now that we know what a giveaway is, why should we introduce it into our social communication?
How can organizing a contest help us?
If our goal is to increase followers on our social channels, giveaways might be the tool for us. In fact, these types of social contests, are a great way to achieve this goal. On Instagram for example.
Most importantly, because of the limited time that characterize these special contests, we have the opportunity to increase engagement.
In fact, as is well known, it is most important to attract reactions to our social posts, within the first few hours of publication. And this is precisely to make sure that our content appears prominently to other users as well.
Obviously, to connect with our followers, it is necessary to implement an ad hoc content marketing strategy that creates expectation in users.
And if we can connect with our community by choosing the perfect gift to launch our giveaway, the connection with our followers will improve by leaps and bounds.
What if I have a startup?
If we want to get our StartUp off the ground, and therefore a small, fledgling brand, the giveaway is great for getting more people to know about our new business.
Of course, the argument applies whether it is a post on Instagram, a video on YouTube, or a newsletter.
Brand Awareness can be helped by all the tools we have at our disposal in social media marketing.
What if I have a personal brand?
Even in the case of personal branding, giveaways can help us.
Think, for example, of the use of hashtags.
One of our potential customers might learn about our business, thanks to the hashtag #giveaway.
And once we capture his or her attention, thanks to specially crafted content, our ideal potential customer (our buyer persona), could become our new follower.
An example of personal brandig and giveaways, are influencers.
In short, why should you implement a Giveaway on Instagram?
We report 7 good reasons:
- Increase followers of your social profiles
- Incentivize interactions on posts, thus more likes, comments and views
- Increasing engagement
- Direct visits to your website, via a call to action, or landing page
- Making connections with your community
- Advertise a product or service
- Doing personal branding
Choose the Giveaway based on your goal
Like any self-respecting marketing strategy, choosing the perfect giveaway depends on our goal.
In fact, all our “markettare actions,” must be designed and implemented, based on the purpose we want to achieve.
If we are not clear about our goal, it will be very difficult to choose which giveaway to propose to our potential followers (and therefore potential customers).
It is necessary, therefore, to study our target audience, and to interpret the desires of our buyer personas, in order to design a giveaway that works, and that enables us to achieve our business goals.
“What does my target audience expect?”
“What might my buyer personas be interested in?”
Or, if we want to surprise our niche market…
“What do my ideal potential clients NOT expect?”
So Choose your goal, and if you need help, contact us for a free consultation.
When to organize a Giveaway on Instagram
Of course, we can choose any time to hold our sweepstakes.
However, it is strategic to place our giveaway at significant times for our business.
For example:
- Anniversary (of the birth of a Brand, the opening of a store, the first year on the market of a product or service, etc.).
- Achievements (a classic, are the “round numbers” of followers on social channels, such as 10 thousand followers on Instagram, or the number of copies sold of a book, etc.).
- Holidays (Christmas, Women’s Day, August bank holiday, etc.).
- Specific times of the year (the start of schools, carnival, the arrival of summer, etc.).
So we have plenty of choices as to the appropriate time to launch our competition.
For example, if we sell diaries, we can organize our giveaway strategy before the start of school, or the start of the new year.
Or we can choose the Christmas season, to offer the opportunity for our followers to receive a gift of one of our diaries, for him and a special person.
The one thing we must always keep in mind is consistency.
In fact, our giveaways must match our brand identity to make our followers relate to us, even in the long run.
How to create a giveaway on Instagram
Speaking of lead generation, it is important to keep in mind that the giveaway is the type of content that most attracts users.
So, we can use our contest as a tool to attract new leads and customers to our Instagram profile, or our business page.
It is important to remember that the more people who participate in your contest, the more engagement will grow through user interactions.
Consequently, the conclusion is obvious.
More participants = more likes, more comments, more shares = more visibility = more followers.
Contest audience. Who do I relate to?
When you launch a contest, you must keep in mind that you are communicating with 2 different types of audiences.
1. Who already follows you:
That is, your followers, who know your business and what you are about.
To incentivize your followers, you need to put yourself in their shoes, and consider what might convince them to participate in your social contest.
A special prize does not necessarily mean “expensive.” The prize up for grabs must be interesting to our followers, or customers.
A user who follows our profile, or our business page on Instagram, most likely appears among our followers because he is interested in our products. Or because he/she has already purchased from us, and therefore is already our customer, and was satisfied (good job!).
So why not offer our followers, a chance to win one of our most beloved products? Or to receive a preview of a product, not yet on the market, at home.
If we have a business that delivers services, not products, we might raffle off a personalized consultation, a visit to our facility.
We have plenty of rewards available to offer our followers (or customers). Just put them at the center of our strategy, just as Flywheel Marketing teaches us.
2. Those who do not follow you:
That is, those who probably don’t even know you.
In this precise case, it is necessary to study our target Buyer Persona, that is, who our ideal potential customers are.
As a Marketing and Communications Agency, we consider the buyer persona as a starting point, to build the right strategy for each of our clients.
Why the Buyer Persona is a key step in marketing strategy. For any Company.
But it is not the same for everyone.
We explained what the Buyer Persona is specifically here: Buyer Persona.
Once we have established the characteristics of our Buyer Personas, we can set up an ad hoc communication strategy to make sure:
- Attract new users who are really interested in our business;
- Convert users into contacts;
- Close with a sale;
- Delighting new customers so that they are satisfied with and promote our Company.
We have just explained why it is important to apply an Inbound Marketing strategy.
How to incentivize users to participate in your Giveaway on Instagram
Once you have determined the audience best suited for your business, you can set up your contest on Instagram.
To let as many people as possible know about your giveaway, you can use a very powerful tool: thehashtag.
In fact, the hashtag allows us to “categorize” our content.
Using the correct hashtags for each of our publications, we will apply a kind of filter, among all the publications on the platform.
We can use the hashtag #giveaway alone. However, this may be counterproductive to our strategy.
Because with this hashtag, we could attract to our page only those who are interested in winning something. Regardless of what.
Instead, our goal has a focus: to attract users who are genuinely interested in our business.
So we can use a custom hashtag. Or composed (like #bookgiveaway, or #travelgiveaway), to make sure that our giveaway is seen by those who might actually become our customers.
How to increase engagement on Instagram with Giveaways
Of course, in order to enter a contest on Instagram, rules must be established.
And these must be clear from the launch of the giveaway.
In fact, a user must perform specific actions in order to participate in a contest.
It is only up to our imagination to decide which ones.
For example, we could ask users to leave a comment on our post. Leave a like, or share our giveaway on stories.
We can also require combined actions:
- “Leave a like and comment”
- “Comment and share on your personal story.”
- “Follow us and comment”
- “Take a screen shot of our website home page and share it in your story.”
As we can see, the combined actions can be many.
And an example can also be found in the giveaways of Clio Make Up, among the most famous make-up artists of the moment, and her team.
In this case, the Clio team requested to:
- Follow 2 social profiles
- Share the giveaway post
- Tagging the two company profiles
- Insert a custom hashtag on the publication
However, let us remember that Italian law has established a proper regulation, as far as prize contests are concerned.
As a result, we need to make sure that our giveaway is always in compliance with the law.
How to create a successful Giveaway on Instagram: 12 things you need to know
If we want to go the sweepstakes route, a tailored strategy needs to be put in place to make sure that our giveaways succeed in achieving their goals.
So let’s proceed step by step, and see together how to make a successful giveaway.
Step 1. Focus on the goal
The first point we need to work on is the focus of our business.
What do we want to achieve with a social giveaway?
Once you have established the goal of your marketing strategy, you can determine the most important activities you need to do to achieve it. And implement your giveaway accordingly.
Step 2. Establish rules
In perfect Inbound Marketing style, the giveaway must also respect the customer (in this case, social network users). Be simple, intuitive, and one that does not require too much effort from the community.
Otherwise, the dropout rate of our contest, may be higher than the participation rate!
It is important to establish rules for participation in the contest, and to communicate the rules to followers clearly.
In fact, let us always remember that social is a leisure activity. People do not feel like “wasting time” with something too complicated, just so they can receive a freebie.
Once the regulation has been idealized, it is time to communicate it to our followers, or potential followers. And three important features should be emphasized in the regulation:
Step 3 The action to be taken to participate in the contest
We can choose different actions for users to perform, or even a mix of them.
Follow the page and comment with “I’m participating!” (mix follow + comment)
Leave a like and tag 3 friends (mix like + comment)
Of course, the actions, and combinations, are many.
The only limit is our imagination.
Item 4 The duration of the competition
Choosing the length of the contest is very important, and it also depends on the type of audience we are going to deal with, and their activity on social media.
In general, a successful giveaway lasts from 3 days up to a week.
In fact, a contest with too short a duration may not reach our ideal potential customers in time. Thus depriving them of being able to participate in our initiative, and causing us to lose the opportunity to attract their attention.
In the same way, a contest that is too long in duration may also discourage users from participating.
Because they will have to wait too long to find out if they have won our beautiful prize.
So it is necessary to find a middle ground, to induce the user to participate in our contest right away, while still giving them time to understand the rules.
Step 5 The choice of the winner
Like all sweepstakes, the winner is happy, and the loser is not.
To avoid misunderstandings, it is good to explain from the outset how the winner will be chosen.
Whether it is a decision made by free software, which extracts numbers, letters and names from a list, or by an individual, does not change.
This aspect of the contest must be specified from the beginning, clearly and simply.
Step 6. Choose the prize
The choice of the prize, is important, not to say crucial, to the implementation of the giveaway.
What we put up for grabs must be enticing to our potential followers, but without leaving us “in the lurch.”
Let me explain further.
It is obvious that a user has more incentive to participate if the prize has a very high value. However, we cannot burn a year’s worth of revenue just for a contest on Instagram.
The prize we raffle must be special to the users. For this reason , it is essential to know our target audience.
In fact, a special user award does not have to be expensive for our business.
What are you selling?
Use the potential of the giveaway to raise awareness of your products or services
For example, if you sell clothes, among the prizes up for grabs, you could put one of your products, or a Gift Card to spend in your store.
Or, if you offer services, you could raffle off a free consultation, or a project tailored to your potential client.
The important thing, is to make our potential customers (or followers) feel like they are at the center of our strategy.
This requires that the prize be designed specifically for them, offering valuable content and prizes.
Step 7. Promote!
Promoting a giveaway is definitely a winning strategy to attract a large segment of the audience.
As a tool that has a beginning, an unfolding, and an end, it is necessary that the promotion of the giveaway be continuous, and not focused only on a period of time.
Focusing our promotion only on the launch post is not strategic. Especially if our goal is to increase the number of followers (because we have a few).
For example, Instagram’s new algorithm, gives more visibility to pages that show more user engagement.
So if our social channel is just born, we will have very little hope of tapping into our audience.
If, on the other hand, our social activity is less recent, our advice is to create relevant content with your target industry.
And once you have gathered a good number of followers, proceed with promoting the giveaway.
Step 8. How giveaways work on Instagram: a little trick
Hated by TV series fans, spoilers can also have upsides, in terms of marketing strategy.
A good way to use this activity, is to “spoil,” precisely, the release of the contest. In advance of the start date.
In this way, we will keep our followers on their toes, who will be tempted to check our page every day in anticipation of the launch.
Item 9. Promote the timing of the launch
The timing of the launch is very important for any self-respecting contest.
We will use all channels at our disposal, to notify users of this new initiative.
We can sponsor a post on social, send newsletters to our contacts, post stories (in the case of a giveaway on instagram), etc.
Learn how HubSpot can help you manage contact databases for your newsletters.
It is also important to emphasize the reason for holding the contest.
For example, we might want to celebrate reaching 10000 followers. Or an important collaboration.
If you need pointers, go back to the chapter “When to Organize a Giveaway.”
Step 10. Promote after the launch of the giveaway
As we said, the promotion of our competition must be continuous, and not focused on a single moment of its duration.
Promoting the giveway as it unfolds allows us to keep users’ attention on our brand, and on our social event, high.
We can make stories, with a countdown showing the end of the contest. Or spread a custom hashtag.
TikTok came up with a perfect social media strategy on the use of hashtags for businesses.
Learn more here: TikTok for Business strategy
But be careful not to overdo it!
The purpose must remain to inform users, not to nag them. Or we may get the opposite effect!
Item 11. Promote at the end of the competition
Like any self-respecting contest, the crucial moment is the announcement of the winner.
And of course we can’t help but promote our giveaway, just when users expect it most.
Invite users to celebrate the end of your contest with you. Involve your followers in announcing the winner, and thank them for participating.
Good social communication, is to end the closing post with a question.
“Did you enjoy this giveaway?”
“What prize would you like for the next contest?”
In this way, engagement will be generated by the comments of users, who will be incentivized to answer the question.
Item 12. Beware of regulations!
In many states there are very specific regulations governing social contests. And Italian law is no exception.
In fact, just in Italy, there are steep fines, for those who do not comply with the latest regulations, starting in July 2018.
Ministry of economic development, chamber of commerce, chamber official…
Respecting the rules, and the user at the forefront, is critical to the growth of our business.
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