Made With ♥ By
Having a launch day strategy is just as important as having a pre-launch strategy. If you want your giveaway to really take off and grow some legs, you have to have everything in order so that it brings you maximum exposure. The launch day strategy is all about executing on the pre-launch strategy that has already been put into place, and then taking it one step further.
Before you start driving traffic to your promotion, make note of your numbers across all social channels. This is important so that you can track progress and see how well the sweepstakes performed when it comes to an end.
It’s time to execute on everything you prepared during the pre-launch phase. Follow up with all the bloggers, influencers, and partners to make sure their posts go out and your ads go up. Send out your press release and publish your blog post.
The pre-launch leg work you've done is a solid foundation for a successful campaign, but a successful campaign also depends on what you do after you launch.
These launch day tactics will help to maximize your promotion’s exposure, helping you achieve astounding results.
There are hundreds of websites that focus on sharing giveaways, and you can easily have your giveaway added to these sites. While this can drive a surprising amount of traffic and get thousands of sign ups, keep in mind that a lot of these people are just looking for a freebie, and may not care too much about your business.
If your goal is to get as much exposure as humanly possible, submitting to these sites will definitely help drive your numbers higher. From our own in-house tests, we’ve found that much of this traffic is nearly 75% women over the age of 25. Many enter sweepstakes as a hobby and are known as "sweepers" in the US or "compers" in the UK, where sweepstakes are more commonly referred to as competitions.
Use your own discretion before submitting to directories. The demographics represented might be perfect for one brand but nothing but noise for another.
Top 10 directories
- AnyLuckyDay
- Online-Sweepstakes •
- Sweepstakes Advantage •
- Slickdeals Sweepstakes •∗
- Contest Listing
- Contestgirl
- Sweeties Sweeps
- ContestBee
- HyperSweep
- WinPrizesOnline •
- See a full list of sites
- • Requires a free account
- ∗ Follow the posting guidelines or you will get banned
Send out another email to your list announcing the sweepstakes and provide a direct link to the page for people to enter.
Be sure to put some time and effort into the email because you want the highest possible click-through rate. Even though these people may already be on your list, you’ll still want them to enter so that when they share the giveaway their friends and family will be exposed to your brand.
Write a post on your Facebook page alerting all of your Facebook fans about your giveaway. Be sure to include an attractive image that will immediately grab people’s attention, and provide a descriptive overview of what people can win. Make sure you include a direct link to your giveaway in your post.
To increase the post visibility you can pin it to the top of your timeline, or highlight it so it takes up a larger portion of your timeline. Make at least two more Facebook posts throughout the duration of the giveaway - one post halfway through, and one post a few days before it ends.
Pin it to the top of your timeline, or highlight it so it takes up a larger portion of your timeline.
If you have a budget for Facebook ads, you can advertise your giveaway and target the exact audience that you’re looking to reach. Set up at least 4 ad variations with different images and text in order to see which ad performs the best. If you’re new to Facebook ads, start with a small budget and slowly tweak your ads in order to get the most bang for your buck.
Facebook also allows you to pay a fee to promote your Facebook posts so that they reach a larger audience. If you have a budget for this, you can try promoting your post so that it reaches more people, which will in turn drive more traffic and entries. Look for a button at the bottom of your Facebook posts that says ‘Boost Post’.
Create multiple ad variations and use your budget on the most effective one.
In addition to Facebook, post about your giveaway on Twitter with a tweet that includes information about what people can win as well as a direct link to the giveaway page. Tweets are only 140 characters, so try to keep the message clear and concise, but still intriguing for people who see it.
Win a Bonobos suit! Yep you saw that right, all week you can enter our #giveaway to win https://t.co/aOCtzAAHkT
— Bonobos (@Bonobos) April 14, 2013
Using Twitter search is a great way to connect 1-on-1 with potential customers, especially people who are talking about your product or niche. Using Twitter search, you can search for keywords that are related to your company or the product that is being given away.
Reach out to anyone who has recently tweeted about something that is on topic and related to your niche and let them know about the giveaway. Do this a few times per day, but don’t do it so much that it turns into spam.
Just like Facebook’s promoted posts, you can also promote your tweets on Twitter through their ads platform.
If you have a budget for it, promote one of your tweets about the giveaway and see what type of response it gets. Always start with a small budget and remember to constantly add different variations of tweets to see what draws the most attention.
Twitter ads draw less clicks than tweets from individuals. We recommend seeking out influencers in your space to tweet your giveaway. Do them a favor or give them something their audience will love to go along with your request.
We encourage you to follow along and build your giveaway as you read this guide. It takes just minutes to set up your first promotion!
Sign Up Free
Many businesses overlook Pinterest because it is a newer player in the social game—they just don't understand it. Even if your business does not use Pinterest, at the very least you should have an account and you should be pinning images to your account that relate to the sweepstakes that you are running.
Pinterest has the power to drive massive amounts of traffic, so be sure to pin attractive images and help others find your content by using #hashtags in the descriptions.
If you have a budget for your giveaway and you want to reach a wider targeted audience, you can use Google Adwords to run ads related to the product that is being given away.
Let’s say your product is a sleep aid, and you’re giving away 6 months worth of product in the sweepstakes. Using Google Adwords, you can target keywords that people may be searching for that are related to sleep aids.
This is a great way to generate leads because people are searching for a solution to their problem, and you’re giving away your product for free. Even if these people don’t win, you can re-market to them and offer them a discount or a free sample after the promotion ends.
Reddit is a popular site that has thousands of sub-reddits for any topic that you can imagine. If you’re into fitness there is r/fitness; if you’re into looking at pictures of cats there’s r/cats, and if you’re interested in lucid dreaming, there’s even r/luciddreaming.
You can search Reddit to find the sub-reddit that is closest to your niche and read what other members have posted in the past. When you are comfortable with how receptive your audience is, post a link to something insightful and helpful for the community, mentioning your giveaway on the page you link to.
For the sleep aid example, you will want to make a post in r/sleep sharing your knowledge about better sleep. Your posts should provide value, asking people to enter your sweepstakes or buy your product as a secondary concern. Don’t just post and run though; bookmark the page and check back often to answer any comments or questions.
Reddit Ads are much more viable, allowing you to target certain sub-reddits that are related to your niche. This will allow you to advertise your giveaway at the top of any sub-reddit. Going back to the sleep aid example, we can target r/sleep with an ad about our sleep aid giveaway. Again, remember to check the ad often in case people are commenting or asking questions!
You can use a service like Buy Sell Ads to advertise your giveaway through email newsletters. Buy Sell Ads has a network of thousands of publishers in a variety of different verticals that you can advertise with. For example, if you’re running a giveaway for a fitness product, you can find publishers in the fitness vertical that will push your giveaway through their email newsletters.
Not only are your ads supporting people who put out great content, but their audiences typically look forward to receiving each newsletter.
There are many ad networks that will help you run CPA (cost per action) offers, where you pay the network for each entry your giveaway gets. CenterPoint Media and Integrate are ad networks with a large amount of affiliates who are bloggers in a wide range of verticals.
You can set up an offer on these networks and their affiliates will promote your giveaway to their audiences. Working with these networks, you will come up with a price that you will pay for every entry you get, and you'll usually set a cap depending on your budget.
A more lucrative, albeit time-consuming outlet, is to contact bloggers and niche websites yourself. It's easier to negotiate a rate that you will pay per entry by contacting content creators directly. Try targeting smaller websites or personal websites in your niche.
Since you most likely won’t be running your giveaway directly on the homepage of your website, you should create an image that will be placed on your homepage that links to your giveaway.
You can also use a simple service like HelloBar (see above) to alert people on your homepage that you have a giveaway going on.
If you sell a product or service, adding a link to your sweepstakes post-checkout can be another great way to get entries. Since people just bought something from you, they’ll be much more likely to enter your giveaway too.
Many companies send transactional emails when someone signs up or purchases something. If your website automatically sends out emails, you can place a link to your sweepstakes in those emails.
The gears are all in motion and our sweepstakes is live, collecting entries, and setting the social web afire with all the sharing and tweeting happening. So... what's next?
.
;void(0);){kind=link}