Introduction
Giveaways are a great way to grow your audience. They can also be a great way to increase engagement and generate leads. But they can also be bad for business!
Know the difference between a giveaway and a contest
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A giveaway is when you give away a prize to a random winner.
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A contest is when you give away a prize to the winner selected by judges.
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If done without a sponsor, giveaways are less regulated than contests because they're considered "contests of skill" rather than "sweepstakes."
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Giveaways can be done without sponsorship, but contests need sponsorship due to their nature as promotions that require advertising and marketing.
There are many reasons to consider doing an Instagram giveaway but it may not be for everyone
If you're looking for a way to increase engagement, giveaways can be a great option. A giveaway is an event where one or more businesses give away their products and/or services for free in exchange for people following them on Instagram and/or liking their posts.
They're also low-cost and low-effort—you don't need any graphics or other resources beyond the product itself (if you're giving it away). This makes them very attractive but they do have limitations: they don't build an audience, you need to know what your end goal is before doing a giveaway, and if done wrong they could damage your brand's reputation.
Giveaways are great for increasing engagement
Giveaways are a great way to get your followers to engage with you and your brand, but they’re also an effective tool for increasing sales. It’s estimated that giveaways drive a surprisingly high number of sales – up to 50% when run alongside a paid ad campaign. It's easy to see why - the more people who follow you on Instagram and the more engagement you get on your posts, the more likely those followers are going to buy from you in the future. And what better way for them than with an incentive like winning a free product?
Giveaways can even help increase brand awareness and attract new audiences as well as existing ones - because every giveaway has an entry form that encourages visitors from other social media sites (like Facebook or Twitter) into entering too!
Giveaways are low-cost and low-effort
When you think of a giveaway, you may be thinking of the kind that involves physical products. But giveaways can also be digital and involve software, services, and/or gift cards.
They are an effective way to get more followers, engagement, sales, and traffic. They're also an easy way to get email subscribers.
Giveaways don’t build an audience
Don’t get me wrong. A giveaway can be a fun way to engage your audience and give them something in return for their attention, but it shouldn’t be your only goal. This is especially true if you want to build an email list, which will help ensure that you have an audience for future promotional offers.
Giveaways are not a strategy for building an audience or collecting emails because they don’t create any lasting value for participants—you win a prize and then what? You might see some initial spikes in engagement (especially if there is an incentive), but once the contest ends those new followers will fade away pretty quickly. Many of those people may not follow you again at all!
If your goal is to grow your business by gaining email subscribers and building relationships with social media fans over time, then giveaways aren’t right for you. Instead, try promoting products after they've been published/released on Amazon with affiliate links — this will keep people engaged long-term while earning money off sales as well!
Know what you want to get out of the giveaway
Before you get started, it's important to consider what you want to get out of your giveaway. Are you trying to increase engagement on Instagram? Drive sales? Create brand awareness?
Once you've decided on your goal for the giveaway, make sure that success is measurable. After all, if something isn't quantifiable and trackable, how will you know whether or not it was successful? For example, if I told my boss that my goal was "to increase traffic to my website", without tracking any numbers or data from last month (or last year), he'd likely be confused about why I thought this was an achievable goal.
However - if I told him "I want our website traffic to increase by 20% this quarter," he might take a look at our historical data and realize that's not an unreasonable expectation given the trends we've seen over time. There may even be historical benchmarks indicating how much traffic we'd need each month for me to reach my goals! If this were an actual situation with one of my clients...
How Can An Instagram Giveaway Be Bad For Your Business?
It is easy to think that the more giveaways you do, the better. However, this is not always true. If you don't know what you want out of your giveaway, it can be bad for your business in some cases.
For example: If someone posts a picture of themselves having fun with their friends wearing a certain type of clothing and then tags the company in the caption asking if they could win something so they could dress like them at their next event, and then they get picked as an entrant in that week's giveaway. You might think this person would be grateful! But what if they win? They may end up being disappointed because there was nothing special about their prize package or maybe even worse: maybe there were problems with shipping or delivery! And even if everything goes smoothly, even if there weren't any issues throughout (which never happens), what happens after? You have spent all this time getting people excited about entering your competition only for them not to have anything good come from it afterward when it's done.
The wrong approach to a giveaway will hurt more than help
Giveaways are not a marketing strategy. They don't replace the need for real, strategic marketing campaigns that target specific audiences and goals.
Giveaways can be harmful to your brand. They create unrealistic expectations in users' minds, which can make them unhappy if they don't receive an immediate response or follow-up from you when they do win.
Giveaways are not a good way to build long-term relationships with customers who want more than just a free product or service. If you want customers to buy from you again, then focus on building meaningful relationships by providing them with valuable information about your business and offering them helpful tips on how they can use what you sell in the best possible way.
Giveaways can be categorized as spam
Spam, whether it's in the form of a text message, email, or social media post, is bad for business. There are many reasons why this is true but the main reason is that spamming can be illegal.
The CAN-SPAM Act sets forth rules for sending commercial emails. These rules include things like having clear and conspicuous identification information about who sent the message and how consumers can contact you to opt-out of future communications from you. What does this mean? You must identify yourself as being from your company when sending someone an email asking them to buy something from you or you risk being sued by that person (or even worse).
Your giveaway may not be legal
If you're running an Instagram giveaway, it's important to understand that giveaways are not legal everywhere. This can be confusing, as there are many ways to run a giveaway and sometimes they seem like they would be legal—for example, if you're giving away a gift card or some other non-physical prize. However, if you're shipping anything internationally or even within the United States where certain laws apply (California has strict laws about "prize promotions") then your giveaway may not be allowed or could get shut down by regulators at any moment!
People may unfollow you after the giveaway ends
An Instagram giveaway may be bad for your business if people unfollow you. Some may not like the idea that they were "tricked" into following your account and then didn't win, even if it was a voluntary action.
Some people don't want to follow a brand, even if they have won something from them. Many businesses are afraid to put their followers in a position where they can't win all the time because it could lead them to unfollow the company or brand entirely out of disappointment when they don't get exactly what they want every single time. This can be avoided by having multiple giveaways with different prizes each time, so people will still be excited about following and winning something new while also feeling like they're part of something bigger than just one specific product or service offered by your business on Instagram (or anywhere else).
Think carefully before doing a giveaway
Think carefully before doing a giveaway.
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Giveaways are often used to promote products or services. If you are in the business of selling anything, then it can be a good idea to do a giveaway to get more people interested in your product or service.
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Giveaways can be a good way to build your audience. When you post about a giveaway on Instagram (or anywhere else), people who don't know about you yet might become aware that you exist and start following you so they can enter the contest.
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Giveaways are great for increasing engagement: They're an easy way to get people to comment on posts, share them with friends, and answer questions in polls related to the contest itself.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a way to grow your business, giveaways can be an effective tool. But they aren’t right for everyone. Consider the cost of the giveaway and what it means for your business before jumping in. If you do choose to do an Instagram giveaway, then make sure you have a plan in place that will take care of everything from start to finish so that there are no surprises along the way!