When you’re looking to drive leads and get more customers for your small business fast, a giveaway or contest can do the trick.
However, putting together a profitable giveaway can often feel like more of a challenge than it’s worth. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Use this complete walkthrough of how to run a giveaway complete with giveaway ideas to guide you through the process for maximized success.
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How to run a giveaway for your business
Let’s first review how to run a giveaway for your business.
- Set your goals. You’ll want to know beforehand what your giveaway should achieve. For example, if your giveaway is meant to be a lead generation strategy for your business, you’ll want to choose a giveaway idea that collects information from new customers.
- Set your budget. Just like any other marketing campaign, giveaways come with a cost to your business. Make sure to choose a prize that’s within your budget and also helps drive the maximum marketing ROI.
- Know your audience. You want the giveaway prize you choose to resonate with your audience so they take the appropriate steps to enter. What works for one audience won’t work for another. For example, if you’re a salon, giving away a weekend fishing excursion may not be as enticing as giving away a free cut and color service.
- Decide on your prize and rules. At this point in the giveaway planning process, you may want to refer to your legal team or marketing partner to understand what you can or can’t offer for free. After that, you can buy your prize and draft your giveaway terms and conditions.
- Choose your promotion channels. Decide which marketing channels you want to promote your giveaway. For example, social media and email are popular giveaway promotion avenues. In fact, giveaway emails have been proven to have higher conversion rates. Meanwhile, social media accounts that run giveaways grow 70% faster than those that don’t.
- Measure your success. You’ll need a way to track your progress and measure the results of your giveaway to make data-backed marketing decisions. You could use marketing reporting dashboards or customer relationship management (CRM) software to manage your giveaway conversion tracking.
When you approach your giveaway with a clear game plan, it ensures a smooth experience for both you and your participating customers.
🌱 Make a plan to grow your business with a giveaway using our free, easy-to-use growth strategy template!
Giveaway prize ideas
If you’re wondering what your business should offer for your giveaway, here are some giveaway prize ideas.
Small prize giveaway ideas
These low-cost giveaway prize ideas are perfect for businesses with smaller marketing budgets.
- Free service quote or consultation
- Free trial
- Free products or services
- Free coupons or discount codes
- Social media shout-out
- Branded swag
- Product or service add-ons
- Gift basket
- Gift card
- Free meals or drinks
This list could go on, but the point is that no matter your business’s budget, your customers will always be happy to have the chance to win a freebie.
Sweepstakes and big prize giveaway ideas
If you decide to dedicate resources to a larger giveaway or sweepstakes, try offering one of these higher-cost prizes.
- Winner’s choice
- Vacation
- Product bundle
- A year’s worth of products or services
- Computer, tablet, gaming console, or mobile device
- Headphones or speakers
- Subscription services
- Cash
- Coolers
- Furniture
- Appliances
- Event tickets
- Theme park tickets
There are tons more big giveaway prizes you can choose from out there, so explore all your options and have fun with it when picking your higher-ticket items.
Giveaway ideas any business can use
There are plenty of ways you can gamify your giveaway or contest. Check out these giveaway ideas fit for any niche market.
💡 Giveaways aren’t the only way you can drive leads for your business! Find 25 more lead generation ideas, tips, and examples here!
1. Co-sponsored giveaway
If you want additional support to ensure your giveaway is a smashing success, try partnering up with another business. Find a business complementary to your own, and see if you can join forces to offer a bundle of products or services from both of your brands. That way, you could work together to promote the giveaway and tap into one another’s audiences.
2. Guess how many giveaway
A classic giveaway idea is a “guess how many” contest. You could simply fill a clear jar or container with candies or other small items and then challenge contestants to guess the exact number of them in the jar. You could run this giveaway idea on social media, in-store, and more.
3. Tag or repost social media giveaway
An easy way to run a giveaway on platforms like Instagram or Facebook is to ask your followers to repost, comment on, or tag a friend on a post of yours. This can help you increase your social media engagement, and you could select a random winner from the list of participant handles.
4. Giveaway in exchange for a review
Ask your customers to leave a review for your business in exchange for a chance to win a freebie. You could share links to your local listings or a customer feedback survey and track who responds, then pick a winner at random.
5. Photo or video contest
For this giveaway idea, have your participants submit to your business their best, funniest, or most creative photos or videos. It’s up to you how you choose the winner—whether you have your team vote internally or run a public poll. Either way, you’ll be able to drive engagement, collect leads, and create content related to your giveaway before, during, and after the contest.
6. Hero nomination
To run a hero nomination giveaway for your business, ask participants to nominate someone they admire and describe what makes them a hero. Once you collect your submissions, you can pick one (or more) to receive the giveaway prize. This giveaway idea showcases how your business cares about its local community.
7. Digital scratch-off
You can take this giveaway idea in-store or online with a series of tickets that customers could scratch off to find out if they’re a lucky random winner. For example, you could create digital “scratch-off” tickets that users can click to see if they’ve won your giveaway prize.
8. Caption competition
This giveaway idea would primarily be on social media, but you could make it work over email, on your website, or in-store too. All you have to do is pick an image that you want your participants to submit a funny or clever caption for. From there, you can choose your favorite caption to uncover your winner.
9. Buy a gift, get a gift
Whether you choose to do one lucky winner or multiple for this giveaway idea is up to you, but it essentially encourages customers to buy more products. As a referral program type of contest, a “buy a gift, get a gift” giveaway offers a freebie gift to customers who purchase an item for a friend.
10. Wheel spin
Whether in-store or online, you could have a wheel that spins for customers to get a variety of small to medium-value prizes. For example, you could have a pop-up on your website that automatically spins when visitors land on a page, and to claim their prize they have to enter their email.
11. QR code entry
This giveaway idea is the perfect opportunity to incorporate QR code marketing into your strategy. Try creating a quick form accessible by a QR code so that customers can simply scan and submit for a chance to win a prize.
12. Raffle ticket giveaway
A raffle is a go-to giveaway idea for many businesses. They are relatively cheap and easy to run. To start with a raffle giveaway, you could host or sponsor a local event to give out raffle tickets. Next, people can enter into your ticket pool with tickets that contain their information.
13. Scavenger hunt
If you’re looking for a more involved giveaway idea, try a scavenger hunt. This would require participants to locate multiple clues in your store, office, or on your business’s website for a chance to be the first few to complete the hunt and win a prize.
14. Multi-day giveaway
Aside from scavenger hunts, another multistep giveaway idea would be one that lasts days or weeks and contains multiple opportunities for customers to win throughout. For example, you could offer small prizes to customers each day, and tease a grand prize at the end of your giveaways timeframe.
15. Holiday-themed giveaway
Spice up your business’s giveaway by framing it around a popular social media holiday or monthly observance. For example, around Halloween, you could hand out pieces of candy that all come with a code to potentially win a grand prize.
16. Quiz or trivia giveaway
Test your customers’ knowledge with this giveaway idea! You could release trivia questions on a topic related to your business, and the participants with the most correct answers over time win a prize.
17. Refer-a-friend giveaway
Our last giveaway idea is another that would double as a referral program for your business. Provide customers with an exclusive code to give to a friend, and when that code is redeemed they get a freebie.
Use these giveaway ideas to grow your business in a flash
When you want to scale your marketing quickly, giveaways can be just what your business needs. However, choosing a unique giveaway idea to make your business stand out from other contests out there is key. These fun and approachable giveaway ideas can help you execute one that makes an impact. For extra help with your marketing, see how our solutions can help you maximize your giveaway campaigns and more!
Here is our complete list of giveaway ideas:
- Co-sponsored giveaway
- Guess how many giveaway
- Tag or repost social media giveaway
- Giveaway in exchange for a review
- Photo or video contest
- Hero nomination
- Digital scratch-off
- Caption competition
- Buy a gift, get a gift
- Wheel spin
- QR code entry
- Raffle ticket giveaway
- Scavenger hunt
- Multi-day giveaway
- Holiday-themed giveaway
- Quiz or trivia giveaway
- Refer-a-friend giveaway
