7 Engagement Strategies to Get People to Participate in a Sweepstakes
Looking for ways to increase engagement with your brand? Sweepstakes are a great option! Everybody loves to win. In this article, we’ll share seven strategies to increase brand awareness, generate new leads, or strengthen your relationship with current customers. From social media promotion to leveraging influencers, these tips will help you boost your promotion’s reach and participation.
1. Have a Prize Strategy in Place
Consider offering a valuable and relevant prize to your target audience. To increase your chances of a successful promotion, pick an innovative and relevant theme so it can stand out to your audience.
Offering a prize with high value with a flawless prize-fulfillment strategy will help your promotion experience stand out. Consider prize ideas that add value to your customers’ life or help solve problems. Remember you want to provide a great experience to every participant that enters the contest, not just the winners.
2. Keep the Entry Requirements Simple
Creating a promotion that is easy to enter is extremely important because it will have a direct impact on the outcome of your promotion. Complex instructions or steps may turn potential entrants away. Avoid creating entry requirements that are confusing or require too much effort from the participant.
For example, one of our client’s entry page is simple to understand with brief instructions:
The easier it is to enter, the more likely people will participate.
Sweepstakes entry methods should be as simple as possible. People are more likely to participate in sweepstakes when the entry requirements are easy to understand and follow. Successful promotions allow people to quickly complete their entries so they can focus on winning rather than filling out lengthy forms.
3. Leverage Social Media
Create a hashtag and post about the sweepstakes on all your channels.
Social media channels are a great way to promote sweepstakes, increase brand awareness, collect first-party data, and user-generated content.
If you want to use UGC (user-generated content) as your entry method and you also plan to use that in your advertising, then you must explicitly state this in your sweepstakes official rules. This helps avoid misunderstandings regarding content usage rights.
4. Creator Partnerships and Brand Ambassadors
Effective sweepstakes strategies often involve partnering with other businesses or influencers in your industry to promote the sweepstakes to their audiences. When brainstorming and researching which partnerships you’d like to pursue, keep in mind that overlapping audiences will help you and the potential partnership brand both grow their audience.
Partnering also allows you to reach audiences who may not previously have been aware of your sweepstakes. This is an invaluable tool to broaden your reach and create more engagement around your sweepstakes.
For example, if you’re looking to grow a CPG brand, partnering up with established influencers or businesses can help you reach potential new customers that align with your brand.
5. Ensure the Sweepstakes Official Rules are Clear
People should know exactly what they need to do to enter. Running sweepstakes is an effective strategy to engage with your audience and grow their loyalty, but your sweepstakes official rules must be crystal clear.
Whether through prior press releases or on the sweepstakes webpage, ensure potential participants know what they must do to enter — i.e., provide name, email address, and other requested information. As well as explaining the rules and eligibility criteria so entrants know what they’re signing up for, and you can avoid legal risk down the line.
If you’re unsure whether your official rules are legally compliant, then hiring a sweepstakes company like Sweeppea can help you get there.
6. Make the Giveaway an Experience
Get creative with your entry methods to help your customers visualize your brand in their life.
For example, an outdoor gear brand can have their participants answer a question like: “What’s your favorite place to take your outdoor gear to?” and have every answer be an entry.
You can make this request part of your entry form. It’s simple to enter and helps you understand your customer at a deeper level. Making the entire promotion an experience for your participants can help you gather new insights for remarketing campaigns in the future.
7. Branded Surveys
Another excellent promotional giveaway engagement idea is using surveys. Depending on who your ideal audience is and your business goals, this can be an excellent way to gather first-party data, and make the experience exciting for your participants.
People love sharing and learning about themselves. Surveys allow them that outlet and also give them a chance to win a prize.
If you’re currently pivoting strategies or are running out of marketing campaign ideas, the information you can learn about your audience using a survey is going to be priceless.
Conclusion
Sweepstakes are a great marketing tool to increase brand awareness, drive sales, and customer engagement. Following the seven strategies outlined above, you can run successful sweepstakes that get people excited and engaged with your brand.
If you want professional help administering your sweepstakes, we’re here for you. Contact us today to learn more about how we can partner with you to make your next sweepstakes successful.
Backed with over 10 years of experience, Sweeppea has helped many businesses turn their participants into customers. For more information on how Sweeppea can help you with your next sweepstakes, contact us at support@sweeppea.com or call us at (305) 505–5393.
