New Update: Boost Social Proof with Reviews & Automation
Introducing RafflePress's new leave-a-review giveaway actions. Boost customer engagement and build trust effortlessly by incentivizing reviews in WordPress.
New Update: Boost Social Proof with Reviews & Automation
Stacey Corrin
Stacey Corrin
John Turner
John Turner
Do giveaways increase sales? This is a question our readers ask frequently and one we can easily answer with proof.
Running contests and giveaway campaigns are a great way to grow your following on social media platforms. They generate excitement and help your followers feel valued. But how exactly can they increase your sales?
In this guide, you’ll learn that giveaways do increase sales for small businesses, and we’ll show you why.
In This Guide:
The answer to that question is a resounding yes!
Social media giveaways are effective at growing brands fast, increasing your followers and email subscribers, and gathering new leads.
Giveaways have a conversion rate of almost 34%, which is higher than other types of content. And with more leads, you have more opportunities to transform new audiences into potential customers.
In one case study, KnivesShipFree saw massive success with its giveaway marketing strategy. They launched rolling monthly sweepstakes ahead of a new product launch.
Using OptinMonster, they created a series of lightbox popups to collect registrations from contest participants. Then, after entering the contest, they added participants to the company newsletter.
The results of this digital marketing campaign were mind-blowing. After only 3 months since launching the contest, KnivesShipFree added over 5,000 new emails to their list. That’s a direct result of engaging their target audience.
Then, on the first day of launching their new product, they made over $10,118.20. What’s more, $4,373.04 came from first-time sales from the new subscribers.
It isn’t hard to replicate this type of contest using a combination of OptinMonster and RafflePress.
RafflePress is one of the best WordPress giveaway and contest plugins on the market. With its built-in Grow Your Email List giveaway template, you can launch a giveaway to gather email addresses in just a few minutes.
Then, you can promote your giveaway using attention-grabbing Exit-Intent popups from OptinMonster, with a call-to-action button linked to your giveaway landing page to encourage more entries.
If you’re unsure where to start, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do a giveaway to grow your email list.
In another case study, Agile’ Marketing Services grew their email list by 52% with a giveaway.
Moreover, the giveaway generated a lot of engagement on social media. Because they aligned the prize with their target audience, they were able to both reward loyal customers and encourage repeat business to boost their revenue.
If you need more proof of the power of giveaways to drive sales, take a look at this case study. SeedProd, the powerful drag-and-drop WordPress website builder, ran a giveaway over the Black Friday holidays for the chance to win a MacBook Air.
The campaign generated over 4000+ new users, translating to 3X their average sales. For a small business, that’s a significant increase in sales.
Now you know that giveaways can increase sales for your business, let’s explore how to turn those revenue goals into reality while engaging your existing customers.
Giveaways can help you get more from your business goals, resulting in increased leads and sales. Below, we’ll look at these marketing tips in more detail and explain how you can use them to skyrocket your brand’s growth.
Chances are the first thing you do when you wake up is check your emails. More than half of us check our email before doing anything else online, such as browsing social networks and catching up on the news.
Since emails have the highest open rates compared to social media, it makes sense to focus more of your efforts on email marketing.
RafflePress’s Grow Your Email List giveaway template is the easiest way to boost list subscribers. When launching the template, your giveaway widget is automatically populated with the Join an Email Newsletter action to encourage users to opt in for a chance to win.
As we mentioned earlier, when you get users on your list, it’s much easier to nurture them through your marketing funnel and turn them into customers to increase sales. For example, you can email coupons and limited-time offers to pique their interest.
So, do giveaways increase sales? If you use your email list effectively, they certainly do.
Despite its fast-changing environment, social media marketing remains one of the best ways to find new customers.
The truth is that 52% of brand discovery online happens in public social feeds. Growing your social media followers will help you secure the type of audience interested in buying your products and services.
Using RafflePress to increase brand awareness is pretty straightforward. We created the social media account follow actions so participants can enter your giveaway by following you on your:
With more people following your brand channels, you increase your exposure to a broader audience, resulting in more potential customers. It’s also possible those users will stick around for more giveaway ideas and freebies.
In this sense, giveaways can increase sales by exposing your brand to a wider audience interested in buying your products.
Did you know that 130 million Instagram users engage with shopping posts on the network monthly? With that many eyes on your content, it’s the perfect opportunity to optimize your posts for more sales.
Why not run an Instagram giveaway and include powerful entry actions to engage your followers directly with your brand, such as:
If you like, you can include all of the above and reward participants with bonus entries for every action they take.
The bottom line is if your audience sees tons of people engaging with your brand, you’ll appear more trustworthy, which can be the tipping point for securing more sales. It’s also an effective way to attract influencers and entrepreneurs who may be interested in working with you.
Contests and giveaways can dramatically boost your website traffic. With one-third of contest entrants willing to receive more brand information, it’s an excellent lead-generation tactic.
This is especially true when you host your giveaway on your business site using a giveaway landing page. Since it has nothing to distract your visitors, it keeps them focused on submitting their entries and securing new leads for your brand.
You can also use your giveaway to send participants to other areas of your website. For example, you could create your own giveaway entry asking users to pick a favorite item from your product pages or read a blog post and leave a comment.
When users interact with your site, you increase your traffic and keep them on your site for longer. If these shoppers spend more time on your site, they’re more likely to make a purchase.
What’s more, how long people stay on your site can affect your bounce rate, which is a signal search engines use to rank your website.
Using a retargeting strategy may not be the first thing that springs to mind when you think about running a giveaway. But when you look at the stats, it’s another excellent example of how giveaways can increase sales.
The average click-through rate (CTR) for display ads is a mere 0.07%, but when you compare that to an average of 0.7% for retargeting ads, there’s a clear difference. Additionally, website visitors retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert.
This means that if you retarget giveaway participants with display ads such as Facebook Ads, they’re much more likely to become customers after returning to your business website.
This is why RafflePress has a settings section dedicated to retargeting and success tracking.
You can enter your retargeting pixels and scripts in that area, where they’ll fire as soon as anyone enters your giveaway.
Bottom line: Do giveaways increase sales? They can if you’re clever about retargeting people who enter with exclusive offers.
As demonstrated in the case study earlier, running a giveaway is a surefire way to increase product awareness. When you combine your giveaway with a well-written email announcement, you’ll have a higher chance of increasing sales.
This is because contest emails have an average open rate of 8%, which is 5.5.% more than email marketing campaigns that are more commonly used.
Plus, if you use your new product as the contest prize, you’ll gauge interest and fuel more excitement for its lunch.
You can use RafflePress to generate a buzz around your products by using the prize details section in the contest builder.
You can upload multiple images of your product, create a compelling headline, and write a description that entices people to participate.
User-generated content (UGC) is quickly becoming the best way to generate leads and sales for many brands. And with more than half of consumers wishing that brands would tell them what content to create and share, running a UGC contest is smart.
With a photo contest or video giveaway, you can ask users to submit a photo or video to enter. You can then use that content to promote your brand on your website and social media.
RafflePress makes this easy with the Submit an Image entry action, allowing users to upload a photo within the giveaway widget. Then, you can see all entries in your giveaway dashboard, so you can easily pick a winner.
UGC works because they’re recommendations from REAL customers, and people are more likely to base their purchase decisions on genuine recommendations than branded promotions.
Giveaways are also the perfect opportunity to get feedback on your products. Studies have shown that 58% of people never use a company again after just 1 bad experience. So, it’s your job to do everything you can to exceed your customers’ expectations.
One way you can do that is to create a survey asking for customer feedback. You can do that by running a contest with a simple poll.
Alternatively, you can create a more detailed survey with WPForms and require users to fill it out in return for entry into a prize draw.
Once you’ve gathered your feedback, you can use it to boost sales and improve your products and customer experience.
Have you ever seen giveaways attracting so many entries that they quickly go viral? Participants tend to share giveaways with their whole network, which encourages more people to enter, and so on.
Moreover, over 94% of the time, users share a giveaway immediately after registering, with 62% sharing it with a friend suggesting they enter.
Word-of-mouth marketing like this works similarly to UGC in that people are more likely to enter if they’re referred by someone they already know.
In an interview with Business Insider, Oana Borcoman, Founder and CEO of Evoke Experiences, said:
RafflePress’s Viral Refer-a-Friend entry action was explicitly created for this purpose. When users click to enter, they have the opportunity to share the contest in the following ways:
In the action settings, you can choose to write a custom message and even include hashtags to boost your reach.
By encouraging participation using word-of-mouth marketing, you can increase brand exposure, helping you attract your ideal customers. Plus, you have a higher chance of increasing sales with a larger target audience.
Finally, using RafflePress to run a giveaway for your business doesn’t require any technical effort.
Since the giveaway builder uses a visual drag-and-drop interface, anyone can use it to build stunning contests. What’s more, you won’t have to hire a developer to get your contest looking great, as there’s no coding required!
This makes the entire contest creation process super-fast, so you can focus more on improving your business in other areas, which is excellent news for startups on a tight budget.
Do giveaways increase sales you may ask. The answer is yes if you use a tool that gives you more time to focus on improving and promoting your business.
While giveaways can be a powerful marketing tool, it’s important to be aware of potential downsides before diving in.
Giveaways can attract people only interested in the prize, not your brand or products. They might unsubscribe after the giveaway or never convert into paying customers.
Additionally, if the prize doesn’t resonate with your target audience, you might generate engagement without attracting valuable leads. For example, a tech giveaway wouldn’t be effective for a clothing brand.
To mitigate these pitfalls for your small business, clearly define your goals and target audience. Ensure you’re targeting audiences with a genuine interest in your brand, with the potential to convert.
Also, choose a prize that aligns with your brand and resonates with that audience. By offering something they truly value, they’re more likely to engage with your brand and become paying customers.
We hope this guide helped you decide whether giveaways do increase sales for small businesses. If you’re convinced, the next step is to dive in with your first giveaway. Follow our guide to create an online contest in WordPress for the steps.
You might also find the following guides helpful:
And don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook for more great tips to grow your business.
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