How effective is Free Giveaways to gain potential users?

Giveaways used to be this sure-fire way to grow your list or accounts.

Now they aren't as good, but they definitely still bring a lot to the table.

To make sure it works, here is what you should pay attention to I think:

1. An attractive prize

First think about offering something that really attracts your target audience. It has to be appealing to them, they should want to win it. Use a hero product, something that is a massive commercial success and will make your audience “dream” a little bit. It should be a product they aspire to own. That “dream” factor of course is relative, it doesn’t have to be super expensive.

2. Eye-catching

You have to make it look visually appealing. Put the product on a pedestal (figuratively.. and literally also why not!). Open the product. Show it. Show someone experiencing the product. Make it look amazing. However, make sure that the display is coherent with your feed, brand, and post style.

3. Collaboration

Collaborating with a community/account/influencer who has a bigger audience than you even if you have to pay that account/influencer will really help to get the word out on your giveaway.

4. Ease of entry

You need to make it as easy as possible for people to enter. Never underestimate how lazy people can be :). Most people don't want to go and take a selfie or do something that will take them more than 5 seconds. Unless you are offering a really massive prize, and still then it’s probably not the best approach.

All they should have to do would be to follow you, tag a friend, and drop an emoji in the comments. And maybe share it in their story. You could also give different chances to different entries. For example, one comment equals one entry, and shared as a story equals five entries.

5. Consider paid

Consider putting a little bit of paid campaigns behind it. Especially if the organic engagement is not picking up as much as you expected.
Better spend a bit more and get more entries than just give up on it. The prize money will be spent anyway! Better make it worthwhile.

Hope this helps!

Free giveaways can help a brand raise awareness for their product or service, but you should not over-estimate the value of the NEW follower or email subscriber.

Sure, you can gain 10k followers or get 5k email subscribers from a free giveaway campaign, but that is just a vanity metric.

The question you have to ask yourself is how many of those followers or subscribers will actually be engaged users (those who actively interact with your content, product, service).

I know from personal experience, that email lists that come from free giveaways are not that valuable -- not that engaged.

Probably only 5-10% will be truly engaged users, which is helpful in itself. But, it's not as grandiose as the vanity numbers would lead you to believe.

Would I do free giveaway again? Absolutely.

But my expectations would be set accordingly as well.

I'm sure there are exceptions, and largely depends on how the free giveaway is run and who it's targeted to.

🔍 Strategy: Giveaways

• Giving something away for free to build an audience or create buzz/hype

❓Why is it Effective?

• Generate buzz & hype easily
• Building up a list of leads in a short amount of time
• Low amount of time & effort (as compared to other strategies)
• Signs of appreciation and giving back to the community
• Might be cheaper than ads (see Case Study #1 below)
• It's fun!

📚 Case Studies

• Pieters Levels of NomadList gained ~10,000 followers on Twitter at $0.30 per follower, which he claimed that it is almost 3x cheaper than buying ads.

• Cathryn and Allen earned $322,695 from an initial funding goal of $15,000 in 28 hours on their Kickstarter campaign, by collecting 1755 email addresses doing a giveaway prior to launch

I've written more about this here

What kind of FREE giveaway?