Launching promotions on Instagram, carrying out contests, and creating giveaways can be quite straightforward as long as you follow a strategy with a SMART objective, and use appealing contest mechanics with a clear dynamic. To this end, we’d like to share with you the best app for launching giveaways in Instagram and provide you with some examples of successful mechanics.
Tips for running giveaways on Instagram
Behind every successful Instagram promotion there’s a lot of hard work. Launching a giveaway or contest is not just about generating good copy, preparing the graphics and picking a winner. Nothing could be further from the truth! There are certain strategic aspects that you should keep in mind from the moment you decide to launch an action of this type. Let’s see what they are:
1. Define a goal
Why launch your promotion on Instagram rather than another social network? Do you know what your objective is? You should never launch a giveaway, contest or promotion without having a clear goal and a strategy for achieving it.
Launching into the world of viral promotions on Instagram without a plan can be a waste of time and money. You’ll get far better results if you focus your efforts strategically!
2. Get inspired
We know that good ideas don’t always grow on trees. After many years working on your brand, creativity can run dry. But don’t give up. Find inspiration in these real-life examples of successful giveaways and campaigns.
It’s not about copying other people’s ideas, it’s about keeping up with trends and best practices. Then you can decide what’s best for your brand and your audience.
3. Know your audience
The key to carrying out effective Instagram giveaways is to understand your users. It’s vital that you understand what they’re looking for, what they like, what they need, how they interact and who they trust.
We’re sure you already know most of this from past experience. But it never hurts to find out as much as you can about your current users. Remember that tastes and audiences change with the times.
4. Establish the legal basis for your Instagram giveaways
A clearly written and easily accessible legal basis transmits transparency, honesty and integrity. Being honest with your audience brings other advantages too: it reinforces your brand image and promotes greater participation.
In addition, regulating your contest, giveaway or promotion is a way of protecting yourself from liability. Try to include every detail: who is responsible for the promotion, who is organizing it, what the dynamics for participation are, what the prize is, and when and where the winner/s will be announced.
It’s important that you adapt your legal basis to the country or geographic territory where you will carry out the promotional action, and to Instagram’s promotions policy.
5. Free tool for an Instagram giveaway
Do they exist? They certainly do! If your dynamic is very simple, you could save some money by using a free tool to create your Instagram giveaway. But if you wish to launch a more ambitious campaign and need all the features required to make your campaign go viral, then investing more is likely to have a positive impact on your promotion.
Ideas for carrying out Instagram giveaways
Now that you know how important it is to define an objective, draw up a plan, and establish legal basis for an Instagram giveaway. Let’s look at some examples of viral mechanics that work, and that you could also employ:
Comment giveaways on Instagram
If your goal is for users to generate content relating to your brand, one good idea is to incentivize your audience to post a comment about your product or services. You can ask them to mention you and add the campaign hashtag in order to take part.
When the participation period is over you can run a prize draw based on the number of mentions in the comments section.
Influencer giveaways on Instagram
Imagine you’re a clothing store about to open its doors. In order to start generating expectation you launch a campaign with influencers, giving them access to your collection before the official opening. They share the whole experience with their audiences via stories and reels. One week later, you launch a prize draw for the chance to win a $1000 gift card to spend in the store.
The nature of the prize draw could be as straightforward – but as powerful and viral – as asking users to comment on the post, mentioning three friends they love shopping with, and following the brand’s account. What could be simpler?
If your aim is to raise brand awareness among your target audience, the above is an example of a giveaway that you should definitely consider.
Visual challenge
What could be better than playing a fun game for the chance to win a big prize? Test your followers visual skills by challenging them to guess how many objects are in a picture or to spot the differences between two images.
You could then run a prize draw among all users who comment on and participate in the post.
Complete the sentence
But not just any sentence! Imagine that you’re about to launch a summer campaign and you’re looking for a super fun and impactful claim. How about turning to your community for help? What could be better than asking your own followers to come up with the campaign claim? Provide the first part of the sentence and encourage your followers to put their creativity to the test by completing it.
In addition to raffling the prize among all participants you could extend the promotion until the campaign launch day, having the winner appear in the commercial or on billboards.
Raffle a prize by adding a touch of “gaming”
Challenge your followers to do a word search where they have to find five of the services you offer or five of your best-selling products. The dynamics of this action would also be a prize draw based on comments, so choosing the winner randomly would be far easier and more transparent if you use an app like Easypromos.
Are you ready to launch your next promotional action on Instagram? By getting creative on social media you can stimulate greater participation, grow your community, and generate brand awareness. Are you up for the challenge? Easypromos can help you!
