If you are searching for an effective way of gaining more Instagram followers, sales and long-term brand engagement, giveaways may just be the answer you need. Today we will give you 5 reasons why you and your business should run an Instagram giveaway. You will find out that the benefits of giveaways can be just as irresistible as winning them.
First of all, the numbers don’t lie:
- Instagram accounts that run regular giveaways grew 70% faster than those who don’t.
- 91% of Instagram posts with over 1000 comments are related to a giveaway or contest.
- Giveaways and contests on Instagram receive 3.5 as many ‘likes’ and 64 more comments than an average post.
Free products are bound to attract customers. Free contests and giveaways are one of the oldest tricks in the marketing playbook. Even though you might think that giving away free stuff is going to be one of your expenses, you definitely should consider it a smart investment. By exposing customers to your product, you can quickly generate awareness of your brand. Familiarising the audience with your business is likely to encourage them to come back for more. Without further ado, it’s time to dive into the details.
1. Build Brand Awareness
Building brand awareness is particularly crucial for small businesses. In these difficult times, it is imperative to find alternative ways to reach out to your existing and future customers. Online giveaways will prove very helpful in achieving your goals.
Since people love free stuff, running an Instagram giveaway is a proven way to grab your audience’s attention and spread the world about your company. Being creative about giveaways can lead to exploring even more effective ways of reaching more people. For example, you can ask your participants to tag their friends in comments. As a consequence, you will boost organic reach and attract more users who found their way to your business via interest in free products.
2. Increase user engagement
First, let’s make it clear: followers aren’t enough for your business to succeed and they won’t bring you income. However, engaged followers create a whole new discourse. The higher user engagement is, the more new users you can attract. How? The Instagram algorithm shows popular posts, so getting likes and comments is a must.
As a small business owner, you might find it challenging to boost your user engagement. One of our previous posts discusses how you can increase your customer engagement. Giveaways tie in well with the overall engagement strategy. Why? People love freebies. According to one study on the effectiveness of a call to action (CTA), including the word ‘free’ significantly increases user interactions. Additionally, business who entice their new customers with giveaways are bound to make a strong first impression. Consequently, this will then have an impact on how likely they are to find out more about your business and turn their interest into sales.
3. Secure collaboration with influencers and business partners
Business partnerships and influencer marketing are goldmines for small businesses who are only starting out on Instagram. Working with experienced, widely know businesses as well as popular individuals with an army of loyal followers can help your business thrive. However, one could say that an immense amount of competitors on the market can make securing collaborations with bigger brands and influencers difficult. Nonetheless, this should not discourage you from widening your horizons.
It is important to outline that smaller influencers and newly established or similarly popular businesses can be excellent partners. They will want to increase their follower base just as much as you and they will work hard to achieve that. If you team up together, you will be able to offer better prizes, get more contest participant and ensure you do your best to attract as many people as you can. Collaboration will also help to establish long-term connections with influencers and other businesses who can support you in the future.
4. Get user-generated content
As you would expect, Instagram is all about visual content. While the most beautiful photographs and expertly designed graphics are incredibly important, it is crucial to feature fan-made content where possible. User-generated content increases brand trust. A report by Stackla says that 90% of customers say aunthenticity is important when deciding which brands they like and support. Furthermore, 79% of people claim that user-generated content highly impacts their purchasing decisions.
Getting customers to share pictures and videos of your content is not always easy. Giveaways can change that; your customers will be more likely to take photos of your product if you offer something in return. Therefore, considering photo contests is a viable way of forming new customer behaviours and acquiring the one type of product images you cannot create yourself.
5. Boost sales
The above points took us to the final point: sales. No matter your business niche and size, every company aims at growing revenue and giveaways are a very effective ways of making that happen. How? By doing exactly what we have already discussed. Building brand awareness, increasing user engagement, collaborating with others and acquiring user-generated content. All of these activities will bring you a step closer towards generating income.
Summary
The 5 reasons why you and your business should run an Instagram giveaway hopefully have you an idea of how much they can help your business. Overall, running Instagram giveaways are a highly effective method of acquiring new audience and increasing sales. Giveaways can drive massive engagement without taking up too much of your time and budget. If you run giveaways on a regular basis, you are very likely to organically grow your Instagram audience over time.
Giveaways will give your business the exposure it needs to shine and grow. Moreover, only 2% of Instagram accounts run giveaways. This means that giveaways might just give you a chance to make your business stand up among your direct competition. Besides, even if your competitors are currently running a giveaway, there is nothing stopping you from running a better one.
Running giveaways will equip you in useful knowledge. They will enable you to explore the available options and customise your giveaways to suit your business best as you go along.
Our offer
If you are looking to run a giveaway but are not sure where to start, we are here to help. Whether you are only thinking about a one giveaway, a social media campaign or a full social media management scheme with campaigns and giveaways included, we will be able to help your business grow.
Find out more on our Services page.